Purpose at Work with Nestlé’s Lisa Gibby
About This Episode
In a world grappling with complex challenges, corporations have the potential to be powerful forces for good. But it takes courageous leadership to set audacious goals and rally entire organizations to drive meaningful change.
On this episode of Mission Forward, Carrie Fox sits down with Lisa Gibby, Deputy Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at Nestlé. As the first person to hold this role, Lisa is responsible for building and maintaining trust in Nestlé's global brand across 186 markets - no small task.
Lisa shares her journey from running her own small communications firm to leading anti-poverty efforts at Bono's ONE Campaign to now sitting on Nestlé's executive board and ESG council. Her story is one of pursuing purpose at every scale.
Under Lisa's leadership, Nestlé has made bold moves—like being one of the first companies to publish a roadmap to reach net-zero emissions. Setting such ambitious public goals created some organizational nervousness, but it also rallied and engaged employees in a shared mission.
The conversation touches on navigating complex social issues as a global company, the importance of humility and embracing failure as part of the process, and how a new generation of consumers passionate about sustainability gives hope for the future.
At its core, this is a discussion about the power and responsibility of communications to drive positive impact. It's about having the courage to set big goals, the focus to build alignment and momentum, and the wisdom to know you can't do it alone. Lisa leaves us with an empowering message - that everyone has an opportunity to contribute as a force for good, and even failure is part of the journey forward.
Tune in for an inspiring look at purpose-driven leadership and the role we can all play in building a better world, one bold goal at a time. Our great thanks to Lisa for joining us for this conversation.
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Carrie Fox:
Hi there, and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast. I'm Carrie Fox, your host, and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B corporation. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode.
If you have been following along this ninth season of the show, you know that we are taking on the issues that are keeping leaders like you up at night, from how to drive their purpose forward in this political or, should I say, politically charged environment, how to navigate through changes to DEI programs, how to advance AI effectively in their workplace, and most importantly, how to communicate effectively through it all.
Well, today's guest is a wonderful example of just that. Lisa Gibby is Deputy Executive Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at Nestlé, the first person to sit in such a role. She's also a member of Nestlé's executive board and the company's ESG and Sustainability Council. Now, if that doesn't sound like a big enough role, Lisa is responsible for building and maintaining trust in Nestlé's global brand. And to do so, she works closely with the company's communications teams across 186 markets. No small task.
Before joining Nestlé, Lisa served as Director of Global Communications of the ONE Campaign, how cool is that, the anti-poverty organization co-founded by U2 lead singer and activist, Bono. And before that, she was a small business owner running her own communications firm. So Lisa has seen communications from so many different perspectives, from a business leader, to a nonprofit, to now a global for-profit. As you'll hear today, Lisa has a clear point of view and focus on the power of communications to drive meaningful change, and I'm thrilled to have her joining us today from what I believe is her relatively new home in Switzerland. Lisa, it's wonderful to have you.
Lisa Gibby:
Hey, Carrie, thanks so much for having me today. Yes, I'm an American transplant in Switzerland, in Vevey. I've been here for a couple of years now. And yeah, just thrilled to be a part of this podcast, so thanks for having me.
Carrie Fox:
That's great. I saw a picture not too long ago on LinkedIn of you sitting, I think, at your new desk with, my goodness, that could be a painting by your side there looking out that window.
Lisa Gibby:
Switzerland has a lot of great benefits, but if you love the beauty of the outdoors, there's really no place better. So it's very inspirational.
Carrie Fox:
Amazing. So you and I were connected by the absolutely wonderful Louise Hilson, who I have known since literally the first days of my PR career. When she suggested we connect, it was because of how much your communication style resonates with her. The more I read, the more I just felt the same. You are leading a global communications effort, but the way you write and engage with your partners and your audiences, it has this intimacy, Lisa, and this approachability that draws your audiences in. And quite frankly, it's a communication style that most senior leaders wish they had. Clearly you know and strongly hold that understanding of the power and responsibility that communications has, so tell us a little bit how you got into this work, what drives you in this work? Because it sounds like you've got a fascinating backstory.
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, it's hard to believe I've been in the world of communications for over 30 years. It has really gone by in a flash. I think what gets me going every day is just how diverse and interesting and the challenges and the opportunities are so great when it comes to being a communicator. I've always loved being in this business, and I would say really from the early days of my career, I was also very driven to do purpose-led work, which I think communications really enables you to do in a big way.
