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Green Shoots & Big Shifts is hosted by Reetu Gupta, who started the show to have open, hopeful conversations about what it really takes to make sustainability part of how we live, lead, and work.
Each week, she talks with people doing innovative, meaningful work, turning ideas into action. From startup founders and corporate change-makers to community leaders - reimagining how business, society, and the planet can thrive together.
These are stories about innovation, collaboration, possibility, and the everyday shifts that move us toward a more abundant and resilient future.
you're listening to Green Shoots and Big Shifts
the show that spotlights the people and ideas
transforming our world for the better I'm your host
Reetu Gupta in every episode
I'll be talking with innovators and trailblazers
who are reimagining
our relationship with our planet earth
whether it's a small spark of innovation
or a sweeping shift in how we live and work
we'll explore the stories that give us hope
and the actions making a difference together
we are planting seeds of change and driving big shifts
for a healthier abundant sustainable future
hi a big welcome to the audience
and our guest today I'm Richie Gupta your host
for the podcast
we today have Nelli Garton with you with us from
tablecloth she's the founder of tablecloth
so welcome welcome Nelli
excited to have you on the podcast thank you I'm really
excited to be here and to chat with you this afternoon
awesome so
I know you've been working in the sustainability
space for a long time can you share
a little bit about your journey
and what motivated you to start your company tablecloth
and my understanding is you've been doing this for like nearly
a decade and so would love to hear your perspective
on how if your mission or your work has evolved during
that time period sure absolutely
well let me start going a little bit further
back because how I got to this I think is is useful so
I worked a lot in philanthropy and non profits
I I did got a PhD in policy and management so
I was looking at different societal issues
through kind of an academic lens
and then felt like I was not making
the kind of difference that I wanted
I I loved teaching but it was not but I wanted
to to basically take these concepts
and translate them to the people that were doing
work on the ground and so I
I came out to moved out to San Diego left Boston and I
got a job to help on a large
community development effort a philanthropic effort
effort and that was when I really started
thinking about all the different types of capital
that were necessary for healthy communities
and that had to do with you know there was
there was film trope capital there were businesses
there were governmental dollars
and kind of how you could put all of those together and
create kind of a a mixed capital stack to to build
the world that we wanted
and it was at that time that the impact
investing conversations were really kicking up
as well as just broader ESG and sustainability
and folks thinking
about and being accountable and transparent
about the role that they were having
in some of these bigger societal issues be it
climate change or inequality
or any of those sorts of things and so at the
at that time I have a quantitative and qualitative
background in terms of research and what I was seeing
was there were a lot of folks that were putting labels
on things but they weren't actually backing it up
with real data showing this is making a difference
or it's not so you know think of for example
the you know three hour training
that a lot of people would do for
diversity or something and whether
most people were counting hey we did something
not what was the impact
that it had and what did it change and so
that was the problem I really wanted to
attack is helping people to understand
whether or not the things they were doing
were impactful and started by working primarily
with philanthropy and non profits but felt like
there was less of an appetite for concrete
data as there was
then in the private equity world who was
just starting to be held accountable for the impacts
that they were having in the investments
that they made and and their numbers people they want
to actually see you know what the the concrete data
that helps them to drive decision making
and so that was when we started the company
you know we were kind of covering
both worlds and I still do to a certain extent but
but that was a
a big shift in the early days of tablecloth
was recognizing that part of it was identifying
that private equity uh was a part of making
really significant decisions at at a high level
that affected a lot of people people and communities
and the planet
and so we wanted to help to give them the information
so they could make better decisions moving
forward yeah thank you for sharing
I was curious when you when you made that transition
from you know you made two transitions
it looks like from what you were describing
you know starting the company and then move you know
moving majority of your client
base on to private equity space
what were like it looks like it was again data based
decision making that you were making
I would ask you what I would be curious about is like
did you have to change the way you were operating
were there any
surprises as you navigated these transitions like
for someone wanting to start as a company or pivot what
I was wondering if there were any things that you could
