Sustainability Leadership: How to Benchmark Your Transition Beyond Going Green

NAME: Julie Henry

LOCATION: Bradenton, FL

ORGANIZATION: Conservation Enterprises Unlimited

What does it mean when organizations “go green”?  More importantly, how can organizations transition beyond “going green” into the arena of sustainability leadership? And how can they truly benchmark, leverage and improve upon this transition?

With her TogetherGreen Conservation Fellowship, Julie is creating a Sustainability Index which is designed as a quantification of sustainability leadership. This tool will be accessible through the soon to launch www.sustainabilitybenchmark.org, which will guide organizations in benchmarking and communicating their progress. 

This strategic overview of organizations is heavily influenced by Julie’s experiences as a student in the Sustainable Business Leadership Graduate Certificate program at Green Mountain College in Vermont and as a master’s student in Communication at the University of South Florida.  Julie is also involving her colleagues at Conservation Enterprises Unlimited, a network of professionals throughout Australia, Canada and the U.S., who bring additional expertise in conservation strategy, social media marketing, leadership development, and coaching to produce a comprehensive tool.  It is Julie’s vision that the variety of backgrounds and perspectives of the people involved in developing this index will produce a finished product usable by organizations of all shapes, sizes and locations.

Julie has dedicated her career to training, motivating and inspiring people for conservation. Whether teaching a workshop in sustainability leadership or crafting messages about climate change, she believes that sustainability will become a cultural force for change just as the quality movement had global impact over 30 years ago. Ultimately, the sharing of best practices within and between diverse organizations is powerfully motivating as we push the boundaries of what it really means to “be green”.