How Smart Companies Turn Sustainability into Billion-Dollar Businesses by Freya Williams

Interview by Chicke Fitzgerald of the Game Changer Network as a part of the Best of the Game Changer series, showcased on C-Suite Network

What do Brazil’s top beauty brand, America’s second-fastest-growing restaurant chain, and the world’s third bestselling car have in common? They are shattering the myth that acting sustainably and building a billion-dollar business are mutually exclusive.

Packed with eye-opening research, exclusive interviews, and enlightening examples from Chipotle, Toyota, Unilever, Tesla, General Electric, and more, Green Giants serves as a blueprint for sustain able success that anyone can follow.

E. Freya Williams advises organizations including Coca Cola, Unilever, the United Nations, Estee Lauder, Waste Management and many others on how to turn sustainability and social good into competitive advantage for their business and brands. Cofounder of OgilvyEarth and former lead of Edelman’s Business + Social Purpose practice in New York, today Freya is the North American CEO of Futerra, the global sustainability change agency.

Green Giants examines nine companies that are merging social responsibility with wild profitability – and reveals the six factors responsible for their success.iconoclastic leadership fueled by deep conviction and a rebellious streak; disruptive innovation that uses sustain ability to spur the development of radically better products and services; a higher purpose that ignites the company – when the mission leads, profits follow. Mainstream Appeal with positioning and packaging stripped of the crunchy cliches that alienate the average customer. This new breed of billion-dollar businesses proves it’s possible to achieve enormous success while implementing sustainable principles that help consumers live better lives. Ranging from start-ups to business lines incubated within major multi nationals, these companies collectively represent over $60 billion in revenue. What’s more – many command wider profit mar gins and are growing faster than their conventional counterparts.

Freya’s experience has given her an insider’s perspective on the trials and tribulations of incorporating sustainability into a business and the opportunity to experience the movement’s successes and failures first-hand. In the course of persuading clients to try fresh, sometimes counter-intuitive approaches, Freya has built up a wealth of data on the business case for sustainability, as well as an instinctive sense of what works and what doesn’t. She is also intimately familiar with the challenges of forcing change through large, complex, often siloed organizations—and has developed strategies and tools to overcome them.

Freya is best known for her work in making sustainability relevant to mainstream audiences. Her work has been featured on Marketplace, and in The Financial Times, Newsweek and even The Onion. She is a regular public speaker who has lectured at Columbia, Wharton and Harvard.

The world has changed over the 14 years since their founding, Futerra has played a role in changing it. Today, it’s a fiercely independent and global company. It’s majority owned and led by women, with Freya being the North American CEO, and they are one of the UK’s first B-corps.

Futerra isn’t just a logical sustainability consultancy, or a magical creative agency; they are both.

They work with people who believe they can turn the sustainability imperative into the greatest entrepreneurial opportunity for a generation. Their clients are building brands that are symbols of positive change. They are unleashing progress that has purpose. If you’re here, then it’s likely you believe the same.

The Game Changer is featured on C-Suite Network.

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