yeah I mean I think that the data itself
is is similar in the different sectors so you're still
gathering information from an HR system
or doing survey based or doing qualitative interviews
or those sorts of things so the actual fundamentals
of how we do our work didn't change
but certainly the language and tying financial metrics
directly
to that impact so that folks can see where are the
the efforts that we're making
actually material to the fundamentals
of the business so for example
you know if I'm working with a health tech company
they're carbon footprint is going to be less or
components of their carbon footprint are gonna be less
important for them as if you're
running a trucking company and you're using you know
a fleet of vehicles
and you know there are all sorts of different decisions
that are being made
around emissions and sort of you know long term
capital expenditures so
I think I had to learn a new language
cause also the private equity
the world thinks differently
about how to both create value and to mitigate risks
in their investments
um and so that was something
I love to learn I'm I'm constantly sort of absorbing
new ideas and trying to you know
integrate them so that was very
interesting to me I think you know
non profits are businesses
too it's just that the incentive
structures are different and it's more about
actually I have a friend who at one point was pushing
folks to try and
shift the name of non profits to for impact
as opposed to non profit cause we're basically
you know looking at what they don't
what what is their priority in the positive
and so I think that that's an
important thing to to distinguish because every company
be it non profit or government or for profit company
they all have impacts
it's just a matter of whether or not we're measuring
them and paying attention to them so that's really
you know I think probably one of the surprises
was that it actually was way more similar than I
than I maybe would have expected
um and it's about the incentive structures
and kind of who you have to report
to so for a private company
you're reporting to your investors
or you're reporting to
you know your board public company you're reporting to
the public
who might be invested in you and might own shares
and non profits or foundations
have their own kind of reporting structure
and so that's kind of how I think about some of the
the differences that
that I identified yeah thanks for sharing and that
that's helpful to hear that even as you pivoted
you could find some similarities
so if someone is thinking of pivoting they can look at
the data they can look at the information it's not
starting from scratch there is
some pivoting involved but some things that you can
continue to take along in your business
stepping back a little bit how do you yeah
how do you work with your clients
how do you help them what what kind of projects
do you work on yeah yeah so
I mean the majority of the work that we do is of course
around data and so
the data we look for it typically lives
all throughout an organization in different systems
it might be in an Excel spreadsheet on someone's
you know desktop it might be in a
a system they're using you know Quickbooks
or their finances or a CRM system or their HR
management system and so we're basically
trying to collect that data
out of those systems and as well as doing surveys
about what policies and procedures
organizations have in place
and trying to normalize it so that you can look at it
through kind of a central lens and have a conversation
about what this means to your point about driving
decision making and so you know typically
you'll be making decisions kind of in silos
and what we wanna do is
is bring all of that information
together so you can see how
when you make this decision about you know for example
hiring or safety rates in an organization
how that affects finance
maybe that affects your insurance rates
maybe it affects so we want to be able to
look at all of those pieces
together and see what are the different impacts
for the organization and to be able to help them along
that process so often our work
starts with data quality and figuring out where
does this information live in organizations and
folks are all over the board in terms of their
the systems they use and what the processes
are that they put into place so
you know part of what we first try to do is say
here are all the different pieces of information
that would be useful
where would that be in your organization
then bring that in and our first round of data
when we're getting baselines from companies is often um
you know we're identifying where the holes in the data
maybe it's incomplete data maybe there are errors
in the data and those sorts of things so we do a lot
around data quality to try and improve that
and then we also work with our clients
in setting up you know more formal
kind of systems and definitions
for the data that they're collecting and providing
and then our team does a lot of of
first we put together a series of dashboards
based on the data
and then we work with them to identify where
in that data where are their surprise rises
to you where are there potential opportunities
so for example we recently
were looking at a a company and and their safety rates
were really high for what we would expect
in their industry they had a lot of injuries
and days away as a result of and
and so you know that's an easy one to point to
