A closer look at ESG and ERG at work with Nathalie Pannequin

[Music] In this episode, I talked with Natalie Pannekin, a consultant in ESG, corporate culture and employer branding, and the former global head of ESG at Ogrie about her transition from marketing to ESG leadership. If ESG doesn't sound familiar to you, that's okay. I also had to look it up. It stands for environmental, social, and governments, which is a framework that companies and investors use to evaluate how responsibly the business operates, not just how profitable this. In this conversation, we explore the transition from centrally organized campaigns to volunteer-led employee resource groups and how that can empower employees to take ownership and drive meaningful change within the organization. Natalie also talked about the importance of tailoring community-building efforts to fit cultural differences, especially when it comes to ESG's, where environmental and social priorities may vary by region. That ensures that your initiatives resonate and are remaining effective. This episode will resonate most with community builders and leaders who work at the intersection of people, purpose, and organizational change. Enjoy! [Music] Hello, dear Natalie. It's really great to see you. Welcome to Mapping Ties. It has been a while since you and me collaborated and worked together. And I'm happy to have you a guest today and bring a bit of your experience to your listeners. How are you? Hi, Anna Maria. Yeah, I'm good. Thank you. I'm super happy to be here as well. Very happy that I'm able to participate in your podcast and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Let's do it. As the usual, I'm inviting every guest to briefly introduce themselves. Tell me a bit about you, where are you coming from, where are you going, and also how have you found your way into this world of community-building? So, I come from Paris originally, but I am Franco-British. So my dad's French, my mom is English, so I've always been kind of a multicultural type of person. In terms of my professional background, I have a marketing background, but have evolved over the years more into corporate culture topics and more recently environmental, social, and governance. Today, I essentially help companies structure their ESG strategies, but also their culture strategies by turning data into actions that will, on one side, help decrease the environmental footprint, and on the other side, help strengthen the diversity, the equity, and the inclusion program. So everything kind of comes together to help a company or to help companies improve their profile, essentially, and their actions that they take to help the world become a better place for you. And I over-arge this with my communication expertise so that all of these efforts can be properly communicated both internally to employees and externally. So the aim here is to increase employee engagement and sense of belonging on one side, but also to increase the market awareness of what the company is doing. So all of these actions, essentially, they have a direct impact on the company's reputation, but also its capacity to bring in more business. As to how I found my way into community building, so actually, a lot of my career has been about managing global projects, and a big element of that is the implementation phase. The most efficient ways to succeed in the implementation phase is to get leadership by in and to build communities that believe in the project, and that will carry it. So I've plenty of examples from my career, but funny enough, I think the first time I really created a community was when I went freelancing. I was freelancing in London 10 years ago, so that was quite a long time ago now. At the time, I was doing a lot of yoga on my free time, and I had also started working for a local yoga studio, and I started posting my journey on social media, and over the months, I built a community of several thousands of yoga practitioners just like me, and I met a lot of people during that time, learned a lot of yoga techniques through that community, and yeah, it was all just a very special time. And I think all of the knowledge that I've taken from building that community that was kind of, you know, a coincidence almost, I've taken this into what I do on a professional day-to-day basis. Fascinating. I think it's the first two firsts, actually. We never had a guest that was working in ESG coming from that part of the organization, so that's exciting, and we also never had a guest that had a yoga community, so that's also fun. So what is the community that we're going to unpack today together? So I'd love to talk to you about the first community I built to help bring cultural and DNI, so diversity, equity, and inclusion awareness across several countries and several departments at my previous employer. Okay, and maybe we start from the beginning. I always like to kind of put our listeners into a bit of context. So where are we? What kind of organizations? What is the context? And also, what spark does need to start the community? Well, with the intended goal or change it was aimed to bring within the organization? Yeah, so the community was first was built in back in 2020. So my previous employer is in the ad tech sector. It's a decent sized company of about 500 people, but back then it was a little bit less, and in 2020, the company was six years old, so it was still quite young and a lot of people from who were working at the company had been there for a while already. So there was this kind of sense of family that everybody had, and you know, even across different countries, it really already kind of felt like a community. But then COVID happened, and COVID kind of broke everything down because everybody was forced to stay at home. People stopped going to the office, people stopped interacting physically, but I think the biggest thing was that people were scared, and because they were scared, you know, when you go into kind of defense mode or when you go into survival mode, you stop interacting naturally with people and you just try to