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The Responsible Supply Chain Show is a must-hear podcast for insights and strategies on building ethics and sustainability into global supply chains. Each episode delves into the challenges and opportunities businesses face as they strive to create more responsible, transparent, and environmentally friendly supply chains. From innovative sourcing and trade disruptions to reducing carbon footprints and combating modern slavery, we explore the critical issues that define the future of global commerce.
justin dillon (00:03.052)
Welcome to the Responsible Supply Chain Show, where we explore the world of responsible sourcing, sustainable practices, and ethical supply chains. I'm your host, Justin Dillon. And in each episode, we get into real stories, challenges, and even some solutions. Because we are solutionists, solutions that companies are facing today as they strive to build more transparent, ethical, and sustainable, and pick your buzzword, supply
justin dillon (00:35.118)
Okay. All right. Welcome to episode two of the Responsible Supply Chain Show. I can't believe we made it all the way to a second episode. I don't want to call it a habit. Well, for me, it's a habit to do something twice. My bar is low. I'm kind of a movement guy. I've always wanted to be a part of movements. I think movements are something that you define in the rear view mirror. A lot of people say, I'm in a movement. It's like, well, you know what? History.
will tell you if you're in a movement. But I want to believe that if there ever is a movement that history shows, looks back and says, wow, previous us, you guys really fixed supply chains and made the world work better. I want to believe that this little podcast, you know, played a role in some way. And that's why today I'm bringing on one of my favorite human beings on earth, Marcella Mont-
Monubons? Monubin? Marcella. I know where's Marcella. I tend to butcher. I butcher names. I actually, when I wrote a book a while ago and then my publisher said, hey, you're not allowed to read your book. I'm all, no one can tell me. I'm let some actor read my book. They're like, trust me, it's really, really hard. You don't wanna read your own book. You don't wanna read your own book. It's just a crucifixion. I'm like, no, no, no, no.
I can read my own book. I'm not going to have somebody else be my voice. So I'm to read my book. So I arm wrestled. I actually had to try out. to audition for the publisher to read my own book and I aced it. And so I go in the studio and I start to read my own book and I hated it. It's terrible. Don't ever do it. I mean, if someone else with a better voice can do it, let them do it. Cause here's the number one thing I felt the entire time. Dumb.
I felt dumb because I had written words in my book that I didn't even know how to pronounce. I had to look it up on the internet with the producer, like, how do I say this word that I made me sound really smart, but I don't even know how to say it. So when it comes to pronunciations, look, it's proven. I got some issues, but you know someone who doesn't make me feel dumb is Marcella. And she forgets more in a day that I'm gonna remember.
justin dillon (03:01.902)
in a lifetime because she was the corporate, former corporate social responsibility officer for PVH, not a small thing. Then in 2013, she joined Unilever as global vice president for social impact, not a small thing. In 2016, she expanded her role into social sustainability implementation and supply chains, member of a human rights advisory to the UK foreign secretary, member of the international business forum taught at Columbia Fulbright.
Marcella is a big deal, but more importantly, Marcella and I got to day drink at the Vatican. And that's how I met her. It's how I meet most people. She and I, independent of each other, never met her. I'd known of her. And we got asked to speak at this thing at some building in the Vatican, which was a big deal. At least it seemed like a big deal. Maybe it wasn't. It was a big deal to me because I got to day drink there.
And they kept us in some meeting and they did not let us out like for like nine hours or seven hours. don't know. was like three o'clock in the afternoon until they like let us out and they're like, okay, now we're going to have lunch. It's like, my gosh, that's right. We're in Italy and or the Vatican or the Holy See, wherever we were. It felt like Rome. Okay. And they put us, they put us in a room and they sat, sat Marcelo and I next to each other. And it was actually her birthday and they served us wine. And I'm like,
birthday to you. She and I are going to talk about the state of ESG and supply chains. Marcella has done it at a big scale and she has some very hard learned wisdom that she wants to share with y'all. Where are we finding you today? You're finding me in Connecticut. It's called the Litchfield Hills in US. What is it like?
