Which of your company’s sustainability initiatives/achievements are you most proud of?

From early on, I’ve been involved in our sustainability practices within our agricultural supply chain, and I’m most proud of the impact that we are having in that area. I’ve had the opportunity to meet many of the growers personally and work with them firsthand, and that has been a tremendous opportunity and experience. We started our partnerships over a decade ago, and we started small. But over time, we’ve been able to implement sustainable practices, as well as a robust data management system, and have created several positive changes. We’ve also built a sustainability incentive program where we reward our growers for implementing sustainable practices. Ten years ago we may not have thought this all could be possible, and I’m proud of where we are today, but even more excited about the impact we can have in the future.

What is your favorite part about being in BIER?

We have worked together for so long and we all are similarly situated in our focuses, challenges, goals, and our desire to do better, which unites us and helps us be stronger as a group through BIER. In many other areas of the business, we compete with each other, but in sustainability we can be stronger when we work together. We can pull our resources, expertise, and critical thinking together and have a more valuable impact on our communities and environment.

How has being in BIER shaped your sustainability strategy/enriched your sustainability strategy?

BIER has enriched our sustainability strategy through best practices, information sharing, and research to help us, as practitioners, stay ahead of the curve, see what the trends are, where we need to focus our energy, and how we can drive change to meet our goals.

What area(s) of BIER’s work and the Water Working Group initiatives are you most interested in? Why?

Many of the papers and research documents have been helpful. Having strong expertise and coming together as a collaborative group is tremendous because we can have a stronger voice. Moving forward, I look forward to working as an industry to address climate-related risk. We are just starting to map out our plans, and working together will be beneficial for all of us.

What’s one cool thing people might not know about you or your company?

Personally–that I got my start as a criminal defense lawyer. Prior to working in the global beer industry, I was a criminal defense attorney. It’s not the typical path that people take to get into sustainability, but there is no one way to sustainability as a career. If you care about social justice and resilient communities, it certainly translates to the sustainability world. The sustainability perspective just focuses on different questions: How do you help the barley growers? How do you ensure responsible consumption of your product? How do you reduce impacts on local communities? I think there is a lot in common between the two areas, in terms of helping society and working toward a better world.

What I admire about Molson Coors is we weren’t afraid to take risks and challenge ourselves. When we set our 2025 sustainability goals, we didn’t have all of the answers, but we knew we wanted to be a leader in this space and challenge ourselves to “Raise the Bar on Beer.” Now that we have built our strategy and created a path forward, I am grateful that we were confident enough in ourselves to set lofty goals and know that the solutions and answers would evolve. As everyone knows, doing what’s right is never easy. It’s important to dream big and visualize where you want to be. That’s certainly true for us at Molson Coors.