Kristen Siemen, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, General Motors 
Interviewer: Nick Lichtenberg, FORTUNE

Impact Initiative 2022 - Leadership In Action with Kristen Siemen

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Impact Initiative 2022 - Leadership In Action

So, General Motors underlined its green credentials with its announcement to only sell electric vehicles by 2035. In our next conversation, we'll sit down with GM chief sustainability officer and explore the transformation underway at the corporate giant will also learn how the company is helping expand E. V access and developing new infrastructure to support their mission. Please welcome to the stage, Kristen Seaman, vice president and chief sustainability officer of General Motors for an interview with Fortune's executive editor, Nick Lichtenberg. Hi Kristin, thanks for being with us today. Thank you for having me here. Yeah, so it's exciting to talk to you because the electric future is really here. Um, you're one of the world's largest automakers on track to create a world with zero crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion. Um, you're planning to sell only electric vehicles by 2035, I think we all know about this. It's, it's ambitious but it's exciting. Um, it creates business opportunities. Um, so can you talk about how you shift an entire product offering in that amount of time? So what types of strategic organizational operational changes you have to make and you still have to make in the future? Yeah, so as you mentioned that we're very proud of the goals that we set the, the vision around 0000 crashes, zero emissions, zero congestion actually was set back in 2017 and I was saying last night, you kind of go from wow, that was five years ago to wow, that was only five years ago and what we've accomplished and what we said and then the ambitions that you mentioned around, you know, we've set a carbon neutral goal for 2040 and our products and operations and our plan to eliminate tailpipe emissions from new like due to us vehicles by 2035. So a lot of big bold commitments um, based on science. So we do have science based targets approved as well um, for those. So, you know, it really is a cultural change. I would say in the company, we talk a lot about everybody in that this transition. We cannot do it alone. It's going to take public and private. It's going to take our suppliers, our employees are really working together to come up with solutions to make this transition. But it's reality, it's happening fast. I mean I think you can see some of the, you know, certainly proud of the products that we've introduced and and seeing those on the road is, is exciting. Yeah. So we know you're going to get to all E. V. By 2035. How long do you think global adoption will really take? How long until the whole world has electric cars? Oh, that's a great question. Um, you know, I think it's about a lot of, I think a lot of these goals are big and bold and it's hard to see how you get to the end game today and you know, I'll use my our renewable energy goal as an example. We set Our renewable energy goal back in 2016 to be sourcing, 100% renewable for our operations, original goals for 2050 and when we said that it was kind of like, I don't know how we're gonna get there right? Yeah, I mean I wasn't involved in that specific goal back then, but then in 2021 we looked at it and we said, you know what, we can get there by 2035 again, not exactly sure how everywhere, but we can accelerate. So I accelerated it 15 years by the end of last year. We said, you know, we can get there in the US by 2025 we actually announced just about a month ago that we completed our sourcing and are now meeting that goal. We have all of our projects sourced to be in it. So, so here it is. You know, we sent out of course an announcement internally and, and one of the employees responded and coming in and they said you skipped a generation, you know, and when you think about it that way, you're like, wow, we really did. But so I think it's really about setting those goals, making the steps every day to see how you can get there and a lot of times you can get there faster than you anticipated. So if you set a long distance goal and then you check up on it, you'll realize, hey, 15 years, they just disappeared off exactly. I want to ask about the stuff you need to make electric vehicles, metals, minerals, I mean, some of you have probably heard about the rare minerals that are needed to, to make an E. V. Um how are you ensuring that this doesn't wind up with a new version of the fossil fuel climate challenge with these rare minerals? I love your description of stuff, there is a lot of stuff that we have to do to put in there. But um, you know, it, we've, we've got um supply agreements in place to meet our um our plan of having a million units of E. V. Capacity in the U. S and china by 2025. So we've already got those agreements in place, you know, and I think it's important as well look at the supply, um again, working with our suppliers, but really ensuring that we're looking at it from a sustainability standpoint and so a lot of work to, to localize that, get the supply chain closer to us, particularly in north America. Um, you know, and making sure that as we work with those suppliers that they have sustainability goals as well in in making sure that we look at it and, and then even things like circularity, you know, there's a lot of focus on the batteries and then what we do it in the life to reuse those materials. We've got partnerships with with companies, you know, service solutions is one where we're working with them to take the materials