save yourself in a way. And so I think that this is a syndrome that a lot of companies got at the time, and you know, my previous employer was no exception to that. And so we could feel the culture was shifting because of the fact that people were interacting much less and were having much less opportunities to interact. On top of that, the murder of George Floyd happened. And we had a lot of employees notably in the US, but even in the rest of the world, who were overall very shaken by, you know, what had happened around George Floyd, and what was happening generally speaking around the world. So with the help of some very willing volunteers, first I launched a fundraiser campaign during November. So for anybody who is not familiar, November helps raise awareness and funds to help cure to stick your cancer and to support men's mental health, which is one of the leading causes of death among amongst the male community. And so this campaign was launched because we were trying to get people to get together, you know, around a common cause. This is something that could be done on Slack. And so there were no borders when it came to running this campaign. People were connecting online. They were doing, we were setting challenges. They were doing their challenges at home. And then they were reporting back to everybody on Slack to say, I've achieved this. I've achieved that. And this was helping raise funds for November. The campaign was actually so successful that it pushed me to think of other campaigns that could be launched. And I ended up settling for a campaign around Women's Day and another for Pride. And I felt that this kind of completed the scope of topics that we wanted to support on a yearly basis, at least to start with. And the campaigns, they started sparking conversations around how we could build a structure that would help support those campaigns, but also to thrive off of them. So rather than keeping each campaign as a standalone, we wanted to carry these messages further. And that's how we got the idea to set up the first ERG, excuse me, not ESG, ERG. So employee resource group that was focused on DNI. The great thing about this is that the community first benefited from the campaigns that we were running to gain traction. And then they started to host their own events. So we had fireside chats. We had external speakers coming in to talk about topics such as they weren't fun topics by the way. It was stuff around the Holocaust. It was stuff around the the KKK clan, like, you know, kind of heavy topics, but to keep people, you know, learning about underrepresented communities and how to support them and how to be the best allies possible. We had book clubs and then eventually we got some sub ERGs that started coming to life that were focusing more on specific topics. So we had an ERG that was focusing on women, we had an ERG that was focusing on parenting, for example, but they were all sort of sub ERGs that brought a ERG that that would englobe all of the different topics around DNI that people would be interested in hearing about. What was that transition life? It's very interesting to me how it started. So clearly it was hiked off or the need was made possible or made a brought into awareness thanks to the challenges of the pandemic. And I think back then, I remember a lot of organizations were grappling trying to do something to keep the cultural life and the connection alive because the space was suddenly taken away. So we were, the space we're forcing us was forcing us somehow to come together. We were in the same office every day and when that space was taken away, then a lot of organizations were struggling on how do we do this connection and this coming together. How do we do it online? I find it very interesting how you started with campaigns and usually campaigns are started by someone. So it's a type of engagement that it's being created, engineered. There's a strategy behind someone puts it out there and then we invite our colleagues to engage. And then when we think about the ERGs or communities which are more often than not volunteer led, that means that our colleagues are stepping into this leader. She rolls and they're doing now suddenly something on top of their job because they want to and not because they have to. It's a totally different dynamic compared to a campaign that they're being serviced, suddenly into a community that they are helping create. So they're moving from consumers, I guess you could say, to creators. I wonder what were some elements or how did that transition happen? Like the first volunteers, what did that look like in your case? So when it comes to the Movinber campaign, the first volunteer, he literally just reached out to me one day and said to me, you know, I see that there are some companies out there that are doing stuff for Movinber. Do you think we could do something for Movinber as well? And that kind of like fell on my lap because I was in the midst of thinking how can we bring people together? And that colleague of mine just happened to reach out with this suggestion. And straight away I said to him, I think that's a brilliant idea. Let's do it. So that's how that came about. When it came to the rest of the campaigns, that was more me reaching out to the broader community. So literally everyone at the company and asking would anybody be interested in helping us put together the next campaign, which will be around Women's Day and which will be on the topic of Women and then the same with pride. When it came to the ERG, so that's very interestingly the first time, so the first campaign that we ran, which was Movinber, I think some people, the initial push actually came from the US and I think some people saw the Movinber campaign and thought obviously because this was the first campaign, they thought, okay, but then how come we're not doing anything for Black History Month? How come we're not doing anything for etc, etc. All of these different topics that come under the realm of diversity, equity and inclusion. And then as I was saying before, George Floyd happened and I