Impact Interview: Camille Mori

Name: Camille Mori

Role/Function: Chief Sustainability Officer, PrimeAsia Leather

What are you working on these days?

It’s been almost two years since I joined PrimeAsia Leather as their Chief Sustainability Officer and I feel like I’m starting to get my footing and see our new sustainability strategy take shape. There is a lot to be excited about. 

Since launching our Sustaining Excellence, Preserving Tomorrow strategy earlier this year, we have been focused on putting the strategy into action and prioritizing transparent communication on our progress. We will be launching our 2023 Sustainability Report in November, and I look forward to reporting annually on how we are working towards our operational excellence, circularity, climate action and social impact goals. 

A cornerstone of the new strategy and something I’m really excited about is to ground our targets in science-based approaches. We are in the process of setting verified Science Based Targets and analyzing how our company can best align with SBTi targets for Nature. This will help us develop strategic roadmaps to reduce GHG emissions and lessen our impact on nature by using data informed decisions that lead to real change. 

Looking ahead, partnering with our supply chain will be key to achieving our sustainability targets. As a first step, we are developing tools and roadmaps to 100% traceability down to the birth farm or group of birth farms by 2030, enhancing our current traceability standard of full traceability down to the harvest facility. Mapping our supply chain down to the farm level will take cross-industry collaboration and will unlock opportunities across all pillars of our Sustaining Excellence, Preserving Tomorrow strategy. It is a challenge that I am excited to take on.

What was the “aha” moment that sparked your interest in social and environmental impact? 

After getting my Master’s degree from the University of Hawai’i, I thought I wanted to go into Academics but realized it wasn’t the right path for me.  When thinking through different careers I could pursue, I decided to do something I loved and start my own upcycling business, repurposing jeans and aloha shirts I found at Goodwill. I always loved making my own clothes but never knew a lot about the global apparel industry. Through my experience running this business, I started reading more about the apparel industry and understanding the full scope of opportunity to drive social and environmental impact in it. Ultimately, this led me to organizing a sustainable fashion show at Honolulu Fashion Week, showcasing my own designs and others of local sustainable designers. It was during Honolulu Fashion Week that I got to connect with fashion industry experts and designers originally from Hawai’i that moved to New York City to launch their careers. After hearing their stories, I knew I needed to be where the industry was and where there were opportunities to learn. This was the turning point where I took my passion and decided to make it my career — I booked a one-way ticket to New York City in January 2015 to understand how I could make an impact in the global apparel and footwear supply chain.  I never would have imagined ending up where I am now at PrimeAsia Leather, almost 10 years later, but I’m glad that leap of faith brought me here.

How did you break into the impact space? What career advice would you give to professionals who are just starting out or looking to transition?

I don’t think there was one experience that I would consider my “break” into the impact space but more the culmination of building my network and taking every opportunity to learn. In Hawai’i, I joined the Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals program and volunteered for Honolulu Fashion Week as a way to get exposure to the business community in Honolulu and learn about the apparel industry.

When I arrived in New York City, it was just before Fashion Week and many brands were looking for support. My goal was to learn as much as I could about the industry and supply chain to understand how I can make a difference. Along the way I also kept a blog, which gave me a platform to meet people in the industry and connect with impact leaders in the space.

Once I had my foundation of knowledge on the industry, I started to pursue roles that were focused on impact. My first job focused on impact was at PVH on their Corporate Responsibility team. I was fortunate to have a great team of people to learn about developing supply chain due diligence programs and building effective stakeholder relationships, abilities that have helped me grow as a leader in supply chain sustainability.

Working in impact is often about driving change. What is the skill or trait that has been most important for your work as a change agent? How did you learn or hone it?

There are certain skills that are helpful at different points in your career journey. Early on in my career I focused on skills that would pop on my resume, like knowing Excel formulas and developing effective PowerPoint presentations. As I have grown in my career, I am focusing more on skills to build an effective sustainability team and integrate sustainability into business operations, such as strengthening my change management and influencing abilities. Two skills that have stayed consistent throughout my career and that I think are important to any impact role are empathy and humility. These are core to building genuine relationships and leading authentically.

What most excites you about the impact space right now?

I am excited that the impact space is growing and becoming more of a professional business function. With this change there are certainly growing pains, such as more scrutiny of sustainability programs and understanding of the details, as well as questioning our preconceived notions of what is sustainable, but I am excited that this is forcing sustainability professionals to focus on the impact they’re driving and to have the data to back up their work. It makes the space more complex, but it will lead to more impactful sustainability programs executing data-driven strategies.

There is a perfect case study for this trend in the leather industry, combating misleading claims about alternative synthetics. At PrimeAsia, we believe leather has its place, and while we always encourage innovation of new materials, the way synthetic leather alternatives were marketed at “vegan leather” were misleading to the consumer and did not reflect that many of these products were derived from fossil fuels and made of plastics. When the media (such as this NYT article) started poking holes in this narrative and questioning why a fossil fuel-derived product was being marketed as sustainable, the industry had to come to terms with the fact that these claims were misleading.

We are in an era of transparency and authentic communication and I am excited to see what comes to light and how we can move towards focusing on real impact with tangible results.

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