Carrie Fox:
Mm-hmm. Do you remember what those first experiences were when you started to think, "Purpose is my path."?
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, just reflecting back, I mean, I worked at a PR firm in New York starting in 1992. I remember I was very drawn to the pro bono clients and the things that had some purpose to it. And then when I went to work for HBO back in the mid-90s and then later in AOL, it was always the advocacy initiatives, the community initiatives that just really brought out a little extra, I don't know, passion in me. So I connected with that at a very, I would say, in the early days of my career, but I've definitely had experiences that I've been able to really grow on that.
Carrie Fox:
And how about at Nestlé? You've been at Nestlé for some time now, you've had several roles there. What drives you to be part of this incredible organization?
Lisa Gibby:
My journey to come here was really interesting. I'm going to go back a little bit and then I'll talk a bit more about Nestlé. But after some of my experiences working for agencies and working in corporate communication, I took a bit of a turn and started working for an NGO, the ONE Campaign, as you mentioned, founded by Bono. This group is exclusively focused on tackling extreme poverty through policies. I just found it so empowering to be a do-gooder in that way. I remember thinking back to a World AIDS Day campaign in 2011, it just was such a powerful feeling to be able to advance a cause in such a way. So that was when I caught the bug, so to speak. I was just so empowered and excited about this.
And then an opportunity came open at Nestlé a little bit out of the blue. I had noticed the work that Nestlé was doing in agriculture in Africa, and I really saw it as just a smooth continuation of the journey and a pivot of continuing to do good, but doing it in a very different way. And that was about 10 years ago. And then I ran communications in the US for about six years before coming to Nestlé Global. The global role, it's intense. As you mentioned, we're big. We're operating in nearly every country in the world. The challenges that come our way are big challenges, but the opportunities are also tremendous. I think when you have a company that's really driven by purpose and values, if you can really leverage the size and scale of the company, you can just do incredible things, and that's what keeps me excited about my role.
Carrie Fox:
I love that. Has the purpose of Nestlé always been as clear as it is today?
Lisa Gibby:
No. I mean, I think the purpose of a company has very deep roots, and I think it's deeply embedded in some ways going back 150-plus years to when our company was founded. But purpose definitely evolves over time, and it shapes a bit over time just because you have to adapt to the world around you in some ways. This is a bit of a non-answer, but I think it still has the foundations of the Nestlé purpose have always been there, but it's activating in different ways based on needs of society and the needs of our business.
Carrie Fox:
Right. That activation is so much of what you're at the center of, working closely with the executive team there. I just was reading about a new announcement. You just announced your executive board now has six women, representing almost 38% of the board. It's a significant milestone. You were recently named one of Boston Consulting Group's most innovative companies. Tell us a bit more about this journey, what these last few years have been like and what is guiding some of this incredible change that you're seeing at the organization?
Lisa Gibby:
Like many big companies, companies big and small, we have a focus on our DEI initiatives and gender balance has been one of them. We've got lots of dimensions to our DEI focus, but the fact that we've been able to really drive the number of women in senior positions and now at the very top of the organization, it's really exciting. And frankly, I'm humbled to be a part of that change. So yeah, that's super exciting. And then best place to work in some of these lists. These are things that it's nice to get those accolades, but we're really just working on being the best company that we can be and to have purpose and values and to communicate those values. I think that that's what really makes us attractive to new people, new generations of workers. It's such an important strategy for future-proofing our business.
Carrie Fox:
Right. So that announcement, I think it was last week or just a few days ago, I know it was certainly in this month during Women's History Month and potentially it was even on International Women's Day, that didn't just come about. I am certain that that was years in the making. I think that this is often something that's lost on companies that really to have that long-term lasting impact it's a long game. So to make sure that we are staying focused on our goals to be able to advance that social impact that many times as folks are being asked, or companies I should say, are being asked to report out on that, if they're not seeing or showing change fast enough, then they may find they want to change or divert their strategies. But I sense that you've been focusing bit by bit, day by day on advancing these goals. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, I mean, it's true. We've been on this journey for quite some time, for I would say at least a decade, and focusing on it and really just keeping our heads down and filling our talent pipeline with the right talent. And then this came about. I put it on LinkedIn because I was quite proud. It wasn't an official company announcement, it was just literally looking around the table at our executive board on International Women's Day, and our new CFO, who's a woman, this was her first meeting and it was like, "Oh my gosh, it's happening. It's happening right now. It's happening today. We've got six of us here." So that's very Nestlé. We don't talk oftentimes about what we're doing and tout every milestone along the way. We just keep our heads down and crack on and get about our business and then make change. I think that's how it should be done. It's very humble and keeping with who we are.