to say this is surprising to us how
might we address this and so
they built a plan and we're able to reduce
their safety incidents
by about half in a year so they went from 60%
down to 29% and so being able to not only
start with the data but then help them to identify
and track here are the things we
into place so that's kind of the qualitative
qualitative side of our platform
and for us to be able to then track
that because of those efforts
you saw this reduction which will connect to
you know productivity and all of those
and efficiency and all of those sorts of metrics
that are
important to them on a financial side very very
interesting I have two questions for you one how does
how like maybe it's an example
maybe it's a particular client
obviously without any any confidential information
how does that this work have you
where have you seen this work connect
with sustainability investing so I have um
we do scope 1 2 and 3 emissions calculations
for the majority of our clients
we have worked with impact investors that are very
focused on sustainability and building you know
positive efforts
towards change and intentional efforts
towards companies that are that are doing work to
make the world a better place from a sustainability
lens you know every business have
if they have a particular location
they have an impact so you know your buildings
your vehicles
your machinery whatever that might be and so we
we try to customize it to the different businesses
to an extent where
we identify what are the areas that are gonna be much
most material to who they are as a business
and so on the sustainability
side of things you know there's what kind of education
do you have in place
what kind of incentives do you have for employees to
you know bike to work or
whatever that might be so we look at sustainability
pretty broadly in terms of you know their
waste and water usage and carbon footprint
but we have a wide range on the sustainability
side of data that we are collecting
that then will help them to identify
cause so many people don't even you know recognize
that that all of those pieces
fit together in terms of the environmental
impact that you're having
yeah and have you seen like some clients
come back to you or like work over multiple
years and have you been able to see like they started
in one place where they're just collecting the data
to now they have a data informed
strategy that is being implemented
very much so I mean that's kind of the fun of our work is
once people start working
with us they work with us every year and we
have them for a long term and so you're able to see the evolution
and the growth in the organization
one example of that is a fund
we've worked with for a long time that has done a lot
that primarily focuses on health and that's where
the investments that they make are into the healthcare
kind of sector and you know when we started
we were looking at things like the social determinants
of health
what neighborhood you live in and how that affects
health
and you know we were looking at things like cost
outcomes and access
and over the last year or two they've really
developed a much more a comprehensive strategy around
net zero understanding that place really matters
to health and so the environmental components
that are important much more important to their
kind of impact story than originally
they thought so it's watching that evolution that
continual learning I mean I really see it as a it's
it's not it's not an end point
it it is you know constant learning to do this well
in many ways because there are so many tensions
so tensions around you know
we only have so much money coming in and can we make these changes
and you still have to make decisions
but that but the data is what helps you to
to do that better so you get the most out of
you know all of the tensions and decision making that
we all have to you know I run a small business and
making I'd love to pay everybody
tons of money I'd love to
you know do all sorts of things and yet you have to
you have to do what you can in the constraints of also
making
sure there's still a job for people to come to yeah
yeah that that that makes a lot of sense I was one
completely agree on like the impact of climate
on health that is one of the areas
I'm I'm I'm focused on in in my daytime daytime job one
question that comes to mind is I know when we talked
last time you were like jokingly saying like
data is like the Trojan
horse so you like you you you can
get in and companies can start to see how they're
they're they're actually functioning
it just and then you've been doing this for 10 years I would be
interested I was just curious like
when clients come to you are they
are coming with a problem statement like
are they are like different flavours
like are they thinking like
I have all this data I don't know what to do with it like
they usually don't start there they usually
start with what they are being
asked by someone else so I need to be able to answer
the questions that my investors are asking me is often
kind of where they start they have a problem
that like all this data lives throughout organizations
it's but you know it hurting
cats to try and gather all these different pieces
especially at a fund level
you've got 10 12 portfolio companies
who all may be very different and how you gather
that information to be able to reliably report to Lps
who are you know a limited partner
in a PE fund they represent endowments foundations
