Sue Garrard

Why organisations work with Sue Garrard

• She has operated inside one of the most scrutinised corporate sustainability programmes in the world – accountable for 72 time-bound targets, managing teams across 180 markets, and delivering the commercial result: Unilever’s sustainable living brands growing 67% faster than the rest of the portfolio.
• She was part of the four-person leadership team that handled Kraft Heinz’s hostile takeover approach – giving her first-hand experience of the moment ESG strategy is tested by investor pressure in real time.
• She brings a specific, transferable argument: that sustainability is not a constraint on commercial performance but, if properly embedded, a measurable driver of brand growth. She has the data to demonstrate it.
• Her advisory work spans financial services (Lloyds Bank, NatWest), consumer goods (Mars, Danone, Heineken), and retail (Primark, O2) – sectors with structurally different ESG pressures – which means she can hold a credible board conversation across industries, not just in one.
• As Chair of Trustees at Blueprint for Better Business and a Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, she is positioned at the intersection of corporate practice and governance – not a pure consultant, not a pure academic.

Biography highlights

• Former Executive Vice President, Sustainable Business and Communications, Unilever (2014–2018) – accountable for the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan across 180 markets
• Founder, Sue Garrard Consulting (2019–present); advisory clients include Mars, ABF/Primark, Lloyds Bank, NatWest Banking Group, Danone, Heineken, Natura, O2, the RHS, and the BBC
• Chair of Trustees, Blueprint for Better Business (founder trustee)
• Fellow, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL); tutors on senior executive education programmes
• Visiting Fellow, Cranfield School of Management; Fellow of the RSA
• Ranked 13th in Forbes’ Top 100 Women Sustainability Influencers Worldwide (November 2020)
• Board member, Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit
• Former Director General, Customer Strategy and Communications, UK Department for Work and Pensions

Biography

At Unilever, Sue Garrard held responsibility for the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan – 72 quantified, time-bound targets, teams across 180 markets, and a direct mandate to make sustainability a driver of brand performance. By the time she left in 2018, Unilever’s sustainable living brands were growing 67% faster than the rest of the portfolio and representing 70% of company growth. That is not a communications outcome; it is a commercial one, and it was achieved by connecting ESG commitments to operational accountability across the business.

She was also part of the four-person team, led by the CEO, that managed the rebuttal of Kraft Heinz’s hostile takeover bid. That experience – sustainability strategy meeting acute investor pressure – gives her a board-level fluency that most advisers in this space do not have. She understands what it looks like when a company’s long-term purpose is tested by short-term market logic.

Since founding Sue Garrard Consulting in 2019, she has advised boards and executive teams at Mars, Danone, Lloyds Bank, NatWest, ABF/Primark, Heineken, O2, and others across consumer goods, financial services, and retail. Both Primark and the Royal Horticultural Society launched public sustainability strategies in 2021 built on her work. She tutors on CISL’s senior executive education programmes at Cambridge, and serves as Chair of Trustees at Blueprint for Better Business.

Forbes placed her 13th in its global ranking of the top 100 women sustainability influencers in 2020. Her public argument, consistently made across interviews and platforms, is direct: sustainability is not a moral addition to business strategy – it is business strategy, and the organisations that treat it otherwise are building structural risk into their commercial model.

Key speaking topics

• Corporate sustainability strategy and commercial integration
• ESG governance and board accountability
• Sustainable brand growth and marketing
• Stakeholder and investor scrutiny
• Net zero strategy and organisational transition
• Purpose-led business leadership
• Public–private sector leadership

Ideal for

• Boards and C-suite executives navigating ESG accountability and investor pressure
• Chief Sustainability Officers and sustainability leadership teams building or overhauling strategy
• Brand and marketing leadership teams connecting sustainability to growth
• Organisations in financial services, consumer goods, or retail at a strategic inflection point on sustainability

Audience outcomes

• A clearer framework for connecting sustainability targets to commercial performance metrics, not just reporting obligations
• Practical understanding of what large-scale ESG integration looks like operationally – including where it fails and why
• A more credible way to articulate the business case for sustainability to boards, investors, and senior leadership teams
• Insight into how to navigate investor and stakeholder scrutiny when sustainability commitments are challenged
• Perspective on the governance structures that sustain long-term sustainability commitment through leadership and market cycles