Season 5 Intro - A New Co-Host!?

[00:00:10] Dominique: Welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:12] Christy: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people sharing sustainability success stories.

[00:00:16] Dominique: This podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas. I'm Dominique.

[00:00:21] Christy: And I'm Christy.

[00:00:22] Dominique: Today we're hearing a new voice, Christy Cook. If you're listening right now and missing the wonderful voice of Adam Morris, do not worry. You can still catch up with Adam and follow his podcast, People Helping People. It's found on all listening platforms. Now Christy, who's here with me, has been a past guest before. She's a sustainability consultant and entrepreneur like myself. She's over 20 years of experience in corporate sustainability, ESG, and customer success for both large corporations and startups.

She is helping some of the world's largest players take action. So, from the United Nations Environment Program to Sodexo and Walmart. Christy has been a mentor to me for a few years? 

[00:01:01] Christy: Feels like a decade. No, it's been a couple of years. Yeah. 

[00:01:07] Dominique: Well, I've been talking to her off the microphone for so long. She's been such a big part of my personal growth journey. She's a key person that I turn to when I have questions or want advice or want a sounding board that I can trust, and I am so excited that she's joining me in this project.

[00:01:22] Christy: Oh, well thank you. And you do the same for me, by the way. But I'm really excited to be joining the podcast as well as a co-host because I've been a fan of the show. I thought like I was gonna plateau at being a guest, but now we've raised the bar. I get to be a part of the storytelling that inspires people.

That really is a gift. So thank you for that. I'm excited about that. And I get to tell people about you. So you told people a little bit about me, but now I get to return that favor and talk about you from my perspective.

So the first thing that I ever learned about Dominique, and I did not know her, was I saw on LinkedIn that she won this President's Prize award, and that award is what allowed her the opportunity to fund her business, Green Scope Consulting. And I have always admired people who were, I think people are super brave that start their own company and they're an entrepreneur. And the fact of this person receive this award from Ohio State University to start their business coming out of school is amazing. And it's something that I felt like I could not do. And so she's been an inspiration in that way. So that's how I first learned about Dominique. And the work that she does through Green Scope is working with government and enterprise clients that allow her to really reach in this community in a lot of different ways through schools, also local businesses and restaurants. And she helps these organizations with data measurement and develop programs.

What you might not know is that Dominique is an engineer. And I have learned what this means. I thought I was process oriented. Dominique is an engineer. She is process oriented and I've loved that. But I think that's interesting because it's just an interesting approach to sustainability in many ways, and others have done it.

But I like to see how you bring those skills to really create, again, these programs that are replicable. Because if you cannot replicate something, it's not scalable. You can't continue it, it cannot make a strong impact. So that's what I think you do well and you bring to the Columbus community and beyond and the work that you do.

[00:03:33] Dominique: I appreciate you saying that. And yeah, I think that's kind of my climate action in a nutshell, honestly, is that I want to be able to find creative ways to take the initiatives, the limited funding, the hard work, and help it to go a little bit further. And if what I can offer is building processes so that that is maintained, that's kind of what I have been doing. So thanks Christy, for saying all that. 

[00:03:55] Christy: You're welcome. 

[00:03:55] Dominique: Christy and I have definitely bonded over a shared interest in the work that we do, but I really also love that we bring a difference of experience. Your corporate point of view, your background from like ESG to all these other programs you've been involved with.

I'm just so excited to watch your lens be different from mine and to hear what questions you ask and just to learn alongside you. So I'm really excited. And today we're kicking off season five of the podcast. That's five seasons. That's crazy.

First of all, I'm just proud to be at this milestone and we are celebrating the fact that we officially have crossed our 100th episode.

So thank you listeners for joining us for every new episode, and they will continue to come out every Tuesday.

[00:04:33] Christy: We'll be continuing our classic Green Champion style where you get two episodes with each guest. First, you get to hear about their background and their personal story, and we usually find out something that's funny or heartwarming or really that helped bring sustainability center stage for them in their career.

[00:04:50] Dominique: And as always, our second episode's gonna be a chance to hear their champion story. So each guest truly has done something awesome. They wouldn't be chatting with us if they haven't. And this usually focuses on a certain project, initiative or an area of focus that we can learn from. And I wanted to also ask you, Christy, you're new to some of our listeners, we've heard about your professional background, but what do you want listeners to know about you?

Yeah, I think the thing that I want people to know is that, I'm just curious. I want to hear about other people's lived experiences, why that mattered, and how that could also matter to someone else, like our listeners. Yeah. And I'm really excited having you here with me. I think we're gonna get into more deep dive style conversations this year. We're gonna meet some of your friends, which also is exciting. We're gonna also bridge some new topics we have yet to cross. So from sports to the people behind our food system. Christy, for you, was there a particular light bulb moment that brought you into this space?

