When I went to the book launch of How to Be a Chief Sustainability Officer by Anna Krotova and Jennifer Geary, I thought it would just be a nice evening doing something different, meeting a few fellow sustainability pros, and maybe picking up a few insights.

What I didn’t expect was how much Anna’s words would hit home. What she was saying wasn’t just relatable—it was scary and eye-opening in the best way. 

• Scary: Because I realized how many organizations still haven’t figured out how to truly integrate sustainability into their strategies, processes, and culture.
• Eye-opening: Because I saw that so many sustainability professionals, no matter where they work—big companies, small ones, listed or private—are dealing with the exact same struggles. 

The good news is – a lot of the solutions are right there in Anna’s book!

Intrigued and inspired, I knew I had to chat with her and dig deeper into her thoughts on what it takes to lead sustainable change and build a solid sustainability strategy withing a business setting. In this Q&A, we dive into her journey, her advice for sustainability leaders, and how to tackle the everyday challenges of the job.

Q&A:

1. Intro & Motivation to Write This Book: Hi Anna, thank you for taking the time to chat with me! Let’s start with a bit about you. Can you share your journey, what inspired you to write How to Be a Chief Sustainability Officer, and what you hope sustainability (and other) professionals will gain from it?

I started working on environmental issues in 2010, after graduating from an Environmental Policy Master’s program. At the time I wanted to understand the roots of environmental problems I saw around me – waste, pollution – and what to do about them. Fast forward, I’ve worked on multiple issues in sustainability—from circular economy consulting to NGO work, to sustainability reporting standards setting at GRI, and internal sustainability roles in private sector companies. 

In 2018, I noticed that corporate sustainability started shifting dramatically with the introduction of various legislation aimed at regulating the flow of capital towards the sustainability transition. In 2021, this legislative work reached its height with the introduction of the CSRD. This, in turn, led to the “rise of the CSO”. If CSRD was to work as intended, we would see at least 40,000 more companies hiring for sustainability roles. I wanted to give a practical toolkit for people coming into these roles, offering a minimum sustainability theory base coupled with practical insight around execution. In other words, if someone was tapped on the shoulder to do ESG and sustainability starting tomorrow, the book would offer them a one-stop-shop on how to get started. 

2. Defining the CSO Role: The role of CSOs is relatively new and rapidly evolving. How do you define its core purpose, and what unique value does it bring to an organization compared to other executive roles?

Today a CSO is first of all a strategist – someone who sees the big picture in terms of how the organization operates and the impacts this creates and is able to translate that back into the business language of risk and opportunity and develop and integrate into company strategy the actions and programs that mitigate these impacts and risks. 

Interestingly, this sounds similar to what a CEO or a CRO may do, except that CSOs add new sustainability considerations and a body of scientific and compliance work into risk management and horizon scanning. The value this brings is innovation to the whole business, and a more nuanced, informed and complete way of thinking about long-term business viability and resilience in a world that is in constant change. 

3. Starting Out or Stepping Up Sustainability Strategies: Some organizations, especially larger ones, began their sustainability journeys years ago, while others are just starting now. What do you think are the most important first steps for a new CSO, whether they’re building from scratch or elevating an existing program?

In the book we give a ‘First 90 Days Checklist’ for CSOs that look at culture, overall sustainability maturity of the organization, commitment, budgets, teams, etc. I would boil it down to four things: 

a) Diagnose culture and buy-in: Do business leaders understand the scope of sustainability, its relevance to the business, its regulatory status and weight, and are they committing attention and resources accordingly? Depending on the answer, you may need to (re) educate key functions and decision-makers first before moving on to any strategy work. 

b) Assess sustainability maturity: What’s already in place in terms of strategy, team, accountability and governance, processes, reporting, and internal communication systems. Again, you may not have a single FTE allocated to sustainability work across the organization, or you may have a big existing team that needs additional expertise because of new material topics. Consider this the wheels of your bicycle – the better the tires are pumped, the further you’ll be able to get in pursuing your material topics. 

c) Perform a DMA: This is to help you determine priorities and create a plan for years to come. Start with a materiality assessment to identify key topics based on impact and stakeholder input     . Focus on areas where your organization can act effectively and prioritize accordingly. Develop a roadmap with clear KPIs and reassess regularly to adapt to any changes in business operations and impacts (e.g., opening new facilities, mergers and acquisitions, launching new product lines and expanding the supply chain with it, etc).      

d) Communicate: Create a starting point to sustainability work if this is completely new to the organization via an internal event, a Teams’ page, and a two-way communication channel, or do a refresh to breathe in new energy and motivation. You need for people to know what sustainability goals are, where to look them up, how their daily work relates to these goals, and who they can approach with feedback and ideas. You will be involving and falling back on multiple people across the organization, so they need to know why the organization is working towards these particular goals. 