think a kind of set in motion, this feeling of if we want this world to get better, we need to raise awareness, we need people to really understand what certain communities are being confronted to on a daily basis. So a few people, a few employees in the US literally just reached out to me and said, hey, the Movinber campaign was really great, fabulous. How about we talk about other topics? And I said to them, well, actually now that you mentioned it, I am thinking of doing something for women's day and for pride. And they said, okay, but what about the rest? And I said, listen, we can't have a campaign every month because at the end of the day, we are a business and we need to run a business and we can't ask people to mobilize every single month on different topics. And that's when I offered for us or for them to to set up an ERG and to be so that they would be able to have fireside chats and external speakers come in on a more punctual basis than actually having a month long campaign. Because this is what we were doing with Movinber pride and women's month is that we were having a month long campaign. And this is something that you can't ask employees to mobilize every single month like they need to do their job as well. So this felt like the the best solution to say, yes, 100%. We want to give visibility to lots of different communities and you're absolutely right that we shouldn't just stick to men, women and the LGBTQIA+ community. However, we can't represent every single community on the monthly basis. So let's find a middle ground. And the ERG just felt like the perfect middle ground for that. And it works because in the end they did organize those chats, they did organize those external speakers. It was two hours on a given day, on a given month, you know, to talk about the topic. Everybody across the company was invited to join. Obviously we did have a little bit of a challenge I'd say which was that if we wanted to invite everyone around the world, we needed to have an English speaker. But obviously the company is present in lots of different countries. Not all countries are, you know, full English speakers. So let's say it had its limit in that sense. Is that it needed to stick to English. And therefore it was very much driven by the US. And therefore it was very much topics that the US community relate to more than other European or even Asian countries. But this, you know, this was the only limit I'd say. Because other than that, I think people were very willing. We had started seeing some local communities getting, so against some sub ERGs that were more local that were that was starting to sprout here and there. So in France, they had tried to set up an ERG that would do those fireside chats and those external footballs. But with French external speakers and on topics that were, that would relate a bit more to France. Unfortunately, business got in the way and so it didn't happen in the end. And it did, you know, we did stick to the global ERG. But yeah, that's that's how it came about. So I think, you know, the external circumstances were definitely a huge push for this to happen. That, you know, put the political setting in the US, George Floyd, all of that stuff was definitely a huge push for these people to reach out to me to say, can we do more than that? But what I love is that they continued doing it for a long time. And we had the women's community that came to life as a result of this broader ERG. And then we had more recently the parenting community that came about as well. Yeah, I love how the culture was set in that way. Or maybe people felt like your colleagues felt that they have the freedom to bring in this event took notes as activism spirits in the workplace because things were happening all over all over the world. Things that were very painful and very unjust. And to see the colleagues mobilized to open up those spaces of conversations on those probably not the most fun or typical topics that we would have at work around the water cooler. I think that's very beautiful how they demanded those spaces and not only they demanded them, but they were also ready to make them happen and bring them to life. And speaking of this business getting in the way, example, I recognize that as a challenge. And so when you move from a campaign, obviously, which is very time intense, it's steered by, essentially by someone, the Ellen D department, cultural department, people department, etc. to move into this long term ERG communities that are colleague led. That's a bit of a change. I wonder if you had to, if you had to do any type of stakeholder management sponsorship. If you had to advocate for this change to happen and for the colleagues to be in between quotes, allowed to bring this type of activism and conversations in the day-to-day business, which had nothing to do with activism at the end of the day. Yeah. So I think it was always embedded in the company's culture to give a platform for employees to express themselves just as long as it remains respectful and not politically charged for sure. But as long as people were respecting each other's boundaries, I don't think there was ever a push against any of those initiatives. In terms of sponsorship, I think where we got lucky at the time is that when we decided to set up the November campaign, luckily we had some budget, some extra budget that we could use. So gaining sponsorship from a budget perspective wasn't even really necessary. And again, because it was quite embedded in the culture, our chief people officer back then. As soon as I submitted the idea to her, she was 100% on board, and she agreed to give me some budget to do it. So that was, I would say, fairly easy in that sense. But then once the campaign, once we started working on the strategy for the campaigns, we needed sponsorship also from an in-eak level, from an awareness perspective, so that it would impact all of the departments properly and efficiently. And generally speaking, what we did is that we always had a member of XCOM who would be the general sponsor for the campaign. And then locally