Impact Interview: Jennifer Gootman

Name: Jennifer Gootman

Role/Function: VP Sustainability, Williams-Sonoma, Inc.

What She’s Currently Working On: 

2020 was a major foundational year for our social and environmental impact work at Williams-Sonoma, Inc. – we conducted our first comprehensive environmental footprint and launched our first customer-facing circular pilot, Pottery Barn Renewed. We met our 2020 goal to impact 100,000 people through our worker wellbeing programs. Despite the challenges of COVID, we worked with nonprofit partners HERProject™ and VisionSpring to bring health, financial literacy, and vision services to over 23,000 workers in 2020 alone. We learned a lot from setting and achieving our existing public 2020/2021 goals around responsibly sourced materials and worker wellbeing, and we used that to inform a new set of goals that will take our company through 2030 and beyond. We’ll expand our climate and carbon reduction strategy, scale our work in circular, and partner across our brands – from design to sourcing to marketing – to create authentic, impactful programs that are embedded in the business and in our products. Today, over 1/3 of all our products represent one or more of our social and environmental initiatives, and we are looking to significantly grow that over the next decade and cement our leadership in sustainable home furnishings.

1. What was the “aha” moment that sparked your interest in social impact? 

I’ve always been passionate about and pursued work that is impact driven, and I spent the first decade of my career in the nonprofit sector focused on the arts, economic development, and social justice. I decided mid-career to get my MBA to combine a formal business education with my purpose-driven work. I also wanted to figure out how to incorporate my creative side and aesthetic inclinations into my profession – I have designed and made jewelry as a hobby most of my life. 

During business school, I had a fellowship in Nicaragua working with a social venture that aimed to keep children in school and out of waste collecting from the neighborhood municipal dump. One of the programs they offered was skills training in jewelry making, so I was paired with them to evaluate and streamline the business and help drive sales to support ongoing programs. It was this perfect nexus of my personal jewelry making passion, the drive to make an impact, and business training. It was through that experience I found my niche of working within design-driven industries to create value for underserved communities and the great potential of impact in global supply chains.

2. How did you break into the social impact space? 

After my MBA, I stayed in the nonprofit sector as the executive director of a nonprofit that provides market access to more than 40 organized groups of women artisans around the globe. I managed everything from design and development to shipping to warehouse to e-commerce and marketing. It’s where I developed my expertise in helping artisan businesses scale and learned all sides of a retail business. After several years there, I began thinking about how even small changes in a large corporation could make a big impact. I wanted to be somewhere that really shared my vision and passion and was open to new ideas and innovations. I knew the West Elm leadership team through a network of industry associations and saw their investment in craft, so I pitched a new role that would lend my skills and expertise to drive that commitment. They recognized the potential of bringing on someone like myself from an alternative background to lead this work. I’ve now been with the company since 2013, and every few years my role evolves and broadens. I went from focusing on West Elm’s commitment to craft to launching fair trade across the brands, overseeing social compliance and worker wellbeing programs across the company, and am now in a new enterprise-wide role leading social and environmental strategy and programming across the company’s eight brands.

For those looking to enter the space, I always advise being specific about the sector or issue that most interests you. People will often ask me how to pursue a career in corporate social responsibility, but to be honest, that was never what I thought I would be doing. I came to this job because of my commitment to artisan communities, but I’ve been able to build that into a much broader platform across Williams-Sonoma, Inc. Sometimes the perfect job for you may not yet exist, so you have to create it.

3. What most excites you about the social impact space right now?

There are so many thrilling things happening in the social impact space today. I’ve been heartened to see how silos between social and environmental programs are being broken down – climate justice and social justice are intertwined, equity and resilience are environmental and social issues. For example companies like Blocpower are helping multifamily buildings in urban areas improve energy efficiency and lower their carbon footprint, which has a direct impact on residents and the surrounding community. And in recognition of the enormity of these challenges, this already collaborative space is becoming more so every day, which amplifies impact. For example, our work with VisionSpring to develop a program to serve factory workers with vision services or our work with Nest to develop its seal of Ethical Handcraft were multi-stakeholder and multi-brand efforts. Technology and science are carving out a new, lower-impact path with scores of innovative materials that may not be production-ready yet, but are getting there quickly. And social and environmental impact in its best form is now being integrated into business; more and more companies see how sustainability and social impact are strategic imperatives rather than nice-to-haves.

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