[00:05:46] Christy: Yeah, I think that's an interesting question because when I started in this space, there really wasn't sustainability jobs, if you will. It wasn't necessarily a profession in the way that it is now. And because of that, I didn't know it could be a job. And so I think the thing that I continue to go back to is my time at Emory University where we were really doing an analysis on campus of how do we get more local and sustainable food into that dining program, and what are those experiences the students can have about their local community. Because some of the students at Emory were local to the Atlanta area, some are not, a lot of international students. How can you bring those experiences for such a diverse group of people and also have that amazing sense of place on campus through food?

And so, I just think that, that fun because that's what, that's fun to me. Always a nod to Emory University and the folks that gave me a chance and let me think about things differently and learn from them. It was a great, it was a great place to learn.

[00:06:52] Dominique: They probably were just glad to have you. They were like, wow, thank you for helping us, and didn't realize how much they were changing the trajectory. 

[00:06:58] Christy: Maybe so. I hope so. I love it 'cause it definitely played a part in my life. But what is your light bulb moment? Did you have a light bulb moment? 

I dunno if I had like one light bulb moment, but I definitely always kind of like find a way to look back at key mentors in my life that set an example for me. I think I needed people to help me see that my impact was a real thing, that I could do things that had an impact. And there was a few mentors here and there that either showed me by example of how little things and what looked like little activities could have an exponential influence. Or people who had the chance to hear me out and responded to my ideas with optimism and excitement and helped me realize that that was something that worth pursuing. And I think for me though, it always kind of goes back to like my 'why' is my family. And the fact that a lot of my relatives continue to be from an islandI'm very mindful of the privilege that I have living where I live, And it feels like a duty to me Yeah. I think that those lived experiences through seeing the world through other people's eyes, whether it is your family or traveling and having these different experiences, but the ability to imagine a world or walk in someone else's shoes to have a different experience, I think is really important.

And I think if we all had that and practice that more that, that would be an important act that every human could do. And I think that that would make positive change in itself.

[00:08:27] Dominique: Yeah, and I think that honestly probably is a deep connection too, because I think what I hope the podcast does is we're able to potentially build a connection from listeners to our guests. And you never know whose story's gonna connect with who. But that reminded me, we had a guest in this past season that meant a lot to me, Nicholas Fox from the Bahamas.

I loved chatting with Nicholas and he knows that because I felt like I was finally getting to tell stories about the thing that was like the origin of my passion. It's been really cool to do that for this podcast. Before we wrap up here, Christy, I think we should maybe both share what kind of fun things we're doing this year.

And yeah, I'll let you go first. What are you looking forward to in terms of just having some fun this year?

[00:09:07] Christy: You know, I think I'm gonna say one thing and what I mean by that is both of these things are fun, but like I really wanted to make sure that I was doing something creative this year. And creative in a way, not just building different sustainability programs. I love that. That is fun. That has also worked, which is a fantastic place to be, but I wanted to have more creativity. So that is part of the podcast and why I'm happy to be doing that this year. But I think that what I'm looking forward to, to me it's all about friends, family, connections and nature.

And there's a lot of that planned this year and I'm really excited about it. So that's fun and I'm looking forward to that.

[00:09:42] Dominique: I love that. 

[00:09:43] Christy: What about you?

[00:09:44] Dominique: So I have a nephew and a niece, both two under two.

[00:09:48] Christy: A new nephew, right?

[00:09:49] Dominique: New niece. Old nephew only. Oh, I think he might be two in this airs, not not be two. 

[00:09:58] Christy: Very old too.

[00:09:59] Dominique: Yeah. But I am like very obsessed with being their aunt. I'm excited to continue to just watch them grow and just have some like nice family time. And honestly, I think they just help me to like, so aggressively unplug and remember what's fun

[00:10:15] Christy: And as someone that doesn't have my own children, but has lots of nieces and nephews, I think seeing the world through their eyes is a fresh and different perspective. In some cases they're experiencing things for the very first time that we take for granted.

[00:10:27] Dominique: Yeah. Well This was awesome. I'm excited for this season. And thank you listeners for being with us and we're excited to share what we have coming for you.

Next week, we're gonna kick things off with our very first guest of the season. Each guest will bring a different perspective to sustainability, and we're here to highlight the people doing the work and to remind you that climate action takes many forms.

[00:10:47] Christy: You can find all of our episodes and support the show at thegreenchampions.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please follow, subscribe, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Stay connected with us on LinkedIn and Instagram @greenchampionspod. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll be back next time with another sustainability success story.