we would have some ambassadors who would help put together some events around each campaign to help raise awareness and raise funds. So with regards to the ER, the ERG, because it worked so well with the campaigns, the ERG, we didn't really have to negotiate that much to get the sponsorship with regards to the ERGs. I think that's one aspect also where employees have always been treated. And again, I think it's part of the culture at the end of the day. Employees have always been treated like adults. And you know, there was always a sense of, as long as you do your job, if you want to do, if you want to be a member of an ERG, and if you want to be active in an ERG on the side, feel free as long as this doesn't impact your work. And I feel like that's also why the ERG in France didn't work out in the end is because when it came to choosing between the ERG and work, they chose work. And that, you know, as unfortunate as it can be, it makes sense. And so there was never an issue with trust when it came to that. So it was very easy to get buy-in and to get sponsorship. And nobody ever reached out to me from top management. Nobody ever reached out to me to say, this needs to stop. This is going too far. It did make it more challenging probably to get those ERGs up and running and running on a regular basis and running efficiently for sure. But at least it didn't stop them from existing. They were there. They were existing. And as soon as people had the time and the bandwidth, they would get straight back into it. You know, we ran several all-enovement campaigns in March during my time there. And every single campaign was being heavily sponsored by the women's ERG. There were always people who would make themselves available to help us create content, you know, to record videos, to promote the campaign, all that kind of stuff. There were always people who were finding time availability to do that. And they organized that around, you know, their job and their day-to-day. So it was never an issue. And because it was never an issue, it was never a problem finding sponsorship. That sounds amazing. And I can definitely convert myself in the shoes of probably some of all listeners listening to this and thinking, "Oh, what a heavenly culture and organization to be in where you're allowed to do that." If there's someone listening, Natalie, that thinks, "Man, that's really not how the culture is, where I work." Maybe, what would you recommend? Like, what would you do? Let's imagine that it's on the flip side. And the culture is not, it's not as welcoming and open to these types of employee-led initiatives. Does that mean that it's a dead end? Should these people drop the towel and give up? Or do you think that there are little ways, the doors, windows that they might be, that they might be exploring? Good question. So I think when you're facing these types of situations, a mindset shift needs to happen, you need to be able to prove that there is a return on investment when you give people the time to be involved in the topics that are important to them that are outside of the workday. The only way really to be able to prove that is through data, but the only way to gather data is to let people try. I think what I would do if I was facing this situation is I would look for, I would try to benchmark, I would try to look for information online, I would reach out to the LND Shakers community, I would reach out to any community really that I'm a part of or that I follow to try and gather as much information as possible around other companies that have built ERGs and the impact that those ERGs have on these companies. I don't think it's probably not very hard to find that kind of information because a lot of big companies have ERGs and you can find it even on their websites that they have those ERGs and you can, if necessary, maybe even reach out to the members of those ERGs if they're publicly available, you can reach out to them on LinkedIn and ask them questions. Just try to benchmark externally as much as possible to try and build a business case for whoever you need to convince, whether it's leadership, ex-com, whoever, to make a business case, to showcase to them the return on investment when it comes to employee satisfaction, NPS, well, ENPS, all that kind of stuff, and try to showcase that to them and then once you've built that business case, and showcase also that an ERG doesn't have to cost a lot, like, you know, you need to also show that from a financial perspective, it doesn't have to be a huge investment, it's more time investment than a financial investment at least in the beginning, it's long start small, but I think making a business case and then just saying, look, you know, let us give this a try, and in one year, in 12 months, we will report back with some data, you know, we can run our employee satisfaction survey and look at how the ENPS has evolved or how people are responding to the fact that we've launched an ERG, and a year later, if people have worked on it properly and not let the business take over too much, then you're able to showcase 12 months down the line that, yes, there is an impact, and yes, people are more satisfied, and this is even something that you can then go and use for your employer branding, you can showcase this to potential candidates and say to them, you know, we have this ERG or these ERGs, and so when you join our company, you know, there are these chapters that you can relate to, that you can look up to, that you can reach out to if you need any support or anything like that, like to me, there is nothing, an ERG cannot be anything negative. Worst case scenario, you have an ERG and nothing's really happening because people are busy and are prioritizing other things. Best case scenario, you have a thriving ERG and there's a huge return on investment when it comes to your employee engagement, your employee satisfaction, and even how potential candidates perceive you, or even how other businesses perceive you, or even some teams how clients can perceive you. I mean, I know that there are some clients that