Today we introduce Faye Bennett-Hart who alongside founder Shelley Morelli, is a director at Morelli Consulting and specialises in Sustainability Services. Faye’s rich and diverse experience in sustainability has been pivotal in her journey to consultancy and she is now an integral part of the Morelli Consulting team.
Morelli Consulting is a boutique sustainability consultancy delivering practical guidance to organisations to help them navigate the challenges and opportunities to achieve their sustainability goals.
What does your day-to-day at Morelli Consulting look like?
No one day at Morelli Consulting is the same. There’s lots of client calls, working with the team and time spent with my head down, stuck into project work as well. I love getting to understand our clients’ unique needs and exploring how we can add extra value.
I like to delve into where I can help provide more opportunity for developing a client’s sustainability strategy or sustainability reporting. It’s not about just meeting their requirements and ticking boxes; we go beyond that.
I also find great satisfaction in fostering the growth and development of my team by sharing the insights and knowledge I’ve gained over the years. I understand that the team will not only absorb this but also enhance it, going beyond my contributions in the future. The idea of them achieving more than I could alone is a motivating factor in my role, and I take pride in seeing them excel and innovate.
What interested you in joining Morelli Consulting?
When I first met Shelley, founder of Morelli Consulting, I quickly got a real sense of shared values which I felt was important for a Co-Director role.
Shelley and I have quite a lot of shared history, but we didn’t fully realise it at the start. After connecting, I learned that Shelley also used to work for a Big 4 professional services firm. Our common experience of this has helped us with a common foundation for delivering value to our clients, but whilst building our own unique approach. We really like to get stuck in to understanding our clients – the people and the business – so that we deliver impactful results.
What inspired you to get into sustainability consulting?
After completing my first degree in Chemistry, I realised laboratory work wasn’t my calling. However, I still wanted to do something that would be beneficial to the world.
Knowing that I was more of a ‘people’ person led me to my graduate job at Ernst & Young, a professional services firm, where I worked in various teams, including transaction advisory, restructuring and project finance. I then found my home within the energy and environment team, and it all started to click into place. My chemistry background, combined with a new found interest in environmental projects, sparked a deep passion and I realised this was something really interesting and in which I wanted to develop my career.
During the evenings and weekends, I undertook my Masters degree in Environmental Management. At the time of starting my dissertation, I was given an opportunity as a ‘Carbon Coordinator’ working for a global media company, UBM, which was verging on FTSE100 status. This role was at the dawn of understanding carbon footprinting and environmental impact, and not only marked the beginning of my journey in sustainability, but also the beginning of a widespread acceptance of sustainability being at the core of corporate business.
Can you share more about your experience in sustainability?
Over the next eight years at the media company, I truly grew. I became the Global Sustainability Manager and developed a team of sustainability managers across the US, Asia and Europe.
At that time, awareness about the sustainability impact of media, and in particular the events sector, was limited. The cycle of installing and dismantling event construction often led to significant material waste, a fact not widely recognised by customers or attendees. Exploring this issue was interesting and we started to make some quite dramatic changes. Along the way winning awards and setting new standards for sustainable practice.
My ultimate career goal was to go into sustainability consulting, but I wanted to have a broader understanding of different industries first. I saw an opportunity at CDP to help develop the gold standard environmental reporting framework that thousands of organisations from many sectors respond to on an annual basis. As I had been reporting to CDP for the last eight years I thought I had a good understanding and went for the role there.
When I joined, I soon realised my knowledge of CDP had only just touched the surface and that there was so much more to understand. During my time at CDP, I took on several roles, including Associate Director developing the questionnaires and guidance for climate change, water, and forests and aligning with frameworks such as TCFD. I also took on the role of leading the CDP scoring team.
Later, I joined a sustainability technology firm with a growing sustainability consulting arm which I quickly grew, doubling in size within one year of my time there. Here, I expanded my experience, working with major players in retail, construction, the public sector and financial sectors, further enriching my consulting experience.
How do you incorporate sustainability into your personal life?
Ever since my Masters in Environmental Management, I’ve had a strong sense of needing to live my life more sustainably, though it’s not always easy.
Take my son’s preference for plastic over wooden toys; it’s a concern, thinking about their long-term environmental impact. I look at the plastic toys in my home and think “where is that going to end up eventually? Is this going to be around for thousands of years, dumped in a landfill somewhere?’’.
I try to get his toys through re-use and resale marketplaces, which he’s really happy about too, because I end up getting more than if I bought new! We always try to sell the toys after he’s done with them and that helps to balance my feelings, but it’s still challenging.
For travel, we’ve switched to an electric car, so I feel a bit virtuous as I drive down to the office in Chichester. We also try to go on some holidays where we can get there by train, like our recent journey through Germany and Belgium. We really enjoyed being able to admire all the beautiful scenery on our way.
However, the cost and availability of sustainable options can be challenging. I believe it’s about finding the right balance.
The little things do add up and it’s important to understand my footprint on the planet, and to try and leave it in a better state than I found it. I believe my greatest impact can be through my work and driving long term sustainable change in my day to day work with organisations.
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