Spotlight Series: Sarah Severn
Meet Sarah Severn: Turning Climate Ambition into Action
For more than three decades, Sarah has worked at the intersection of business, sustainability, and public policy. Throughout that time, she’s been thinking about how we can help companies move from reacting to environmental challenges to becoming part of the solution.
It's a question that has shaped her career, from helping build Nike's sustainability program in its early days to advancing climate policy and stakeholder collaboration today.
“Defending the indefensible doesn’t benefit anyone, and it certainly doesn’t lead to progress.”
Finding the Path
The moment that set her on this path came long before sustainability entered the corporate mainstream. While working in London's advertising industry in the late 1980s, she came across a newspaper feature imagining a future where London sat underwater because of climate change. She convinced her agency to conduct a quick study on consumer attitudes toward the environment, which even generated news coverage. Around the same time, environmental leaders Jonathan Porritt and John Elkington were reshaping public conversations about sustainability, and both would later become mentors after she joined Nike.
"I brought my passion for environmental issues with me," she says.
That passion eventually led her from consumer insights into sustainability, where she found a way to combine business strategy with environmental stewardship.
Building Sustainability Before It Was Mainstream
When Nike relocated her from its European headquarters to Oregon in 1995, corporate sustainability was still in its infancy. She joined the company's Environmental Action Team, helping tackle issues ranging from waste and toxic chemicals to energy and water use. Over the next 20+ years, her work evolved alongside the field itself.
During her time there, she partnered with Nike's U.S. Government Affairs Director to launch Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP) through Ceres. The coalition brought together companies to advocate for smart climate and energy policy, recognizing that no single company could solve these challenges alone. Later, she helped launch the Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals initiative, bringing brands, suppliers, and chemical manufacturers together to eliminate harmful chemicals across the global apparel supply chain.
Looking back, she credits much of that progress to collaboration. "We had the opportunity to work with incredible external stakeholders who shaped our thinking and inspired our business units to engage."
Why Future 500
Sarah first met Future 500 in the mid-1990s, when only a handful of organizations were helping companies engage constructively with stakeholders. "What I always appreciated about Future 500 was the ability to have the difficult conversations and encourage progress without judgment."
That philosophy mirrors her own. Throughout her career, she often found herself sitting across the table from some of Nike's strongest critics. Rather than avoiding disagreement, she learned that meaningful progress starts with listening. "Trust building starts with a genuine willingness to listen, followed by actions that deliver real progress."
She's also learned that hoesty matters just as much. "Defending the indefensible doesn't benefit anyone and certainly doesn't lead to progress."
Changing the Conversation Around Climate
After more than two decades at Nike, Sarah shifted her focus from transforming a single company to helping shape the broader systems that support climate action.
Following a move to Washington's San Juan Islands, she became involved with Clean & Prosperous, where she found a natural extension of the work she'd spent years doing inside the private sector. Founded by the late David Giuliani, the organization advances practical, data-driven approaches to decarbonization and economic growth, bringing together leaders from business, government, and communities to explore solutions that are both environmentally and economically sustainable.
One misconception she encounters often is that climate action is simply too expensive. She believes the conversation should also account for the costs of inaction.
"We strive to demonstrate that inaction is more costly," she says. In her view, continued reliance on fossil fuels, with their volatile pricing and geopolitical challenges, is increasingly ill-suited to what Thomas Friedman described as "a hot, flat and crowded world." Rather than viewing the transition solely as an environmental imperative, she sees renewables, electrification, and distributed energy systems as opportunities to build resilience, expand access to affordable energy, and create long-term economic value.
The Next Challenge Isn't Technology. It's Implementation.
For years, climate advocates argued that the technology existed but the political will did not. Today, Sarah sees a different challenge emerging. In places like Washington State, where strong climate policies already exist, the barriers increasingly come during implementation. Wind farms, solar installations, transmission projects, and battery storage facilities often spend years navigating permitting processes while facing understandable concerns from local communities. The reasons vary from place to place, but they point to the same need.
"There is a need for deep levels of stakeholder engagement."
For Sarah, building clean energy infrastructure is not simply an engineering challenge. It is a human one. The projects that succeed are the ones that make space for communities to be heard, address legitimate concerns, and build trust along the way.
Looking Ahead
As environmental, social, and economic pressures continue to intensify, Sarah believes organizations like Future 500 will become even more important.
She hopes the organization continues bringing together groups that would not normally share a table, while helping corporate leaders meet this moment with both urgency and openness.
A Perspective Reconsidered
Early in her career, Sarah believed that if people understood the science, they would naturally act on it. Three decades later, she knows the path is more complicated. Facts alone are rarely enough. Science has become politicized, and empathy for future generations and vulnerable communities can be difficult to sustain.
Rather than diminishing her optimism, that realization has broadened it. Today, she believes progress depends not only on evidence, but on relationships, trust, and finding new ways to bring people together around shared solutions.