can ask like, what do you do in terms of, you know, employee retention, what do you do in terms of diversity and inclusion, et cetera, and it's important to be able to say, well, actually, you know, we do have things, we do have, how do you say, I can't find the word now, initiatives, initiatives. We do have initiatives that we've put into place, you know, to help our employees feel happier and thrive because a happy employee is an efficient employee. So, I mean, yeah, to me, there's just, you know, that there is no wrong about putting together an ERG. Now, I can understand that in some businesses, in some companies, leadership or, you know, your CFO might feel like this can be a waste of time or a waste of money and, you know, how people are not going to focus enough on the business and on making money, et cetera. I have to disagree. I don't think that's true, but you have to be able to take that first step to showcase that it's not true. In some cases, you might be facing someone who even if you show them a benchmark, even if you show them a business case, they will still be like, "Yeah, no, don't think so." All that case, I was to just change, change companies. But, you know, I think if your business case is well enough, well structured, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to give it a go. And then if you insist on down the line, if you see that it hasn't brought what you were expecting it to bring to the table, then you stop. But I highly doubt that 12 months down the line, you know, your ex-com or your leadership would say, "Oh, we've spent so much time and money on this and you know, we haven't run our business properly because of an ERG." Like, I really do not believe that this could ever happen. Yes, something that also comes to mind is this particular for a culture that might not be as receiving or open to these types of employee-led initiatives is to call them something else that you already have. Like, don't call it an ERG, don't call it a community of practice, don't call it a community of law, call it, how do you call people coming together? Do you call them normally a working group? Do you call these a task force? Like, how do you call them and bring them together around a very particular specific topic, even if it's time-bound at the beginning in order to solidify that business case and benchmarking with some internal data as well. So, I love the idea that you're bringing. I also know that you are currently exploring this idea to building a community around ESG. Can you tell us a bit about that? Where what's this idea about and what do you envision? Yeah, so I'm currently a member of a lot of ESG and sustainability groups, mostly all on WhatsApp. I think one of, well, a couple of the most active ones are groups that I joined following my certification with Cambridge. I took a certification with Cambridge on sustainability business management and there are lots of different communities that have sprouted, have piggybacked off of that certification. But they're all on WhatsApp and they're with people from both inside and outside of my industry and mainly they're about sharing knowledge and resources with each other, pushing each other's LinkedIn contents to increase engagement. And there is a little bit of a meet-up, organizing meet-ups as well. But I feel like there's just so much more that can come out of these types of groups. You know, these communities are made up of people who are employed, others who are self-employed. And I think there's really an opportunity to pick from these groups to structure a community of awareness-raisers who can share expertise and knowledge to help each other advance the talk of ESG across our industries. What I've noticed during the meet-ups that we've had is that people come in, they present themselves, they present, you know, a project that they're working on and that people are kind of trying to help each other find leads and stuff like that. I feel like people in this group, which is quite huge, we're all specializing in so many different things. I know for me, you know, I specialize more in ESG strategy, but I know some people specialize in biodiversity, you know, there's someone who is also working on like agriculture. There are so many different types of specializations and I feel like we could really benefit from sharing with each other those pieces of expertise rather than just trying to find each other leads without truly understanding what everybody is doing. You know, right now, ESG is stuck in a very tough spot. A lot of companies are rolling back their ESG budget and even in some cases, cutting down some jobs, but the planet, it's just not going to get any better and now is really the time to push through and to prove to corporates that ESG is an absolute must to continue investing in. So I have so many ideas for that community. I want to be able to organize workshops, as I said, to to share expertise with each other. I'd love to also invite special guests, so people who have already set up a company, you know, around the topics of ESG. So I'm thinking more environmental sustainability for now, but you know, I've been in touch throughout my work. I've been in touch with companies who help with greenhouse gas assessments or getting certifications like the science-based targets or becoming a B-Corp or things like that. So these are the types of special guests that I'm thinking of. And of course, I just want it to have it be a platform where we cannot all support each other on our projects. But I do feel like it's such a broad topic when it comes to ESG. That really, it's a shame to just stick to, you know, a meet-up every four months where we present ourselves and we say what we do and then we go for a drink and then that's the end of it. I think there's just so much more to get out of this type of community. Also because, you know, since we all have very different specializations, if somebody reaches out to one of the members of this community who is, you know, an expert in biodiversity, if somebody reaches out to them and says, I'd like to find someone