Apr 20, 2021
Danielle Jezienicki is the Director of Sustainability for Grove Collaborative, the leading digital-first brand & ecommerce platform for natural home and personal care products. A certified B Corp, Grove serves hundreds of thousands of households in the U.S. every month. Prior to Danielle’s current role at Grove, Danielle was as the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (WSI) where she supervised ESG reporting and sustainability initiatives for the Company and its West Coast brands including Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pottery Barn Teen, Williams-Sonoma, Rejuvenation and Mark & Graham. Long inspired by the possibilities of sustainability-first consciousness provide, she was an Impact Analyst for four years at Sonen Capital, an investment firm that prioritizes socio-environmental outcomes in conjunction with financial returns. She holds an MBA in Sustainable Management at Presidio Graduate School and BA from Brown University.
Danielle Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:
- Establishing sustainability goals that are both practical yet challenging
- Addressing plastic use and the concept of being plastic neutral at Grove
- Reforestation efforts at Grove
- Advocating for legislation around safety and sustainability in consumer products
- Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders
Danielle's Final Five Question Responses:
What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?
I would say: your next job is not necessarily your dream job. Just find something that you're going to learn or work on that will eventually get you your dream dream job. It's all a stepping stone. Just keep learning; keep growing your experience. It will all be useful down the line. Get to work, roll up your sleeves. We have so much to do.
What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?
The focus on regenerative agriculture; this conversation about biodiversity. The shifting is thinking about sustainability as an add on: we use carbon and then we offset it. But becoming a more circular business, and circularity around sustainability. Understanding that it's all connected. It's all one ecosystem. We need to regenerate the soil and take back the materials. It's this growing consciousness about the role that sustainability plays and how important it is to regenerate, not just sustain.
What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?
I'm currently reading All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. It's really inspiring, and focused on women. I just also read The Overstory, which from a fiction standpoint will give you a good shake and remind you that this is really urgent. We just don't have time to waste.
What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?
One thing I love that we have at Grove, we use Slack and we have a sustainability channel. I love hearing from non-sustainability people about sustainability things, because you end up in your own bubble inevitably. So I love hearing what other people have to say and what other people are hearing. It opens your world as to how it is that you should be engaging with people who aren't knee deep in this stuff day in, day out.
Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work being done at Grove?
For me personally, LinkedIn is a great place. I try to share all of our major announcements. Then we have a sustainability page, sustainability report, plastic report- that's always on the Grove site: grove.co/sustainability or grove.co/beyondplastic. We will give you the latest and most transparent information: our plastic footprint, what percent is reusable. We're really committed to being super transparent about everything that we're doing.