That sounds idyllic. It sounds like what everyone thinks of when you think of Connecticut. Like farmland, horses. It sounds like the home of someone who's worked in sustainability. Yes, it does. It does. I needed a little bit of peace of mind after trodding the world and doing the kind of work that you and I do. I like to start people's stories off of
justin dillon (05:22.112)
starting from the point of, and it doesn't have to go too long, but it's important to know, one, did you ever learn how to ride a bike? Yes, yes. And where was that? My best friend still remembers the color of my first bike. I saw her many years back. She's in Argentina, the country where the accent comes. And here we had adults and she's describing to her husband the color of my
first bike. That is some sensory core memories there. So you learned how to ride a bike in Argentina. Are there any childhood lessons? It sounds like you remember quite a bit from your childhood. Are there any childhood lessons that you learned back then that you've been able to carry into your professional life? I have wonderful family. My parents were, I was very fortunate.
I grew up in a difficult period in the country because it was during the dirty war. You know, even I remember as a child, the changes in government, we had military dictatorship, then went to democracy with Perón coming back in his late life. Significant chaos, change, which I happened to be in New York City with my daughter in September 11.
And after everything happened, I asked my father, I do not recall being scared or being, how did you manage as a family? And he says to me, well, it was simple. We were just mindful. And there was a lot of hard work. That's the other story I always remember from my family. Very hard work that compass, that anchor.
has guided many of my decisions in life, whether it's for fun or for family or for personal issues. I think that is so critical to have that. You've had, really, I'm gonna say this, I know you wouldn't, because you're humble, but you've really had a genre-breaking, groundbreaking career in sustainability. I mean, really pushed through, for lack of a better term, glacial.
justin dillon (07:44.966)
obstacles to be able to really make systemic change. And now, as you should, and as one does, you're now teaching the next generation of sustainability leaders, which is just phenomenal. And in boards. I'm also in boards of companies because I think that in the boardroom, there is a really important element and there is a nexus just in between the boards and the students, as you said. Tell me more about that. Well, the nexus is
You know, we and your work, my work has advanced the issues to certain, you know, to certain level. And as you said, the legacy, what I consider my legacy is to have students and young professionals to run with it to the next level. But we are we have an opportunity as seasoned professionals who go into the boards.
to bring those voices in. And this is not about shadowing and doing all those things. It's about really saying that it matters, that this transformation of business is an important, almost universally agree upon principle of where the younger generation wants to be. And there has been so many ups and downs and there's so many pressures and...
It hasn't been cohesive or cooperative kind of movement because you have such a discord of realities across the world. But we'll have to come together because at certain point there's no other way. Whether the markets recognize it right now or in five, 10 years or 50 years from now, the only way that we are going to be able to be successful is
by driving the agenda that we believe in. I'm not, I don't claim to be a visionary, but I know a few things and there's no other way. And what are you teaching this generation of leaders that you've had to learn yourself? Like, what can you give them that no one gave you when you started off, but what are you giving them now that you feel like is so important for the times we live
justin dillon (10:03.098)
So when I start teaching this course, I put it together. They gave me a syllabus, which was great, but it wasn't what I wanted. You know, it was the first time we taught the class. And I said, this is not me. And they said to me, why? And I said, because this is more about measuring and auditing and not that that is not important. It's super important. It's a tool in the tool set. But if I'm going to teach this, I want the students
to do what I did, to dream it up. And I'm not suggesting that they go, they go, you know, they just come like Robin Hood into a corporation. They need to bring people together. They need to understand how you advance together. You know, you can go fast alone, the typical, you know, line. You can go fast alone, but you can go much further together. So what we did, and I will...
encouraged to have this freedom when I put the syllabi of the course was to say, okay, let us think about the different elements of business transformation. Because if you are going to have, if you want to have this career, if you want to have an impact, then it's not about having goals or the program here or the other. All that is really important, but it's about living it every day. And how do you convince the others that in every single decision,
that they make and you make, you are really impacting the goal and the vision. I think that what I want these students also to challenge themselves. If they want to be in business, you need to put in the ESG, you need to put another E that is economic sustainability, right? Because if you make it only about environment, social and governance, by the way, governance is a table stakes.
