Despite rising sustainability reporting requirements, it’s not uncommon for a corporate sustainability team to consist of a single person.
A 2024 sustainable business survey from United Kingdom-based edie found 49% of respondents worked on a team of one to four people. As U.S. CEOs are more likely to deprioritize sustainability in 2026, according to a recent study by The Conference Board, it’s possible that sustainability teams will be asked to do more with less.
How to be effective as one person — and the entirety of a department — requires strategy, broader corporate buy-in and smart use of artificial intelligence, experts said during a panel last month at GreenBiz26, the annual sustainable business conference held in Phoenix, Arizona.
Michael Rockwell is the first-ever sustainability manager for the Hamilton Company, which specializes in biotechnology and liquid handling devices. Because of that, his expectations for the position “were very unclear” when he arrived, Rockwell said on the Feb. 19 panel.
“I realized very quickly that the sustainability budget was the hiring decision, so everything that I want to push through I have to justify,” Rockwell said. “In the last year, sustainability has been forced to kind of switch from this purpose-driven lens to a value-driven lens. And I think that’s actually going to be beneficial for the long term, and something that [subject-matter experts] just inherently have to do.”
IAC Inc. owns media brands including People, Better Homes & Gardens and Southern Living, and its sustainability expertise lives within the investor relations department. IAC’s Senior Director of Sustainability and Investor Relations Sabina Kaplan said that when she realized she was a team of one, she recognized that she “couldn't accomplish all of the lofty goals CFO leadership had for me just by working harder.”
Kaplan said during the panel she had to make three “major shifts” to the way she worked to meet the company’s sustainability expectations. IAC’s sustainability lead said she had to go from focusing on doing a task perfectly to simply getting the task done; prioritizing requests from stakeholders rather than being responsive as they come in; and going from working independently to forming strategic alliances.
To prioritize, she said she places tasks in three categories: what the company is looking to focus on in the next year, what it will focus on in the next 25 years and things that aren’t material or the company will never have capacity to do. Forming strategic alliances has also required her to build collaboration into her work stream.
“Just because I was a team of one doesn’t mean that I couldn’t collaborate,” Kaplan said. “Internally, what it meant was, instead of pulling in someone to help me with final drafts, I pulled them in for the first draft, and I made sure that they were stakeholders early in the process. And that helps with the buyer and product. And then externally, I was using my network more. … I understood what people were working on, so that when I was trying to work on that thing, I knew who to reach out to.”
Expanding access to sustainability materials also helps build corporate sustainability culture, according to Holly McHugh, vice president of sustainability and social impact for Canada-based jeweler Mejuri. McHugh said in her first year on the job she did six recorded “lunch-and-learns” to share what she was working on.
“One bad thing happening could absolutely devastate a young business, and we didn't have what I started referring to as a moat around the brand,” McHugh said. “That's when I went to the leadership team and said ‘I want to build this moat, and I need other people within the organization to help do that. We all need to have shovels, and everybody needs to be involved.”
Strategic use of AI
Single-person sustainability teams are also turning to AI for assistance. Panelists expressed various views on their relationship to AI, but stressed the need for a clear delineation of responsibilities.
Rockwell said he uses AI “every day” and considers it a “ force multiplier” for productivity. He said he starts most of his prompts telling the tools to answer as though from the perspective of a sustainability expert with decades years of experience and with the specialized expertise relevant to his query.
“As a team of one, we have to disrupt our base limiting factors, which is typically capacity. We don't have enough time to do all of the things being asked of us,” Rockwell said.
Kaplan said she uses AI to maximize her attention, but looks at her relationship with AI like the technology is “a junior partner that helps me check my thinking.”
“I do use it for [a] first round to check my thinking about how to do a project for the first time, but I definitely carefully review every answer it provides,” she said.
Rockwell said he treats his AI tools like an intern, because “you are ultimately responsible for what it's producing, and at the end of the day, you can’t sue or fire an AI agent.”
