Purpose and Profit with Kathy Varol

Sam Shiroff is the Senior Director of Global Sustainability for EnerSys. A multibillion-dollar business serving over 10,000 customers in 100 countries, EnerSys is an industrial technology leader offering stored energy solutions that meet the growing need for energy efficiency, reliability, and sustainability. The company’s purpose is “Powering the Future, Everywhere for Everyone”. Sam combines 20+...

Amelia Nickerson is the CEO of First Step Staffing, an organization that connects people experiencing homelessness, veterans, and recently incarcerated individuals to sustainable employment and income. The First Step team has created an ecosystem for success, coordinating closely with other nonprofits to help provide clients with resources and services such as housing, healthcare, childcare resour...

Ken Cook is the president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group (EWG), whose mission is to empower individuals with breakthrough research to make informed choices and live a healthy life in a healthy environment. EWG lives its mission by empowering American families with easy-to-use, data-driven tools to help reduce their exposure to potentially harmful ingredients in everyday products lik...

Marissa Fayer is the founder and CEO of HERhealthEQ, a global non-profit with the mission to improve women’s health in developing countries by providing access to medical devices & equipment, creating an equitable standard of care. Here are two 2020 statistics from the World Health Organization that highlight the inequitable standard of care for women in developing countries that HERhealthEQ is tr...

Carrie Freeman is the Chair of the SecondMuse Group,   which includes SecondMuse, the SecondMuse Foundation, and SecondMuse Capital. Carrie is also the Interim Executive Director for the SecondMuse Foundation, a non-profit focusing on advocating for building relational wealth as an approach to building inclusive and resilient economies. SecondMuse focuses on the design, development, and imple...

Since 2023, Rukaiyah Adams has served as CEO of the 1803 Fund, an innovative firm that seeks to grow shared prosperity through the alignment of financial investments and investments in community-based organizations. It is not a conventional investment firm, and it is not traditional philanthropy—its work includes aspects of both and is ultimately about ‘investing for the people’. Rukaiyah has been...

Mary Harvey is an accomplished sports governance and sustainability executive with 15+ years of leading worldwide initiatives to achieve societal change and gender equity through sports. As Chief Executive of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, Mary oversees the Centre’s vision, including facilitating the deliberations of the Centre’s multi-stakeholder Advisory Council, operational and financia...

Maximilian Winter is the Founder and General Partner at Harmonix Fund as well as a fourth-generation entrepreneur. Having successfully deployed two funds, Maximilian has invested in over 40 early-stage companies, resulting in an enterprise valuation of $5 billion. Maximilian invests in scalable technological breakthroughs to advance human health and scientific progress. This includes improving hea...

Walden Lam is the co-founder and CEO of unspun, whose mission is to reduce global human carbon emissions by 1%. To get there, unspun is focused on zero-waste production and circular reuse for clothing. In their aim to remake the fashion industry, unspun had to remake how clothes are made. They started with digital fit jeans, and then created VEGA, a 3D weaving technology that changes how clothes a...

Nick Stone is a Lead Director and Board Member for Wilderness. Known for its once-in-a-lifetime safari experiences, Wilderness was founded in Botswana in 1983 with the goal of introducing visitors to the country’s natural beauty while protecting the environment and providing local jobs. Today, the company has more than six million acres of land under its stewardship and provides an economic suppor...

Fawn Bergen leads Intel Corporation’s Corporate Sustainability Group. In her role, Fawn directs the implementation of Intel’s sustainability goals across their manufacturing operations and office facilities around the world, including Intel’s commitments to reach net zero GHG emissions by 2040, 100% renewable electricity by 2030, net positive water by 2030, and zero waste to landfill by 2030. Fawn...

Lata Reddy is Senior Vice President of Inclusive Solutions at Prudential, and chair of The Prudential Foundation. In these roles, Lata harnesses the power of capital markets to drive financial and social mobility. By combining diversity strategies, impact investments, philanthropy, corporate contributions, and employee engagement with Prudential’s full business capabilities, she helps position the...

