Financial Analyst (Chemical and pharma industries), Marketing Manager (Chemical), Economic Development Researcher (Aalborg University Denmark), Market Analyst (my own business). These are some of the roles I’ve had in my career, which were the stepping stones to where I am today as a Professor of Sustainability Marketing at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.
Some other roles that aren’t on my resume, but equally define me are: Idealist, Mother, Student-Whisperer, Nature-Lover, Life-Embracer, Contemplator, Five-Country-Live-er, and finally, Unquench-able- Question-Asker. I love my job because I get to listen to and share ideas with interesting students and business leaders. I have inspiring colleagues who research important things. They ignite my imagination, so that I can do better work. To help me keep learning, I have access to some of the most innovative firms in Switzerland through research, consulting, and student projects.
When I turned 50 a few years ago, I told myself: Statistically speaking, if I’m lucky, I only have 35 more years to live. So what do I want to do with this diminished time? What am I going to change in my sphere of influence? What risks am I going to take? So I decided to work on finding possibilities to re-generate environmental & social systems through the transformative power of business & education.
The Sustainability Marketing Canvas is a result of years of conversations with business leaders searching for a way to “do” sustainability marketing strategies. It is a result of a year of reading about all the “sustainabilities” involved in business and marketing – only to find out that this is a fragmented concept creating a lot of disordered thinking and, as a result, incoherent strategies. The Sustainability Marketing Canvas is an attempt to create coherence in the chaos so that true and lasting impact can be made by businesses. It’s about widening marketing’s lens and asking bigger and better questions so better outcomes can be had.