Women in Leadership: Seventh Generation CEO on importance of being 'radically human'

To mark Women's History Month and International Women's Day March 8, we're bringing you a special series of the ESG Insider podcast focused on women in leadership. We'll be speaking to women CEOs and executives from across industries and around the globe.

In our second interview of the series we interview Alison Whritenour, CEO of Seventh Generation, a U.S. producer of eco-friendly cleaning, paper and personal care products.

Alison has been at Seventh Generation for more than a decade and became its CEO in July 2021. She describes her leadership style as "radically human" — meaning she leads with an emphasis on transparency and collaboration, and by leaning into listening to the advice and experience of her team. She also describes her decisions along her career path as based on connecting the things that she personally cares about with her day-to-day work.

"I really believe that leaders are at their best when they can be themselves, and that then really opens up the door for folks around them to feel comfortable and feel like they can approach leaders with questions, challenges, opportunities," she says.

Diversity in leadership has received increasing attention in recent years from stakeholders in the sustainability world. Investors have pushed for diversity on company boards and management teams, and in some parts of the world, that push has extended to laws and regulations. But the number of women in top roles remains low. Recent research from S&P Global found that women represented just 5.4% of CEOs in 2022, slightly up from 5% in 2021. You can read that research here: https://www.spglobal.com/esg/insights/featured/special-editorial/women-ceos-leadership-for-a-diverse-future

We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall (lindsey.hall@spglobal.com) and Esther Whieldon (esther.whieldon@spglobal.com).

Photo source: Seventh Generation

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