Carrie Fox:
And that, I think, is the perfect example of why Louise wanted me to talk with you, because approach I love so much, Lisa. I love that you all are just head-down thinking about how to advance your purpose and your work, and then you suddenly lift your head up and say, "Oh my gosh, look at what we've done. Think about the mountains we've just climbed," and knowing that there's still more mountains ahead of you. Do you ever feel the pressure, and it sounds like maybe not inside Nestlé, but to do the opposite, to announce something before you've made that great progress?
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, I think it's a really difficult balance because you want to get credit for the good things that you're doing. I'm a communicator, I like to tell really great stories. So having that balance of telling those good stories but doing it in a really thoughtful balanced way I think is the right approach, certainly for us.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah. Quick story I want to get your take on. Not too long ago we were working with another global organization and we were doing a messaging audit for them. We were looking at all of their messaging over the course of the last 12 months to determine what issues they had spoken out publicly about. What we found is that this organization, whose headquarters is in Africa, was speaking mostly about issues that were US-based. Some of it was informed because that's where the largest employer base was or employee base, but they started to realize that there was imbalance to how they were deciding when and how they would make a public statement on an issue, and that it was actually turning off some of their global employee base that felt like it started to have a too western of a lens. And this is a question that we see come up a lot, is how do organizations, corporate communications departments like yours, determine when or when we don't make a statement on an issue in this world that we're living in?
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, it's a good question. I can say we've struggled with the same thing, because when you operate in so many different geographies, what's right for one might not be right for the other. I think for a lot of the social issues, we try to take a hyper-local approach, and we really try to read our local communities and react in that way. But when it comes to real global positions, we take a very high level and we try to keep things focused on a couple of big ideas. Certainly our sustainability initiatives and our climate roadmap are huge priorities for us where we speak out about those issues quite frequently. Our work around nutrition and empowering healthier lives, because we're a food company, we speak out about that. But on some of these more divisive social issues, we go back to our Swiss heritage, and sometimes we're quite neutral.
Carrie Fox:
Sounds like you also, though maybe with each question here I'm making a little bit of assumption and then you can rightsize me, that you've got a pretty active CEO and senior team where you are thinking through communications decisions together. You're thinking through the implications of what you say and what you don't say. Talk to me about that relationship that you have with your team and your colleagues.
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, I think you really need to have that foundation of trust, certainly with the CEO as well as the senior leadership team. That's why being on the executive board and being a part of that senior leadership team, it just really shows the value you can add, I think, to the business. So building that trust is foundational, but then really having leaders who have the courage to lean in and have conversations or be transparent or go out and engage with media or post on LinkedIn. You really need to have the right kind of courageous leader who's willing to do that and trust you to do it in the right way.
Carrie Fox:
Do you have an example of that? Courageous leadership is something we talk about a lot here.
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, I would say our CEO has been passionate about the climate topic for a very long time. We were, as Nestlé, really doing what we do, which is we had a roadmap, we were reducing emissions, we were doing a lot of good work, but we really didn't go out and set forward a bold, audacious goal. With, I think, the CEO's embrace of this, we really decided to go out and publish... We were one of the first companies to publish a roadmap to reach net-zero. We really leaned into it and put ourselves out there with some really big goals, which now we're, of course, chasing to meet and doing what we do at Nestlé and keeping our heads down and going for it. But I think that was a really big courageous move, and it was really at the forefront of companies getting involved with net-zero roadmap. So that was an exciting moment.
Carrie Fox:
What felt most courageous about that? Did you expect there to be pushback? Did you expect someone to say, "You'll never hit those goals," or the fear of failure in hitting those goals?
Lisa Gibby:
Yeah, I think it's all of those things. I think Nestlé has a long tradition, forgive me for getting a little bit wonky, but we've been doing voluntary sustainability reporting for over 20 years. And as part of that, we would make commitments that we would voluntarily make and put out there and track against them. And so we have very much this culture of we do what we say we're going to do. So I think to go out with these climate targets where we didn't have all the answers, knowing that it was a long-range goal, it created some nervousness in the organization. But it also created, I think, a rallying cry for the organization to get behind something in a big way and to get our employees really engaged on the topic. Listen, we're not all the way through it, but I think it's been a really good thing for the organization.