insurance companies you know they they they basically
are trusting that private equity company
to do good with their money and they may need to report
back to for example like a university endowment
wants to know that their money is not being actively
used to work against the values that it holds
or those sorts of things so often
that's how they come to us is because they're being
asked questions they can't answer
and so helping them obviously
solve that pain point and also they worry a lot about
we don't wanna put a large burden on our companies
we wanna make this easy and seamless um
and so one of the kind of
on that Trojan horse metaphor is
you know often the problem they come to us with is not
kind of the fundamental problem we end up solving
we do solve that we get them the data that they need
but we also build trust
and work with the portfolio companies to identify
where is there other value that we could be getting
out of this where are their areas that we might be
putting ourselves at risk if we don't address them
right and so
you know that is kind of the development
the other thing I would say in terms of that question
is a lot of our work I would say
we think about it as developing the champions
in organizations
you know organizations exist in different
way like in some organizations
for example if you wanted to
implement a new policy some organizations you could
you know go in a corner
write it out hand it to them and they go
great now let's implement
you know and others might create a committee and spend
six months working
through and and so how work happens in organizations
is very organization dependent and so
part of our job is developing the champions
in an organization who are the one who
need that information who
how help to gather that information
so that they can really help navigate
how this becomes more core to the organization
one of the things I've seen in a lot of like implementation
efforts whether it was around DSG or Dei or you know
an environmental initiative
those if if they're not built into
then the core of who someone is as an organization
they're
they're easy to sort of lop off when things get tough
but if it is you know built into and really
integrated throughout an organization it's much harder
to you know see it as kind of a side project versus
something that's fundamental
to the value of the company
yeah yeah yeah I I completely agree with you and
and what I'm hearing
is your work and the work you do with data and
building these champions you're able to
support the champions and getting it more integrated
within the company's
DNA versus like this thing that can be chopped off
switching subjects
again I know last time we talked we talked to
like you can't you cannot have any conversation
without talking about AI and we had touched
upon that and you know you had brought up that AI
is an emerging force in sustainability
and even organizational change how
are you incorporating in your work
you know what do you see as the future of AI
in the work you do it is absolutely central
to the work that we do I will say I see AI
as both potential value driver in organizations
but also creating a whole new set of risks
and so you know I will
continue and we as tablecloth will continue to do
the measurement pieces
around you know there are obviously lots of fears
out there that AI is gonna take away jobs
I just heard this morning that Microsoft's
carbon footprint increased 25% this year
I heard that too yeah yeah yeah and so you know
measuring that measuring your usage measuring
you know OK did our jobs change was it
just that certain tasks were used with AI or you know
were changed with AI
what to use AI for because it doesn't necessarily
work for every peace
yet and so you know really I see it as an enormous
right now we've we've recently rolled out some AI
governance work
because one of the things I was seeing
was it was very much a free for all some folks said
oh yeah we use it all the time but very
few organizations actually had policies in place
a full inventory of all the ways in which AI was being
used in their organization
they had not necessarily done a lot of education
of their our team around these are the abuse cases
these are the tools that we have enterprise
relationships
with which means they won't train on our data
how do we you know make sure we're protecting
components like the intellectual property of a company
for the personally identifiable information
of our employees so
you know we rolled out a whole governance series
for both our clients but also more broadly
for any any company
interested in diving into that because you know
one of the stats that really
surprised me over the last year or two
is that previously most cyber security risk
about 80% of it you thought about
cyber security risk being X
now that has almost completely flipped and 80% of your
cybersecurity risk comes from the inside
because your team doesn't
know what they can and can't use AI
for and you know it it
and maybe they're building tools
that then create errors and you know could expose data
and all of that sort of thing so I think it's that's a really
critical piece but
my thinking on this and my three to five year vision
of our work is deeply incorporating
and measuring the impacts of AI on companies
so whether that's on
your people what their experiences
I mean I have a lot of conversations right now with
with people working at different companies
that are saying
I'm being told I have to use it for everything
