Two Steps Forward — Sustainability Meets Business Reality

Joel and Soli dig into the new State of the Sustainability Profession report, which reveals a field under pressure — shrinking CEO engagement, shifting reporting lines, and budgets in flux. Then, author and activist Katharine Wilkinson joins to discuss her new book Climate Wayfinding, and why the inner work of grief, community, and reimagination may be exactly what sustainability professionals need right now.

The word "resilience" is everywhere right now. Which probably means it's already in trouble.
In our latest Two Steps Forward episode, Soli and Joel and pulled on this thread — and found something worth sharing: resilience isn't a rebrand for sustainability. It's what sustainability always was, just dressed in language that the C-suite might finally recognize.

We spoke with Linda Freiner, Group Chief Sustainability Officer at Zurich Insurance Group, on the role of insurance in a world of increasing risk. What became clear is that insurance isn’t peripheral to sustainability. It is, in many ways, the operating system beneath it.
Insurance, after all, is about pricing the future. And right now, the future is anything but predictable.
Freiner frames insurance not as a brake on risk-taking, but as an enabler. Without it, businesses don’t launch, infrastructure doesn’t get built, and innovation doesn’t scale. Insurance is the social safety net that allows the economy to function — and, increasingly, to transform.
But here’s the catch: The model is under strain.

What does it take to start a career in sustainability today — when the field is more established, but the expectations are higher than ever? In this episode, we speak with three early-career professionals about breaking in, building influence and navigating the realities of corporate sustainability. It’s a candid, hopeful and occasionally sobering conversation about what’s changed, what hasn’t and what sustainability elders can do to support — and learn from — the next generation.

Recorded live at the GreenBiz 26 conference in February, this episode of Two Steps Forward features Dylan Siegler, head of sustainability at Universal Music Group. Siegler discusses how the music industry’s greatest sustainability impact may come not from reducing emissions, but from influencing billions of fans through culture and storytelling. The conversation explores sustainable merch, artist advocacy, fandom as a force for behavior change, and the growing importance of “handprint” impact alongside traditional corporate footprint metrics.