While working for PwC in Jamaica early in her career, Meagan Breidert focused on international development clients. There, she learned about a Caribbean-wide initiative to make the region’s communities more resilient to climate change — adapting infrastructure and building warning systems to withstand stronger storms and rising sea levels.
Breidert left Jamaica with a new direction: a career in sustainability where she could tackle “big, challenging, complex problems,” she said.
Now senior director of sustainability and impact at Seattle-based Slalom, Breidert works out of the Washington, D.C.-area office for the global business and technology consulting firm. In her role, she leads Slalom’s internal climate programs and shapes how the company engages with community members and supports its employees.
Keep reading to learn more about Breidert’s sustainability journey. Her quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
What’s your biggest concern when it comes to addressing climate change?
I worry that the discussion and the divide are being driven by the language we use. If we speak in plain language, we’ll see we all want the same things. We want clean air, we want clean water, we want our kids to grow up healthy. We don’t want toxins in our backyard. It doesn’t matter where you fall on a political spectrum, we as humans want the same things for our families.
What gives you the most hope for the planet?
I’m going to paraphrase the convener and architect of the Paris Agreement, Christiana Figueres. She says, “I focus on the signals, not the noise,” and I really took that to heart. There’s this incredible economic benefit to supporting climate-positive practices and a more sustainable way of living. Renewable energy is more economical, new jobs are being created with the green economy. Companies are actually saving money, the air is cleaner, quality of life improves. There’s just an abundance of upside, no matter what the motivation is. We’re seeing more and more renewable energy being used, and I think that’s a signal versus the noise.
What is a habit you’ve changed personally because of climate concerns?
My home has solar panels and I can cover my family’s energy load with them. Regardless of my beliefs, economically it’s beneficial and my bills have decreased. My kitchen and home goods are plastic-free to the extent possible, so all glass. And my family’s clothes are sustainable. My son is younger, so he has more churn on clothes — but my clothes are generally natural fibers and secondhand or vintage where possible. And we eat an abundance of beans and tofu.
If you could wave a wand and invent one climate solution, what would it be?
I would love to have ready-made, at-scale solutions for plastic pollution and single-use plastics. At Slalom, we have a plastics commitment on removing problematic and single-use plastics from our operations, especially in our kitchens and break rooms, but for me personally, plastic is a visual, physical problem. People see it on vacation, when they go to the beach, or in daily life, walking down the street. I would love solutions — whether it’s better recycling mechanisms or advances with bacteria, enzymes, fungi, that are able to break down plastics, or plastics made from less harmful components like seaweed or sugarcane — I would love to see those things come to the market tomorrow.
If you could have coffee with any climate leader, past or present, who would you pick?
I would love to have coffee with the chief sustainability officer at Mars, Alastair Child. M&M’s, particularly peanut, are my favorite candy. But I think the interesting intersection is chocolate, coffee and vanilla grow together in tropical locations that are being the most affected by climate change and extreme weather. What is the plan to secure those supply chains and work with local and Indigenous communities on some of the traditional knowledge for growing those? We all need to eat, and the planet is changing, and how our food grows, the price of commodities, the quality of those things are going to change. I would love to have this very deep-dive conversation around how my chocolate is going to continue, and my coffee and vanilla!
How do you approach this work and not get overwhelmed?
I really chip away at problems and usually start on the data side, start with the stakeholders and just chip away. My team is great because we like to celebrate the little things, like, “Hey, that stakeholder answered the phone today, that vendor that we’ve been asking for data got us this information.” Before you know it, you look up and you’re like, “Oh, I just talked to 50% of our supply chain and now they’re providing us data.” Those small pieces add up to a lot. We can’t do it alone. It’s an entire ecosystem issue, so one at a time, chipping away.
What impact do you hope your work has in 20 years?
I don’t want to say working myself out of a job because I need a job, we all need jobs, but I would say I look forward to sustainability no longer having to prove its business case. It’s on the checklist. It’s already in there. Nobody has to say, “We’re making a business decision — oh, did somebody check with the sustainability people?” It should just be, “Here’s a business decision. It’s all in here, it’s all embedded, and there’s no question about the sustainability pieces.” Once that happens, then we’ll start to see some of the real gains.
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