it's very stressful
you know sometimes those rote jobs that
like you need a brain break
and figuring out how to you know do that work with AI
create more efficiency
but also like still be a human being is important
and so the other thing I was talking
with a client this morning
is this implementation of AI has a whole other layer
of human emotion implementation
when you know you try to roll out AI some people
they they may have a lot of fear am I training
basically my replacement or they don't trust AI
or they're afraid of what it is going
so they don't wanna participate
and you know naming that and the kind of humaneness of
uh huh we're being asked right now to do with AI and
and who controls it and who owns it and who benefits
from it are all important questions to discuss
and and to open up with with your teams
yeah very important topic and as you said it's
you know we can it starts with data
if you can measure it that you can see the trends
and then you can start to address it
so this has been really exciting very very interesting
for me I wanna ask you a couple more questions one
what are you most excited about in the next
2 3 years for your company for impact
investing for sustainability what what excites you yeah
I mean this AI work really does
excite me because I want to help influence
like how that roll out is going to happen um and
and to be a part of the conversation
I think right now so much of the conversation
has been about just trying to build it quickly
as opposed to what is actually the responsible
and the the the safe ways to do this and how
how do we do this in a way that hurts uh
spreads out the benefits and the risks
and so I'm excited to be in that conversation
because it's just you know
this is our industrial revolution this is the next
kind of level
and I think right now there is space to shape the arc
of how that actually plays out
whether it hurts or harms people and the planet
and so I think that's something that I'm very
excited about you know I think you know I mean we've I
I guess we haven't talked about it in this conversation
but I think about it a lot we are at the intersection
of so many enormous issues right now in
the world whether that is global warming
climate change whether that is income inequality
whether that is you know divisiveness in our
society and and you know democracy and
I think it is it can be overwhelming for some people
and a lot of people
then kind of bury their head in the sand and
I'm really focused on how do we help people figure out
where they can make a difference you can't make a difference in all of it
but what are the concrete steps that we can be
moving towards that we can feel
good about because there is no other body but us
to make change if we want change to happen it
starts here it starts
with what you and I do every day it
starts with the decisions
that we make and I've been thinking about this through the lens
of kind of we all have these different
spheres of influence in our lives so I am
I run a company I sit on boards I'm a family member
I am a part of different you know communities I
and all of those you have different ways
in which to influence to shape how capital flows and to
think about where we can activate
and I think to try and motivate others to be activated
and the more that we can do that the more that
we together
create the world that we want to live in yeah yeah
I love that I think what you just said is so
important like it is we are really
at at a threshold right now from
from all these different perspectives
all these different angles
and what we do today is going to impact
many future generations so yeah we we all have a role
and we can
figure out what that role is and just just do that
uh huh yeah and find
community in that and recognize that you're yeah
not carrying the whole weight
other people are carrying parts of it
but I I do think working together
identifying ways in which we can each individually
influence
things and is is how the world is going to get shaped
and and I want it to be for the good
for the better absolutely
thank you so the last question
is I ask my guests to leave the listeners with one word
that they would like them to take you know
for into the rest of their week rest of the day
okay one word I think it would be possibility
uh huh I think there's tremendous possibility
out there and you know we often
focus and this work is hard sustainability
you know the the impact
investing like these are hard challenges
we're trying to overcome but I'm really
hopeful and positive
that we can I think there's a lot of possibility
out there and you know it is about activating
and and you know supporting
each other to be able to to do more in the world
and so I think I think that's my word
yeah thank you I love the word possibility
and as he was speaking
I'm like yeah do we have another option
of not doing anything I
I don't think so we have an option
there's not an option so
even if you like move a centimeter a millimeter
whatever move because I don't I don't think there's
another option
I don't think there is either and not one that I wanna live in
you know no I think that there there are other options
and one of them is just like complete societal
destruction and I'm not willing to be a part of that
yeah yeah I agree
with that thank you so much Nelli
this has been a great pleasure
and thank you to the audience
I really appreciate the time and I very much
enjoyed the conversation so thank you