4. Overcoming Resistance to Sustainability: One of the biggest challenges sustainability leaders face is internal resistance. What strategies do you recommend for CSOs to build buy-in, especially from skeptical stakeholders at the C-suite level?

At the moment, corporate sustainability is very much about change management – helping organizations transform, build new processes, take accountability, innovate and introduce new operating and business models. This is a massive task – it is hard to grasp and buy into overnight. 

Start with facts and numbers – connect your proposed initiatives to ROI, show the cost of inaction, and quantify opportunities. There is a great framework developed by NUY Stern, the ROSI framework, to help with this. 

We also need to stop separating sustainability from the rest of business – we all want supply chain resilience, competitiveness, access to capital, employee retention – sustainability delivers on all these points, and it does not need to be labeled separately.  

Where you’re still running into resistance, dig into its emotional drivers. This starts with understanding who is in front of you – what are their values, cognitive biases, political views, how strong is their fear of change, etc. We cover this in detail in the book. Your colleagues may simply be busy or tired, don’t overlook that. It can be frustrating, but these are the behavioral nuances and limitations you need to work with. I do think that in a few years, once we would have all gone through this collective learning period, things will get better for CSOs. 

5. Balancing Sustainability Goals and Business Priorities: What advice would you give to sustainability professionals who feel stuck between delivering on ambitious goals and facing organizational inertia or competing business priorities?

Accept that you will always be working within certain limitations, as all other people in the business do, too. Determine your sphere of control and influence, i.e., what you can control directly with the resources and relationships you have, and what you can only influence and may need to shift on the execution roadmap depending on the business context. Get your stakeholders to agree to this prioritization in writing such that you have something to come back to when priorities do start to shift. Ideally, your sustainability strategy and priorities should be agreed with the board, with budget and timelines attached to each initiative – in fact, it is a requirement under the CSRD’s ESRS to report board oversight of sustainability issues, so that should hopefully serve as a conversation starter at least. 

When things are really not moving forward, step away, take a break, turn to another project, and come back when the business is ready. From my own practice, some topics were just too much too soon, but once the organization has gone through initial learning or freed up resources after wrapping up other business projects, things have progressed very quickly. 

6. How to Build a Culture of Sustainability: How can sustainability leaders create a culture of environmental and social responsibility across diverse organizational levels?  

To build a culture of sustainability, it’s crucial for leaders to take a comprehensive and inclusive approach that embeds environmental and social responsibility into every aspect of the organization. This can be achieved through the following steps:

• Assess the current culture to understand existing attitudes and practices toward sustainability, identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement.
• Secure leadership commitment, with senior leaders actively championing sustainability to set the tone and inspire the entire organization. Leadership visibility ensures alignment and prioritization at every level.
• Engage all employees by launching comprehensive training and awareness programs, ensuring everyone understands how their roles contribute to the company’s sustainability goals.
• Create sustainability champions within each department to drive initiatives and integrate sustainability into daily operations. This ensures that responsibility is shared across teams rather than siloed.
• Foster ongoing engagement and recognition, celebrating contributions to sustainability efforts. Highlighting successes not only motivates employees but also reinforces the organization’s commitment to sustainability.

By combining education, empowerment, and recognition with clear leadership and structured accountability, sustainability leaders can build a strong, inclusive culture that supports environmental and social responsibility across all organizational levels.

7. Key Lessons from Experience: The book draws on 20 years of sustainability experience. What is the most surprising lesson you’ve learned about driving sustainability within organizations?

Most people intrinsically care about doing business more sustainably and responsibly. Whenever I went into what I thought would be a difficult conversation, more often than not, the stakeholders on the other side were supportive. It is now a matter of professionalizing sustainability management and translating the body of regulatory compliance requirements to serve as a strategic arm to inform business decisions. CSOs and their business colleagues who do this well will emerge as leaders in this next phase of corporate sustainability.  

8. The Future of Sustainability Leadership: As the CSO role continues to evolve, how do you see the expectations and responsibilities of sustainability leaders changing over the next decade?

At the moment, the CSOs mandate is bloated and not scalable, but that will change soon. I believe the sustainability reporting function will firmly be integrated into Finance with ESG Controllers responsible for most of the data collection. CSOs will then act as the center of excellence and coordination, translating and actioning external sustainability developments (regulatory, scientific, market) with the business. Standalone sustainability projects will be owned by respective teams and parts of the business, e.g., if a company is shifting towards lower impact materials for their production processes, the sourcing and supply chain teams will be responsible for this work under requirements and goals jointly developed and agreed by the CSO and the leadership team. 

Depending on where companies are in their sustainability maturity and integration into business, the CSO will act either as change agent, implementation manager, or strategist. Ideally, sustainability will become an integral part of business, embedded into every operating principle and commercial goal. 

Thanks, Anna, for the open and insightful conversation!

Author: Darina Elencheva, Founder & Lead Strategist at the sustainable link & co.