Visiting Egypt to help launch their Sustainability Accelerator, Nixon-Saintil sat down with BT to talk about IBM’s new accelerator, their CSR and ESG goals, transparency in client and sustainability efforts and reporting, and creating opportunities
At the forefront of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) tracking and reporting, IBM’s work on sustainability can be traced back five decades, releasing the company’s first-ever corporate environmental policy in 1971, and it proudly continues its advocacy for supporting global, and community-based, goals today.
Light-hearted and passionate about her work, IBM’s vice president of ESG and Corporate Social Responsibility, Justina Nixon-Saintil has been a vocal advocate of empowerment, sustainability through “GoodTech,” as well empowering vulnerable communities and underserved minorities through her work at IBM.
Visiting Egypt to help launch their Sustainability Accelerator, a global pro-bono social impact program to support NGOs looking to make a difference, Nixon-Saintil sat down with Business Today Egypt to talk about IBM’s new accelerator, their CSR and ESG goals, transparency in client and sustainability efforts and reporting, and creating opportunities.
When describing the accelerator, Nixon-Saintil said that “the accelerator is a way for us to leverage IBM’s technologies and solutions in the sustainability space, and mitigate the effects of climate change for vulnerable communities… those facing the most threats [such as] climate change and pollution.”
“These NGOs are the ones on-ground supporting these communicates, and we are helping them to create or enhance solutions that will help those communities against those threats”
“When we talk about what is unique about the accelerator, it really is about environmental justice and climate justice, and that is why we work with NGOs, because it aligns with that mission… So, wherever we are launching the accelerator, we want to make sure we are helping the most marginalized and vulnerable communities around the world,” the VP stated.
“We are not asking the non-profits to invest money into the accelerator, we are providing all the expertise and the solutions,” she clarified, pointing out that, in some cases, they provide small grants to further support NGOs.
IBM’s accelerator not only leverages its technology, it is a global initiative across multiple countries that invites NGOs, free of charge, to join in order to target and uplift vulnerable communities. This year marks the accelerator’s second cohort, with its 2022 theme addressing clean energy.
To enable the advancement of the ecosystem and scale non-profits, the accelerator uses a two-phased approach over two years for each cohort, with its first phase dedicated to the learning and implementation of IBM Garage, the company’s methodology that applies design thinking and agile techniques to enhance or even reimagine the NGOs’ solutions.
“Our focus over the next two years, in partnership with these NGOs, is to really drive that societal impact, demonstrate that we are increasing yield for crops, increasing incomes, increasing productivity; and by doing that, they will be able continue either working with us or work with other companies who will invest in scaling those solutions”
Its second phase commits IBM resources and technology to help participating NGOs with their solutions. These include the company’s IBM Watson AI, IBM Cloud, Environmental Intelligence Suite, weather data credits, mentorship and access to IBM’s global partners.
One of IBM’s top investments here in Egypt is in investing in human skills and capabilities, with the company working closely with the government, including its Digital Egypt Builders initiative (DEBI), and through their own skill-building initiatives.
Nixon-Saintil, known as a supporter of creating opportunities in STEM for underserved communities back in the USA, spoke to us on IBM’s efforts to help young people enter the workplace.
“[IBM believes] it is important to prepare young people for what it means to work in a corporate environment; from how you think about creativity and collaboration, and learning presentations skills as well”
“We provide all of those across Africa, but specifically in Egypt, we have reached a wide range of young people,” she noted.
IBM does this through its P-Tech program, where IBM collaborates with high schools, community colleges, and vocational schools to provide them with the academic, technical, and professional skills and credentials they need to enter the workplace. IBM supports two schools in Egypt, as well partners with several companies and institutions to provide employment opportunities as well.
It’s a difficult time to be a massive global operation, such as IBM, as consumer expectations and governmental regulations across the world have intensified the spotlight on how companies deal with and report ESG and sustainability efforts.
To Nixon-Saintil, the most important elements to corporate sustainability are leveraging company resources alongside its business strategy, and transparency.
“The keys to corporate sustainability… is how you leverage the resources of your business to drive societal impact.”
The ESG VP described the need to align sustainability goals with a company’s business strategy, noting that “[Companies] will want to make sure that they are leveraging technologies, solutions and expertise, and they will want to track and measure impact. If they are not able to do that, they will not know what is successful and will not actually have ROI on the work they are doing.”
“We know that investors, consumers, clients, they all care now that companies are driving sustainability efforts. There is data that shows that a lot of them are more willing to work with a company that is socially responsible,” she added.
Being transparent and open about efforts, the measurement, the evaluation, the reporting of what you do is the most important thing around sustainability, Nixon-Saintil emphasized, adding that stakeholders must know whether companies are tracking, estimating or not tracking emissions and the like, particularly as they are keeping a keen eye on these data sets.
It is important to note that IBM has some lofty sustainability goals, announcing its net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 commitment last year. “The way that we are going to do that is by purchasing renewable sources, using renewable sources for 90% of our electricity by 2030 and we have a number of initiatives that we are doing to drive towards that,” Nixon-Saintil explained to us.
The CSR and ESG landscape has become more complex to navigate in the past few years. When describing the challenges that companies are facing today, in terms of data collection and transparency, she pointed towards the lack of standardization.
“What is happening in the ESG space is that there is inconsistency on what is being asked. Nothing is standardized”
Nixon-Saintil believes that for companies to successfully report ESG efforts, there needs to be “more standardization of what these companies are asking for from a reporting and data perspective,” which would enable companies to compare between requirements and organizations’ needs.
“Right now, it is difficult because they are all asking for different data, and even [in terms of] the delivery of the data itself, making it challenging for companies,” she added.
IBM openly shares its data, including in their RFPs (request for proposals), Nixon-Saintil also emphasized the efforts the company does to bring awareness through their communications, and that they only provide or highlight certain solutions once IBM has used and approved it internally.
“We are not going to provide the environmental intelligence suite [or anything else]… unless IBM is client Zero. We walk the talk,” the VP noted.
