‘Rebranding What Sustainability Is’

Two sustainability professionals who met at CL 26 share the challenges and opportunities they each face, the value of collaboration, and where the term sustainability falls short.

Kyra Ferber and Kellyanne Perez-Vera met last fall at C4C (Convene for Climate) in Rotterdam, which brought 114 events industry experts together with leaders and entrepreneurs from public and private sectors to talk about business strategy and sustainability. The event sparked a conversation between the two, who bonded after discovering that they held similar roles at two very different high-profile global corporations — Ferber, vice president for ESG (environmental, social, and governance) at the Universal Music Group (UMG) and Perez-Vera, marketing sustainability director for Mastercard.

Ferber and Perez-Vera continued their conversation earlier this year during a Convening Leaders session moderated by Tanya Popeau, PCMA’s global director of sustainability. They talked about the challenges and opportunities they each face, the value of collaboration, and where the term sustainability falls short.

About their jobs

Kellyanne Perez-Vera

Perez-Vera My role is very niche and was created specifically to ensure that Mastercard reaches its net-zero ambitions. When I started, my role was focusing on creating the strategy to decarbonize within global media,

all of the social platforms, media and production — what’s happening on an actual shoot. My role expanded and I oversee the strategy for decarbonization across meetings and travel.

Kyra Ferber

Ferber I’m vice president of ESG over at UMG, the world’s largest music company — whoever your favorite artist is, they probably have some connection to UMG. Within UMG, I help lead our ESG and sustainability strategy. My second day job is leading our ESG and sustainability compliance. We’re a Dutch parent company  in 60 countries, so from a compliance perspective there’s a lot of interesting — and sometimes conflicting — problems to solve.

On getting traction

Perez-Vera I think there are a lot of brands, a lot of companies, that are saying, “Well, things aren’t figured out yet. I’ll wait until everything gets figured out.” But nothing gets done unless you’re the one who’s willing to take that leap of faith and navigate. The second thing is to partner with vendors and suppliers that are also passionate — the Maritz team had said they wanted to pilot measuring events and understanding carbon footprint. And I always say, “I’d love to be your guinea pig.”

I think the beautiful thing about this space is that whoever you’re speaking with, it’s: “Let’s sit and have a conversation. How are you measuring your impact report? Where have you seen hotspots? What are you doing to optimize?” It’s a space where we’re all willing to share and grow together.

Ferber It’s about a conversation and understanding first, where are stakeholders coming from, what are their key concerns? And then translating that into, okay, so then what are our ambitions as a company and what does this mean across different stakeholder groups?

Just because someone is interested in sustainability doesn’t mean they have the same language that sustainability professionals have. So getting management and the board up to speed on what is net zero, what is SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative), what is CDP (the Carbon Disclosure Project). What are all these acronyms and do we have to have any of them? And what does this actually mean for [singer/songwriter and prominent environmental activist] Billie Eilish? What does she actually care about?

A core part of our success is that sustainability is a priority for our stakeholders. Our artists care a lot about it. Their fans increasingly are really interested in it, and as a result, our management and our board and our employees are all really invested. And I think our management and our board have been essential in being able to make progress and to set bolder ambitions year over year.

On making an impact

Ferber At UMG, we’ve really seen firsthand how not just powerful but also necessary it is to collaborate across industries. We don’t put on live events, but we know that if we’re going to make any kind of difference, that’s where it is. This year we launched a huge partnership with our nonprofit partner Reverb.org. We advise them on things like sustainable merch and they can take that information across everyone they work with. And in turn, they’re really helping our artists put on shows that are as sustainable as possible or as sustainable as the artist is ready to be.

Perez-Vera I am proud to say in our 2024 impact report that our company grew by 16 percent in revenue and we reduced our carbon footprint by 7 percent. It’s a big deal, because the story has been told that the higher your revenue increases, the more carbon-intensive your business becomes. And we’re demystifying that by optimizing our strategy, our businesses, working with our suppliers to ensure that they’re also decarbonizing. I think a lot of it is just being brave to start that conversation and just hold hands together as we figure it out.

On where we go from here

Ferber It is really about collaboration and staying connected. It’s the small decisions that add up to large movement. If we steer the big ship one degree, that makes a massive, massive difference. I think increasingly moving sustainability from a lone ranger into every single line of business is just kind of the norm. My goal is — I hate to say this out loud —that in 10 years I don’t have a standalone department or role. Sustainability is baked into business as usual, and that change is integrated into everything we do.

Perez-Vera I’m going to be a rebel. I think we should do away with the word “sustainability” because it’s an anomaly. This should be the new norm — it should be the right thing to do. I like saying “impact” more than “sustainability,” because sustainability can mean a lot of things. So the biggest thing is rebranding what sustainability is, so people realize it’s not the standalone department that’s in the corner, emailing us again. It’s baked into every conversation.

Barbara Palmer is Convene’s deputy editor