Carrie Fox:
I love that concept, the idea of a big, bold goal that rallies the entire organization, that pushes momentum of everyone forward. I wonder if you can take that idea and think back to your younger self when you are running a small business and you had your clients and you were thinking about what was possible from that point of view, how would you translate what you are doing today on this big global scale to what folks who might not have the resources you have, what they can think about on how they might advance their purpose in the world too?
Lisa Gibby:
I think having worked both at an NGO and in a big company and then having a small consultancy, I think everyone has an opportunity to make a contribution. I'm totally an optimist. I love this idea of being a force for good, so I think there are no contributions too small in these efforts. The thing that's exciting is that you can be a part of these solutions at a totally different scale. And it's empowering. I think it energizes you about your career and why you get up in the morning.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Well, thank you. So I know as folks are listening, many of them I'm sure are thinking, "How do I apply some of what Lisa's doing here in my own organization?" I'm hearing focus, I'm hearing build momentum, build alignment across the organization, and have a big goal, have something that you're driving towards.
Lisa Gibby:
And have some fun doing it. I mean, I think you just really have to get energized. Instead of getting scared by these big goals, you need to embrace them and go after them. I think another important element, especially when it comes to communications, is just this humility thing. We don't have all the answers. We don't have it all figured out. We're going to make mistakes. Bear with us. Work with us. I think it's really helped us in our journey. It certainly helped us as far as partnership and support. I think we're onto something with it.
Carrie Fox:
And you can't do this work alone. There's no way you could possibly advance that goal without your partners.
Lisa Gibby:
That's right. This is a together game. It's a team sport. We need everyone to be working together and being pragmatic about solutions. I think that sometimes companies or organizations get scared of failure, and I totally get that, but failure is part of the process.
Carrie Fox:
All right, I've got last two questions for you.
Lisa Gibby:
All right.
Carrie Fox:
So one, speaking about failure part of the process, what worries you these days or what feels like a barrier ahead that you're thinking about how you navigate through it?
Lisa Gibby:
I think the biggest challenge right now is just the world that we live in can seem overwhelming. It's the poly crisis or geopolitics. I mean, for where I sit in the organization, it does impact our work every single day, and it can seem overwhelming. But I think it's also an opportunity for companies and people who are driven by purpose and values, I think it can help you really focus on what's important. Only by having that focus can you really navigate through this crazy world that we live in right now.
Carrie Fox:
And then parting word, Lisa, you just told us what is worrying you, though you did as I expected you to do, you spun it into something that was positive and optimistic too, but as we wrap up today, what's in your line of sight? What's got you feeling optimistic and hopeful about what's ahead too?
Lisa Gibby:
I mean, I can't believe that my children are basically young adults now. They're 20 and 23. They obviously care a great deal about the environment, and they're much more switched on than I ever was at that age. I think we have a new generations of consumers who really care about environmental issues. I think Nestlé is very well-placed given our focus on sustainability to be a leading company into the future. I think that's good for us, but it's also good for society and others that we're going to partner with. So that gets me really excited about the job I'm doing and the progress we're making because I feel like it's not about me, it's about my children. It's all about our kids, right?
Carrie Fox:
Right. Well, you have a heady job for sure. You've got a big job ahead of you and how lucky Nestlé is to have you in this leadership role serving as that courageous communicator and change agent, really, for the future of this company and for our planet. Thanks for thinking about the work you do in such an intentional way, Lisa, and how you're modeling what communications really can be inside an organization.
Lisa Gibby:
Thank you so much for the time today, it was a true pleasure. Best of luck to you on the podcast. Get the word out.
Carrie Fox:
Thanks, Lisa, so much.
And that brings us to the end of another episode of Mission Forward. If you liked what you heard today, I hope you'll stop right now and give this show a five-star rating wherever you are listening to this podcast. Maybe even forward it to a friend who you think would enjoy today's conversation. And of course, check out the show notes for all of the links referenced in today's show. Mission Forward is produced with the support and wisdom of Pete Wright and the TruStory production team, as well as the wonderful Sadie Lockhart of Mission Partners. You can learn more about our work over at missionforward.us, and of course reach out to me anytime at carrie@mission.partners. Thanks for tuning in today, friend, and I'll see you next time.