Then you make it about no for profit. So if you want to do all this, just put the E of the economic and understand very well the business you're going to run and work on because that's your key to really embed everything that we believe into it for all of them. Well, you've had the privilege of working with one of the great sustainability focused CEOs of all time, Paul Pullman at Unilever.
justin dillon (12:25.106)
And for those who don't know, his tenure was 10 years, 2009, 2019. And at the onset, he set of, I mean, you were there, he set a very ambitious, I'd like to hear what it was like to be in the room when you set a very ambitious goal to decouple business growth from overall environmental footprint and increase the company's positive social impact. when you hear people set goals like that, you don't hear the footnotes, which is the company grew over that tenure.
justin dillon (12:57.27)
300%. Now you can everyone's going to take a pot, you know, you can take a shot at it saying, well, they're covering, know, the, the, we just suffered a downturn and it was coming back. You can take all of the macroeconomic takes at it, but the, the, the, the data speaks for itself. That's the first E and the ESG was proven itself out, which allowed for what it sounds like all the other ESG that you guys said, what was it like to be in the room when
at beginning of that tenure, when you're setting these goals and you're, I would imagine this is the first time Unilever had ever had leadership that was saying, this is how we're going to run the business. There were two important goals for me. One was to draft the social agenda, which was called Enhancing Lovelyhoods with three pillars of action. One was, you know, the human rights agenda, which
it tackles supply chains and what we are talking today. Everything tackles supply chain, right? The second was women's empowerment. Women's at the time, the women agenda 2013 is still, we haven't had the crisis, the Me Too campaign, et cetera. And there, I talk about the rights, the skills to succeed and the opportunities. And the third element was
you know, responsible business, basically embedding all this in the agriculture and other business linked to what we were doing in manufacturing. So that blueprint was added to the USLP. I mean, to see, to be in the lounge, to be in the discussion, to be in the lounge of all that, we've all been so committed, so passionate.
and giving such a support was something I will never forget. And every single one of those meetings every year. I imagine it was, and it was kind of a once, you know, it's very rare. I'm but I would imagine that even when you have air cover from the CEO, you still had a lot of soft, soft and hard diplomacy inside the company. I mean, what were some of the tactics that you used? It's not like you could say, well, just, you know, go to the principal. The principal says we have to do it.
justin dillon (15:10.642)
You still had to push an agenda. You still had to win people over. And I would imagine, I really want to hear since that's this podcast is about, is how did you work with supply chain? Because we've mentioned that before and that's another, you're talking about sustainability and supply chain sometimes don't speak to each other very well. What were some of the tactics that you used working with the supply chain side of the business? In 2013, we have International Human Rights Day in December. I'm working with my business partner,
In comes, said to Mark that day, let us Mark that day and let us, you know, for both human rights, social impact, link with climate, et cetera. And she said, great. Well, what should we do? And I said, well, I'd like to have a video. where we interview, like you're doing to me, the CEO, the chief supply chain officer, the chief procurement officer, et cetera. And I want to ask them.
What does human rights mean to you? Don't give me the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Don't tell me the UNGPs. No. What does it mean to you? Everybody came from a very deep, personal point of view, because they were thinking about their families. They were thinking about their upbringing. They were thinking about their friends, the people that they lost to probably some abuses. And there was all this reality that they brought into that session. So we put a little short of that.
video and we put it out as part of the Human Rights Day. And that was it. That was because it reminded everybody why we were doing this. You're kind of jumping to a conclusion that I have. And I've always thought about this. Sustainability is often spoken in the language of statistics. What's that quote that's attributed to Stalin?
The death of a million is a statistic, but the death of one is a tragedy. Meaning that we relate to stories. We relate to stories, not statistics. And you've, it sounds like you weren't bringing your chief procurement officer or head of supply chain statistics. You were bringing them stories. And in some cases you were inviting them into a story. Like your story, a story that's bigger than the story that they knew. And that seems like such a genius way of diplomacy, Marcella to
justin dillon (17:39.152)
And I think that's something really important for the listeners of this podcast is we are all part of a big story. You invited your executives to tell their story about human rights and recognizing that we're just a piece of a story. And sometimes we can't see the broader story of what we're doing. Is there any guidance that you can give around storytelling to people who are working in similar positions to you today that they can use internally and externally, whether that's to supply chain or even to marketing?
How do stories around sustainability and ethics really play out inside of large and small organizations? I remember at a certain point we were looking with supply chain and remember I was not in supply chain, it was in a totally different that we were interacting with them and with procurement. And one of the areas where we saw significant problems was salt pans, particularly in India. If you think about salt, this is a commodity.
It has very little value. mean, it's not like gold or oil or it has little value, but it's critical to the diet in many parts of the world. Too much salt is not good, but salt is needed. And in India, in India, the conditions in the salt pans were very, very difficult. So we did an assessment, came out with these issues. We worked with the head of procurement at the time.