then out of used batteries and put them back into the process, both from a manufacturing standpoint and, and then the life, right. So these are really precious batteries and be very careful how you use and reuse them exactly. Um, we're talking backstage about how, um, You came to engineering, um, and you're also passionate about um, bringing more engineers into GM can you talk about what that what that's been like? Yeah, sure. So, so as I shared, I've been with General Motors almost 29 years, 27 of those were in product development. So I'm an electrical engineer by degree and uh, You know, coming into this space was a little bit unusual. Um, you know, I didn't grow up in the environmental side of the business, but it's really proven to be a great advantage to have that background um, of the company and really understand what it takes to make those changes and what we need to do from our biggest part of our footprint is the customer usage of our vehicles, our scope three category 11. And so it's about 84% of our total footprint. So if you think about how we get to carbon neutral it is by changing over our portfolio and my role previous to this, I was leading our global energy strategy team and really managing g H G from a regulatory and compliance standpoint and worked with my predecessor on setting those goals, you know, and as engineers as I shared, we're trained to solve problems and climate change is a gigantic problem, exactly that we need to do. And so it's really been great to to have the opportunity to work with our, our leaders across the company, you know, purchasing and supply chain and you know, I run into now suppliers that I worked with in my previous roles and talking to them about their sustainability journeys. And, you know, to be able to do that with a sense of understanding of what it takes and how early we need to get those things into the design phase, you know, material selection from an engineer. Um, thinking about not just, you know, how the product performs when it's in use, but now how it performs at the end of life. And what happens to it, you know, is it designed for not just for assembly or force service design for recycling bility. And so all of those conversations, you know, really need to take place across the company and driving it into the overall culture. Yeah, I mean, you told me that you got the call for this job, you came from this, this related background, but it almost sounded like like batman, what was that? Like you got the call? And you ask yourself um, yeah, so we have time for, I think one final word on this, what was that like to to get the call and then to ask yourself, am I the right person for this? Yeah. I mean, I think it's um maybe two fold. Right? I mean we talk a lot about you mentioned the ei as well, you know, I think women traditionally, you know, we talk a lot about how we tend to be second guessed ourselves. We talk about the impostor syndrome. You know, Am I really ready? Am I really the most qualified for that role? Um You know, there's statistics that say if there's a um job qualification out there that a woman will look at it and say, you know, like I meet nine out of 10, I'm not going to apply. You know, and men maybe traditionally would say I got to I'm good, you know? Um so, you know, I certainly went through that and I went through the, you know, do I have the knowledge and environmental and and all of those things. But it really um I I took it as an honor that I was selected and that they thought I could do it and it's really been a great opportunity and advantage to again, to work across the company on the great goals that we've set, right. And then before, you know it, you cut 15 years of your timeline. Um we actually do have time for one final question. I mean, what would you say about the critical leadership criteria about this transition? So the leaders in this room, what what can other leaders navigating this transformation take away from from your playbook? Yeah, I would say one of the things that I I talked about setting ambitious goals and and making sure that you know, you put something out there and before you know what you're gonna accomplish more than you thought you could, one of the big focus areas that we have is really about making sure that this is an equitable transition. You know, these types of transformations, particularly as an industry have in the past had a tendency of leaving communities behind. And so at Gm we've really put a strong focus on equitable climate action and kind of really focused on four key pillars. It's about the future of work. In fact on stage yesterday we talked about, you know, the transformation of the industry and we really we are focused on bringing our workforce along with us and I mean the knowledge and expertise that that we have in the company isn't something you create overnight. We've been around for well over 100 years. And so that's something that's important to its infrastructure action. Um making sure that charging stations are available for communities across the board um products e. V. Access. One of the things we're really proud of is having affordable TVs. So products across every price point and segment, you know that um everyone can live in this future world. And then we also started a climate equity fund to really work with community organizations that grassroots, that are making a difference for this transition. So I would say for us it's important. It's not just about what you do, but it's how you do it and making sure that it's done in an equitable and inclusive way is important. Thank you so much. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks thanks for having me.