There used to be a famous beer commercial with a strapline that "good things come to those who wait".
For global communications leader Bianca Shead of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), one of the world’s longest-standing non-profit conservation organisations, it’s a sentiment around the value of patience that continues to ring true throughout her impressive career.
Shead is the Senior Director, Global Marketing and Communications at TNC. She started her working life in communications and sustainability roles at brewing giants Molson Coors, SABMiller, and then Asahi, before moving to TNC nearly 10 years ago,
But, if you assume making beer and conserving nature have little in common, you’d be wrong, she says. “Beer has three main inputs: water, cereal and yeast. It doesn’t get much more natural than that."
On the role SABMiller played in informing her career, she says: "SABMiller, a very progressive organisation, spent a lot of time looking at its value chains to work out better management of resources. I had worked closely with The Nature Conservancy on water projects – around rivers and watersheds that some of our breweries depended on – so it felt like a very natural progression.”
The appeal of TNC also lay in its role in financing environmental projects. The organisation has an in-house impact investing team, as well as a nature finance one, both working with external partners to identify viable initiatives, design financial and market strategies, and structure deals.
Constant evolution
TNC has changed a lot over its 75-year history, and its work now reaches more than 80 countries. More recently, it has also had to contend with heightened geographic, cultural and political sensitivities that impact nature conservation and the long-term commitment that is often needed.
“The last couple of years have been intense. Agility and perspective have been particularly important qualities," says Shead. "We needed agility to deal with rapidly-changing situations, and perspective to assess the potential impacts of a situation, and respond appropriately. We’ve honed our skills in defining rapid response protocols and processes, and developed a scale for defining the seriousness of a given situation,” she adds.
The hard yards of practical application and demonstration of the value communication can have, have also been significant factors. The integration of UN Sustainable Development Goals into the SABMiller business and mapping impact across supply chains, was a highlight in the beer years. More recently, the TNC team worked to ensure that the UN’s Global Biodiversity Framework reflected the true value of biodiversity to the world – a large and complex task. The campaign ran for two years, working closely with policy teams and anchored on a Financing Nature report.
Regardless of industry, the long-term drive to create solutions that address climate change and nature loss, as well as focus on the value of nature to investors, governments and communities, have remained constant.
“It’s important for NGOs to be able to understand and articulate the business case for valuing nature. We need to speak to our partners in terms of their organisations and priorities, their dependencies and impact on natural resources, and the risks and opportunities that should matter.”
Many of the aims of TNS’s work take years to come to fruition, and rely on patient and consistent communications support. Endurance remains a useful commodity then, but what lessons did she learn from the world of brewing that she still applies today? Shead says: “Genuine sustainability is not about philanthropy, altruism, or feeling good. It is baked into value chains and business process – and delivers outcomes for multiple stakeholders.”