And working with the person who was leading procurement, he committed to look into that. But then, you know, they realized there was so much, particularly in health and safety issues that needed to be done. That the cost of the commodity, even if we subsidize it, we're not going to be sustainable for others, for the whole industry and the market. And we continue pressing answers. Look, this is, cannot continue knowing what you know. We need to find a solution.
And just to give you the bottom line, they discovered that that supply chain was highly fragmented. What does it mean? There were many intermediators in the middle. They were from the buyer to the person who managed the small operation of the salt pan. There were tons of intermediators that weren't adding value, but they were passing the commodity and adding the margin. So they figured out this, you know, this is a waste and they need to go other place because the one who is suffering is the
justin dillon (20:00.56)
worker. So they implemented things like health protective equipment, know, water in the middle of this gigantic area that was very high heat and all this, you know, facilities. So they make a presentation to me about what they were doing and how they were doing it. I mean, the excitement of this procurement team, Justin, they were like kids.
They said not only did we got it, they were so excited that they were able to implement all this. They caught the middleman, they focused on the facility, workers were doing well. And he says, Marcella, our, the competitors of the salt pans that we are working with want to know what our guys did so they can do it too. It's amazing. what your answer surprised me about how you stories. It's never fun when someone comes and says,
you have to do this. But when someone says you get to do this and the get to is being a part of a bigger story than yourself, which is what I think all of us as human beings are looking for in all of our lives, but really don't ever imagine we can find that in our work. But that seems to be what working on these issues is when you talk about story and statistics, the stories lead the statistics because you get to bring
you know, through your Jedi mind tricks internally, you're able to bring people into bigger stories. And that is so, it's so beautiful. I've got one last question for you. You know, for this next generation of responsible supply chain practitioners operating under these regulations, I mean, do you have any, any guidance for them? Because their, their job is a little bit different. They now have a compliance job and there's a, there's danger.
when everything's about compliance and not responsibility, there's a danger to check boxes. What advice would you give to help these practitioners not just check boxes, but to actually, as you were saying, really create systemic change inside the organization? So I have two or three points of advice. One, for anybody working and wanting to be in business, know the business. You cannot transform if you don't know the business, even if you are very, very...
justin dillon (22:23.558)
highly motivated by value transformation. You need to know the business. If you don't know the business, you won't be able to embed, you won't be able to transform. Secondly is, I said it already, don't point fingers, it starts with you. I personally do not wake up every day and say, today I'm gonna do less harm in the world. Shouldn't the dream will be the flip side, what good looks like.
and be clear about what good looks like and start working backwards what kind of practices you need. You know, people, students, our legacy, I'm rooting for them. I mean, it's their place, it's their world, it's their planet. Well, you have done a phenomenal job and you're not done. I don't care what you say or think. You've got so much more to do and I love that you're continuing to invest.
Well, Marcella, thank you so much for doing this is so great. And you're helping so many people and I for one, you've helped me an enormous amount and inspired me so much. So I appreciate you coming.
justin dillon (23:31.058)
This is the one thing, the part of the show where we break down one concept from our interview and give you something to walk away with like a thank you bag. Marcella talked about how if you want to create systemic change in an organization, you have to know the business. If you're a sustainability expert, if you're a human rights expert, if you have some type of role inside of the business that is
designed to protect people and planet, you have a big, big job of convincing others in the business that your perspective, your recommendations should be taken seriously. And in order to do that, you need to understand how the business works. You work for a company. And the supply chain is really the pulmonary system of the business. It pulls in resources and it distributes that.
throughout the rest of the body, the necessary resources throughout the body. And the one thing that it does quite well is it removes unnecessary gases, things that could harm the business. That's essentially what a responsible supply chain professional does. You're here to help bring resources into the company, but make sure that you're getting rid of unnecessary or toxic gases that could hurt the business. And that's where the responsibility part comes in.
So your job is to understand what parts of the supply chain are beneficial to the business and what parts can be detrimental. That is a perspective that needs to be taken up more and more in this space. think given the way that the world is going and the way in which even sustainability and ESG is being talked about, that it is time to see yourself as a critical part of the business. Not a critic, but a critical
part of the business to help it grow and return value. Thanks for listening.