"Many people are knowledgeable, but you also have the ability to make others listen, engage and act. "
Maria Wilhelmsson, CEO VoxImpact
Caroline Rennie works with executives and executive teams globally to deliver sustained alignment and heightened effectiveness in the environmental and sustainability domain. She has been key to securing commitment to sustainability strategies in companies, and in multi-stakeholder engagement processes with companies, NGOs and government. She has served as coach, advisor and strategist to senior teams in multinational corporations, NGOs and government in her roles as Director Environmental Affairs, Director Communications, and Political Advisor.
Caroline is Managing Partner of ren-new llc, a company that works with people in organisations to make sustainability profitable. This involves strategy work with leadership teams; tactical implementation with environment responsibles, and change management with the organisation at large. She works with groups and individuals throughout the organisation to bring about changes in behaviours that accelerate effectiveness and impact. As experiential learning dramatically improves retention and the likelihood of behaviours being practiced, she focusses on designing trainings, workshops and events in which teams prove to themselves that they can work together highly efficiently and effectively. She brings her knowledge and understanding of group dynamics, organisational processes, business skills, communications and stakeholder engagement to ensuring that the behaviours are transferred to the working environment.
Background
Caroline worked at the Director level for ten years at Tetra Pak in various global roles (Environment, Communications, Marketing, Customer Satisfaction). She was instrumental in ensuring that environment was understood as a strategic driver, incorporated into the KPIs, and embedded in ways of working. Prior to Tetra Pak she had developed the Environmental Affairs function as a Director for Continental Can. She was responsible for overseeing negotiations of the regulations of the recycling law AB2020 in the State of California, and has worked for small plastics recyclers, the City of Philadelphia, and NGOs such as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the Inter-Governmental Committee on Migration, and Youth for Understanding. She is a fellow of LEAD (Leadership for Sustainability and Development; an expert advisor to the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN); a fellow of the Tallberg Forum's Pathfinders Programme (Tallberg Forum); and has served as Chair of Petcore, the European PET recycling association and as Board Member of the US National Recycling Coalition and the California Resource Recovery Forum.
She is a dual-national with British and Swiss passports, and speaks English, French, and Italian fluently, and German and Spanish conversationally. She has a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania; degrees in Economics and Anthropology from Beloit College Wisconsin, and is currently writing her thesis for a Masters in Adult Learning and Global Change for the University of Linkoping, Sweden.
Methodology
Caroline works with principles of action research and "system in the room" to ensure that those who are part of the change, are represented in designing the change. Groups learn to reflect not only on what they are doing, but also on how they are doing it, with a view to consistently improving their performance. She also draws on techniques from applied improvisation and innovation prototyping processes to enable learnings to happen surprisingly (for the participant) and thus land more profoundly. She draws form the evolving understanding of neurological science and behavioural science to amplify motivation, creativity and purpose, and thus to increase influence. The intention is always that the learnings are not one-off experiences, but lived as if at work, and thus usable immediately in the workplace. This is reinforced by having the team develop and reflect on the learning together, and establish commitments to each other thereby building a culture of accountability.
Audience
Caroline has worked with CEOs and executive teams of multinational companies, as well as business students and mid-level managers.
Clients
Alstom, Business School Lausanne, Coca-Cola, Ghana Coastal Resources Center, IMD, IPDP, London Remade Solutions, Norconsult, Sidel, Springboard, StewardEdge, Stewardship Ontario, Tetra Pak, Tias-Nimbas, Unilever, WWF...