Tanah Sullivan – GC Powerlist
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Green Southeast Asia 2023

Information technology

Tanah Sullivan

Group head, sustainability | GoTo Group

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Green Southeast Asia 2023

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Tanah Sullivan

Group head, sustainability | GoTo Group

Can you talk about you or your company’s efforts relating to renewability, sustainability or other environmentally- friendly activities? 

As Indonesia’s largest digital ecosystem, GoTo’s services are used by millions of stakeholders every day. Our efforts to generate meaningful, credible value for all of our stakeholders is what drives the operational transitions we are making as a company and what led us to our Three Zeros by 2030 commitments: Zero Emissions, Zero Waste and Zero Barriers. These are more than commitments – they ensure we are approaching and planning for the ESG issues most relevant to our company, and prioritising ESG risks the same way we would financial risks. The Three Zeros serve as a northstar to ensure we are decarbonising our operations and that of our broader ecosystem, building a truly circular platform, and investing in the growth of our employees and partners to achieve full inclusion. We are already making good progress – for example, by shifting the vehicles in Gojek’s ecosystem to EVs, replacing packaging with sustainable and recycled alternatives, and building new services and products to better serve the financial well-being of our driver-partners, among many others. Transparency and accountability are also incredibly important, as we want to be clear about our progress and how we plan to achieve and make progress against our goals. This is why we have committed to publish an ESG report annually for GoTo Group, and disclose the relevant and credible metrics, in line with and assured by international standards. Going one step further, we have recently published roadmaps for each of our Three Zeros, highlighting the key levers and targets we have set for ourselves annually, and to update stakeholders in real-time on the progress we are making. 

Why are sustainability officers well-placed to drive change in the business world? 

Sustainability officers play an increasingly important role facilitating the transition of companies toward more sustainable (and credible) practices and ensuring the generation of meaningful value for all stakeholders, which includes shareholders and the government. As investors and regulators become increasingly stringent on ESG performance, the role of sustainability officers will only continue to grow in importance and complexity. At GoTo, our sustainability team is a centralised function working across the group to drive awareness and oversee the implementation of our Three Zeros, in the context of each business line or corporate function. Our sustainability team works closely with our finance function to also ensure all our sustainability efforts are in line with and supporting our financial performance and goals. We are already seeing stronger linkages between sustainability and financial performance, and how progress in one area can lead to improved metrics, efficiency and cost benefits in the other. The high level of understanding of company priorities and objectives, as well as ability to articulate global and industry trends as it relates to ESG and what it means for each business unit, has been fundamental in the effectiveness of our sustainability team. That said, we must remember that sustainability officers cannot do this alone. To achieve long-term change, sustainability has to be a company-wide effort driven by every business unit across the company. This is why it is crucial for the sustainability agenda to be championed by leaders at the top – clear direction from company leadership ensures that sustainability is truly integrated in every aspect of a company for the long-term, irrespective of who is at the helm. 

It can be difficult to truly measure a company’s track record and accomplishments in terms of their environmentally friendly behaviour. What do you think has, until now, been mostly missed when discussing how green a company is? 

The stringency required to ensure a company is truly integrating sustainability into the way they operate goes beyond just making a set of commitments. A lot of companies will say the standards and guidelines to measuring progress are incredibly difficult and complex – this is true and for accounting standards, it took decades for them to be as universally accepted and used as they are today – but it should not deflect from the real issue, which is how serious companies are behind the commitments they’ve made. One clear way is where and how a company is allocating resources – human or financial – towards making truly meaningful operational shifts and transitions towards the sustainability commitments they have made and those needed to credibly respond to the environmental, social or economic challenges across their value chain. Another challenge for us is that the technology industry is a relatively new one. This means the integration of ESG best practice is also largely still in its early stages, with little precedent from even global players in more advanced markets. For our home market of Indonesia, this becomes additionally challenging when considering the economic growth priorities, we also must balance, for ourselves, our driver-partners and merchants. Given that we are one of the first tech companies in the region to embark on this journey, our focus continues to be equally on raising awareness of the challenges we are addressing, as well as the insights and learnings we are making along the way. We see this as a pre-competitive space, and one we require industry-wide and cross-industry collaboration on. This is in parallel with and in support of our continued efforts in ensuring we are systematic and strategic about integrating sustainability efforts into everything we do. Stakeholders can see this demonstrated in how we operate as a company, the products and services we offer on our platform, and how we are using data and technology to accelerate and expand the scale and impact of our efforts. 

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