The main reason I do my job is my daughter. I had always had an interest in the environment and the natural world, but when my daughter was born, it was a bit of a Eureka moment. I realised that I needed to spend every moment in my day job – as well as my personal life – focussing on ensuring she has a world to grow up in.
When I was younger, I was fascinated by space, and a quote from ‘Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space’, by the late great American astronomer Carl Sagan, really sums up the ‘why’ of sustainability for me:
“That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”
Since the Eureka moment, I have been lucky enough to work in sustainability roles in several sectors – from space to FinTech – looking at the greenhouse gas emissions from rockets and the lifecycle of satellites, to the potential impacts and application of finance.
However, when the opportunity came up to join Leonardo, I jumped at it.
One of the main reasons was the opportunity to make a meaningful impact. At Leonardo, we have over 8,500 colleagues in the UK (and more than 50,000 around the world), so amplifying the impact in helping others to understand more about sustainability – whether that's climate or digital sustainability – was a powerful driver.
Another draw was the potential of the technological applications we are working on at Leonardo. Over the next decade, we are going to see some major challenges, and innovation will be key to addressing many of these things. To me, sustainability is all about how we, as a business, can make sure we’re reducing our impacts as much as possible – but also how can we start creating a positive impact back on the world around us and our communities.
Additionally, I was impressed by the commitment that Leonardo has towards sustainability – whether the Science Based Targets at the Group level, or our UK commitment on Net Zero. What I have seen at Leonardo already is massive engagement from across the business with people who are really, really invested and want to get involved.
In my experience, sustainability teams are always collaborative and this is definitely how we work at Leonardo. You cannot apply sustainability to one part of the business or a specific geography; everything has to be consistent. This collaboration is something that I have always loved about sustainability – even when working with competitors – we all have a common objective and purpose.
Leonardo has recently published our new Industrial Plan at group level with embedded specific sustainability targets. There is also the new Sustainability Plan, which is global and incorporates projects happening in the UK, including climate action, biodiversity enhancement, employee engagement, DE&I, Cyber sustainability and Social Value.
Additionally, there are UK specific requirements we are working towards – whether that’s customer or legislative requirements. Our UK business has a specific 2030 Net Zero target for our direct emissions. This is slightly in advance of the Group targets, but this actually works in parallel as the quicker we decarbonise in the UK, the more we support our Group goals.
In the UK, legislation has recently been introduced about biodiversity net gain, and alongside us looking at how we protect and enhance biodiversity on our UK sites, we are working to collaborate with colleagues in Rome to consider how to do the same across all geographies.
The key thing is collaborating and sharing ideas, because ultimately it doesn’t matter whether we’re in the UK or Italy or Electronics or Cyber or Helicopters; we’re all facing the same challenges, and must work together to find the solutions.