Amy Terpeluk leads the CSR & Social Impact Practice at FINN Partners, a values-based marketing and communications agency. FINN Partners helps brands share their stories in ways that drive business value and make a positive impact in the world. Amy has created initiatives in education, DEI, public health, economic inequality, sustainability, climate change, and veterans’ well-being. Amy also helped...

Chuck Templeton is a Senior Managing Director at S2G Ventures, the direct investment team at Builders Vision—an impact platform providing philanthropy, investment, and advocacy tools to organizations that are building a more humane and healthy planet. S2G Ventures has 4 focus areas for investment: Clean Energy, Food & Agriculture, Oceans & Seafood, and Special Opportunities.   Once an entrepr...

Stephanie Benedetto is the Co-Founder and CEO of Queen of Raw. This award-winning company is turning deadstock pollution into profit through two major channels: 1) its proprietary inventory management software Materia MX, and 2) an integrated deadstock marketplace. Queen of Raw enables fashion companies to sell their excess inventory, while at the same time supporting sustainability compliance mea...

Lindsey Hoell is co-founder and CEO of Dispatch Goods, a women-founded reverse logistics company building the infrastructure for circular packaging. Dispatch Goods enables direct-to-consumer brands to offer their customers’ meals and groceries in completely reusable packaging, again and again. Their mission is to make single-use waste a thing of the past, with the motto of “better, cheaper, greene...

Buddy is President & CEO at Soles4Souls, a not-for-profit social enterprise creating opportunity through the collection and distribution of shoes and clothing around the world. Teaster’s experience at Soles4Souls, along with the organization’s global economic impact, is chronicled in his book, shoestrings: how your donated shoes and clothes help people pull themselves out of poverty. Previously, B...

Neda Nia is the Chief Product Officer at Stibo Systems, a master data management company whose purpose is to deliver better data, better business, and a better world. As part of their data management suite of solutions, Stibo Systems has innovated tools that help clients track and achieve their sustainability and ESG goals. These tools enable clients to evidence their ESG performance, create suppl...

Carbon Market Watch works to ensure that carbon pricing and other climate policies cut pollution and drive a just transition towards zero-carbon societies. The NGO utilizes evidence-based advocacy to improve climate action through market-based solutions working in concert with sound regulatory policy.   Gilles Dufrasne leads Carbon Market Watch's work on global carbon markets. He has been fol...

Melissa C. Potter honed her expertise in the topics of Race, Identity, Culture, and Equity working in both the social justice and entertainment worlds. Today she is the Vice President of Strategy and Impact at Paramount, upholding the company’s commitment to the long-term social impact of cultural shifts in society as driven across a diverse collection of brands including CBS, SHOWTIME, MTV, BET,...

Mike Salguero is the founder of ButcherBox, the leading high-quality, direct-to-consumer meats brand. Since its launch in 2015, the company has grown to become a $600 million business, all while putting an emphasis on animal welfare, the environment, and supporting farmers and fishermen. ButcherBox is a certified B Corporation, signaling the brand’s commitment to using its business as a force for...

Andrew Winston is one of the most widely read and respected writers on sustainability. The author of four books and hundreds of articles, his work has been published in many outlets including the Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review . In 2021 Andrew was named a top 50 management thinker in the Thinkers50 list. Andrew's latest book is, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies T...

Today’s episode is extra special.  On the Purpose and Profit podcast, I interview business leaders that are innovating new approaches to business. These changemakers are marching to the beat of their own drum, paving new paths that others will follow. To be a changemaker requires having the courage to do things differently. Yesterday, my husband Ozan Varol released a new book called Awaken Yo...

Brad Liski is a social entrepreneur and the CEO of British Columbia-based Tru Earth, a global household cleaning product company focused on biodegradability and the elimination of single-use plastic waste.   In 2022, Tru Earth partnered with Ocean Wise to launch the American Shoreline Clean-up Program.   Brad was recently named a Sustainability Leader by Canada’s Clean50 for 2022. Other...

After 2 years of speaking with some of the most innovative leaders in the ESG space today, this week’s Purpose and Profit is extra special. It’s my very first solocast!   In this episode I take you behind the scenes, sharing part of my journey in creating the global purpose strategy for adidas, a $22 billion company. My experiences shaping how adidas positively impacts people and planet catap...