who specializes in, I don't know, like, digital sustainability, which is more my realm, then they would be able to send this person to me rather than trying to do the work themselves when they're actually not a specialist in this at all and vice versa. You know, it's kind of like what you do with Ellen D. Shakers really when you have somebody coming in and presenting a project and explaining to everyone how they, you know, how they went about that project and the challenges that they faced and the opportunities that they faced and the result, etc. I was something similar, but with ESG, I'd love to understand how a biodiversity consultant goes about, you know, putting together a strategy around reducing the impact on the biodiversity for their client. Like, how exactly do they go about that? You know, what do they look at? How do they look at it? Do they actually strap on a pair of boots and like, go out in the river and like, get samples of water and stuff like that? Or like, is it more, you know, standing in behind a computer and typing on a keyboard type of thing, you know? I'd love to share that kind of knowledge with people. It also sounds when you actually painted that picture of, and he said ESG is like in a tough spot at the moment, right? With different organizations pulling back in a time when the world really should be pushing forward and advocating for real change and policies and actions at micro-level, micro-micro-levels. It seems also that bringing together people with this kind of expertise in some form of a community team tank, you could potentially make a bigger impact in advocating for this type of work externally, probably even education as well. Because this is an interesting one. Like, why are, I mean, I understand capitalism and all and money, but it feels like it's such a no-brainer at the moment that that's where we should all be investing our time. So how could a community come together to hopefully potentially put their efforts to change that narrative? And you also mentioned this piece of the, it's so diverse. That's actually thinking about that when you mention ESG, I was thinking, oh wow, hey, I know very little about it. So I should educate myself more. I've done no work in that area. And I thought, well, unlike the community of practice, which is like a focus on a domain or specific set of skills where you might have community of interests or an ERG that's focused on a specific identity that we all share. This ESG communities are bringing together a very broad spectrum of people. There's intersection of environment, then you've got the social, the governance issue, and people are coming with different priorities and different lenses. So it's climate action, it's DIY, ethical supply and chain, bio diversity, corporate transparency. There's so multi-faceted. And so when you bring that diversity inside the space, you have to be able to hold that diversity and acknowledge it and respect it rather than reduce it. And I think a lot of communities, they work a lot of on homogenous type of audience or members. So it feels like it's a bit the opposite. And I think when I'm going with this reflection Natalie is, people are coming together at different agendas and they're very different. And it's also a charged topic. There's urgency there. There's a lot of things that are at stakes and probably people have very strong opinion about things. And I think you come from this also experience of the type of topics that you've explored at your previous role and the conversations you had around very heavy topics. So the question that I took ages to get to is this, how do community builders hold space for these diverse and oftentimes potentially conflicting viewpoints? What do you think? Yeah. So it's definitely something that needs to be well thought out. First, I just wanted to say real quick. I find very interesting what you said about, you know, how do we come together and sort of find a narrative or a way to get people to understand the urgency that we are facing at the moment, especially when it comes to the environment, even more so than the social, even though the social is also a very an aspect that we really need to look out urgently. I feel like right now, and it's been like that, you know, ever since I started working on ESG about three, four years ago now, I feel like people still have this tendency to associate people who work in ESG and even more so on environmental aspects. Two activists, like hardcore activists who are obsessed with the fact that the planet is burning, et cetera, extremist almost, you know? And I feel like even me, definitely not an extremist, but I feel like I've been slapped with this stamp of, she works in ESG, like, oh God, she's going to be all about like, you need to recycle and stop eating meat and like stuff like that. And, you know, the kind of cliche image that you have about people who work in that realm. And so I think I feel like the reason why I was struggling so much to get buy-in from the population generally speaking on these topics is because we are associated with extremist activists and not just normal people trying to help make the future more bearable for our children, you know? That's all we're trying to do really and I can tell you and I can testify for it. We're all very decent normal human beings. Nobody is an activist. The activists are the people that you see on TV and there's not that many of them, even though they are very loud. And it's important for them to be there to raise awareness, but the rest of us were much more, you know, kind of balanced people as well. And we know that everybody is dealing with a lot of things and that you can't ask people to, you know, turn off their lights, turn off their heating, stop eating meat, stop hopping on a plane, stop traveling, stop living, stop breathing, stop everything, you know? We were very aware of that because we are ourselves in that same paradox really, you know, every day. So I thought it was really interesting when you, when you, because it is a tough job, it is really tough and within a community or, you know, when a community is trying to help make that shift, it's very difficult for the community to make that shift as well. So I just wanted to do a quick side note about that before moving on to your question. So you took a very long time to get to the question, you're taking a very long time to say, same energy, matching my energy, I loved it. So in terms of holding space for so many different people, profiles, experiences, I'm not going to say I have the answer just yet. I think what I will say is that based on my experience and based on what I've noticed and based on the conversations I've had, when it comes to ESG, there's really a huge element of culture, of geography, but especially of culture. There's a huge element of that. There are some countries, I'll take France as an example because that's the country that I'm most related to or that I can relate to the most rather having grown up here. In France, the environment is definitely an important topic and it's been like that for a long time. France was actually a kind of a trailblazer when it came to environmental actions. We're kind of in a rough grey area right now. I don't know if you've heard, but we've got actually the first country to host chicken shops. I saw that the other day. Yes. So for me, I was hugely shocking, especially considering that we were initially quite advanced in terms of the importance that we place on the environment as opposed to a lot of European countries and I'm not even talking about other countries in the world. So there's a huge paradox between, it's been years now that France has been making huge advancements on the environmental side and then now all of a sudden we're hosting the first chicken shops which makes zero sense. But anyway, all this to say that in France culture, speaking, the environment is definitely a big topic. Social is a big topic as well, but I will say this, DNI, much less so. People are very much in denial in France. They think we're all treated equally regardless of race, regardless of gender, etc. People are very blindsided by that. And so if I came to French people and started saying, I want to create a community around DNI, I would probably struggle a big time to get that community going because people are in denial and thinking that there's, you know, well, no, we need to do anything. I mean, you know, DNI, it's fine. I mean, women, you know, women have access to safe abortions and, you know, everybody has the same level of job regardless of their race. That's absolutely not true, but that's what that's the story people like to tell themselves. So if I want to build a community in France with French people, it's smarter for me to go for environmental topics than for DNI topics. With the US, it'll be the complete opposite. If you want to create an efficient community, it's better to start with DNI than to start with the environment, right? It's very difficult to hold the same space for people working in ESG, generally speaking, also because ESG has a lot of different interpretations depending on the culture that you're talking to. So it's a tough one. So I would say for now, the way that I'm thinking is keeping environmental and social separate. Governance to me is more transversal thing that is going to impact on the environmental and on the social aspect. But when it comes to environmental and social, I would not bring them together at least not to start with. Seen as I'm based in France, community that I'm thinking of building is going to be more on the environmental side. Now, the good thing about working on the environment is that when you work on the environment, you impact local communities. Yes. So the social will naturally at some point they call down into that. But I think as a starting point, it's better to separate the two than to have the two together. So that's a challenge that I'm going to have to deal with when I start setting up this community is that I know that I'm going to have to focus 99.9% on the environmental side before I can start focusing a little bit more on the social side as well. And that's the tough part about ESG, I feel, is that we try to bring together two topics that are extremely different, but that do you ultimately have an impact on each other? But that are extremely different treated, extremely differently perceived, extremely differently, even in terms of data. It's completely different ways. It's completely different data, completely different ways of analyzing it, sorry, and completely different ways of treating it and exploiting it. So it's tough. It's really tough for sure. It's going to be an interesting journey, but it's really something that I'm passionate about. It's really something that I want to explore, but to say that it'll be an ESG community, I think is a little bit too ahead of what I can actually do for now with means that I have. So if there's someone listening Natalie that is playing in the same field, thinking of bringing these types of profiles and people with either environmental interest or focus or social or both together, if you were to give them a tip, as I remember you mentioned, the communities that you're in, the type of activities and how they come to life is not really hitting the mark on creating that transformation that the community has the potential to bring into the world. So there's a lot of potential there, but probably we're too stuck on a little meetup here and a little conversation there. And so maybe the way there are people are being brought together isn't the most impactful way. So I'm curious if you were to pick for yourself or someone else working in such a community to pick one type of initiative or format or we call this rituals in communities like ways of coming together. Which one would you pick? Keeping this challenges in mind and the audience, but also the potential that such a group of people might have. So this is me speaking for the way I feel and the way I perceive the ESG realm. We were mentioning before that there are so many expertise, so much expertise, I don't know I'm not saying there's so much expertise. There's so much different types of expertise. It gets super overwhelming. I'm not going to lie, it gets super overwhelming and you very quickly find yourself having to become a pro at one specific aspect because if you start looking at everything, it just becomes way too much for me. And so for me, something that I am missing is unfortunately A lot most companies, let's say, haven't in impact on several aspects of the environment, but also several aspects of social. And so since one human being cannot specialize in every single aspect, it's important to be aware enough, I think, about the aspects that you are not an expert on. So typically, for me, as I said before, I am more an expert on the digital side of things. So what is the carbon footprint of a company from a digital perspective? A digital footprint is something that every single company in this world is going to have, because every single company in this world has at least a website. For a lot of them, they even do advertising. They have social media. So they have a digital footprint. However, let's say I go, I approach L'Oreal, for example, they're going to have a digital impact 100%. But they're also going to have an impact on the biodiversity. They're also going to have an impact on water. They're going to have an impact on many other things that I'm not an expert in. And that's fine. That's OK. I can't be an expert in everything. However, I want people to understand how do you look at water impact? How do you look at biodiversity impacts? That's what I was saying before. Do you like strap on a pair of boots and go out there and look? Or do you look at the financials? How do you go about this? I feel like getting an understanding about what other people or how other ESG sort of sub-functions function is a great way to keep a community engaged. Again, that's my point of view, because I'm a nerd. I need to learn all the time. So for me, something a ritual that would help strengthen the sense of community would be well, let's say on a monthly basis, some storytelling of some sort. So one person shows up and takes us through, OK, I'm a biodiversity specialist. What does this means? What are the criteria that I look at? How do I look at the criteria? What kind of data do I gather from that criteria? And then what do I do with that data? How do I process it? How do I analyze it? How do I then restituted back to my clients so that they can start making decisions on how to lower their impact on the biodiversity? Same thing with water. And this can also be carried to social, of course. You can have HR specialists coming in and telling you about a project that they've worked on with regard to, I don't know, volunteering, for example, volunteering for local communities, for example, and the impact that that has had. To me, I think this is a great way to keep people engaged because you come out of there with a sense that you've learned something. You've been able, hopefully, to ask questions, to get answers. And you come out thinking, I'm wiser than when I came in. And it makes me want to go back and continue learning, you know, on the next topic. Again, this is because it's a community of people who are already working in ESG. I'm not sure it would work that well with people who don't work in ESG. But since, you know, the point here is a community around ESG, I really think that a monthly session where somebody presents what they do or presents a project that they've worked on could really have a huge impact on how the community is engaging with each other. And again, if I get a better understanding of how somebody is going to treat or is going to analyze biodiversity impact, then I am also better armed to have these conversations with potential prospects. If I'm talking to a prospect who says I'm interested in digital impact, but also biodiversity impact, then I'm able to talk to it and to say, you know, if you're looking for a specialist in that field, I have just the right person for you. So there's an element of keeping the community engaged, but there's even an element of like going further than that and being able to help each other continue evangelizing, although I hate that word because it sounds very activist. You know, it helps keep you evangelizing this message and raising awareness and getting people to again, understand the urgency that we're dealing with here. Because I don't think people truly understand the urgency of what we're dealing with. Thank you Natalie for I feel we covered a lot of ground today. Thank you so much for your insights. It was beautiful to see kind of you also your evolution, how you shifted and made from like marketing, moving into social and culture and DIY and now finding your sweet spot or your like zone of genius, call it however you want to call it in ESG ESGs and giving us this um, and the overarching picture of what is it and what are the challenges that come with it and it's exciting to continue thinking and exchanging and sharing along the lines of practical actionable ways in which communities coming together to talk about these topics can bring the change into the world. So I'm excited to see what you end up doing and with this new community, this project that we're exploring, wishing lots of luck and maybe we'll welcome you back in a year or two so you can tell us how it goes. Until then I want to thank you for your time. It was an absolute pleasure. It was great to reconnect with you and we should great rest of the day. Thank you so much Anna Maria. Thank you very much for having me. I had a really great time sharing all of these experiences with you. I hope you know listeners find it useful. They can feel free to reach out to me even if they have any follow up questions. I know this is a very, very ESG is such a broad and huge topic and it's a constant moving target so it's not easy to deal with so I'm happy to engage in any conversations if anybody feels the need to reach out and follow, you know, with any follow up questions, we're more than happy to answer them. Nice. So thanks a lot. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.