Impact Interview: Aman Singh

Name: Aman Singh

Role/Function: Director, Global Sustainability Communications, Kenvue

What are you working on these days?

I lead global communications for Kenvue on our sustainability and social impact efforts. That means working cross-functionally on a) helping our teams, our customers and our consumers connect the dots between a changing climate and health, b) exploring how we can flex our muscles to better support people’s health as a consumer health company and c) working cross-functionally on how our work across social and environmental issues can help deliver value for our teams, our customers and our consumers. That takes me into all sorts of alleyways: from storytelling and stakeholder engagement to packaging lessons, consumer insights, events, employee activations and more.

In this era of sharper priorities, impact looks different from project to project – and sometimes can mean protecting the work, not just promoting it. For me, every dot I can help connect for people between climate and health, climate and economics, climate and supply chains, climate and migration, climate and mental well-being, heck, climate and our children, is an opportunity for exponential impact.

How did you break into the impact space? What career advice would you give to professionals who are just starting out or looking to transition?

I jumped into sustainability via journalism and then publishing – hence the storytelling bend! And the deeper I got, the more interested I became. I started out in the agency world and learned from many of the best in the sector and then moved in-house to Walmart and now Kenvue.

My advice is pretty straightforward: first be the best you can be at your core skill – whether that’s accounting, project management, communications or engineering. Build your experience in your function, learn the corporate and/or nonprofit sector and their nuances and then work to add sustainability or impact to your portfolio.

The second thing I would highly recommend is flexibility. Be open to lateral transitions, have clarity of purpose and stay curious. Learn, read a lot, attend webinars and widen your scope so you are starting to connect the strands between nature, climate, energy, poverty, human rights, supply chain, economics, the energy market, plastic, waste, water and so much more.

PS: For anyone unsure on what within the broad world of impact makes you most fulfilled, I would recommend joining an agency – with the diversity of work, clients and sectors, agencies are ideal places to test your skills and identify what you love doing vs. what you may not find as fulfilling.

Working in impact is often about driving change. What is the skill or trait that has been most important for your work as a change agent? How did you learn or hone it?

I would say the most important skill for me has been the art of connecting, as Susan McPherson puts it. Making friends, the coffees, the lunches, the “how can I help” approach, framing this work with context, inviting people to be curious with you, and showing them how pursuing a more sustainable world can be powerful for their own goals and objectives too.

At the end of the day, we are truly in this together.

How has the way you think about communicating sustainability changed over the course of your career? What do you think it takes to get it right?

We’re gone through several phases of this and despite all the progress of the last 25ish years, we are in a place where the challenges feel ever more insurmountable and yet, ironically, ever closer to our doorsteps. Despite the terminology entanglements and the constant distractions of what’s idealistic or morally right vs. financially savvy, I think we need to face the fact that the climate is changing, the energy system is evolving and people’s lifestyles are getting affected in real ways. Everywhere. Today.

So, for those in communications, I would say we need to be clearheaded with our outcomes, intentionally disciplined with our messaging and return to a place of inherent trust. We also need to be deeply self-critical of anything we put out there that does not address a factual need, challenge or opportunity. For example, it’s always good news when we can get rid of virgin plastic in a packaged good or switch from fossil fuel-derived energy for a plant to a renewable source. But to make it make sense for everyone else, we need to make sure we are helping people understand that recyclable packaging will only be recycled IF they dispose of it the right way and that now that the friction is gone for them – all they need to do is toss it in the recycling bin! Same for energy: more renewable sources mean cleaner air and water over time for neighborhoods – communities need to see that, understand that and trust it.

What's a communication moment from your work that you're particularly proud of? Why do you think it landed?

One of my proudest moments was helping design and lead Walmart’s annual Sustainability Milestone meetings. It was one of those exercises that truly offered an opportunity to make sustainability practical for a non-technical audience – how do we capture hearts and minds?! For context, these meetings are a unique annual moment for Walmart where its sustainability teams come together with cross-functional leaders, employees and its suppliers on discussions around core priorities. The catch that year: we hadn’t hosted one in a couple of years due to the pandemic and needed to balance multiple factors: the right mix of people in the room, a balanced agenda given we’d be engaging such a wide mix of audiences, striking the right tone given what the world collectively had just been through and aiming for content that delivered part-inspiration and part-let’s -get-to-work vibes!

The day delivered, with multiple components, including a conference type agenda for suppliers, leaders and employees; an expo of sustainability-led initiatives and products for employees to see how sustainability shows up in the real world/on the shelf; and Chatham House listening sessions with our nonprofit partners on key topics such as plastic, waste, nature, regenerative agriculture, etc.

Bottom line: we prioritized audiences, we programmed the sessions with specific outcomes in mind, and we doubled down on making the content as consumable and practical as possible – helping extend the conversation for many more people and showcasing not just the why but also the how.

Confirmed with anecdotal and qualified feedback of course!

Who in the impact space do you think is communicating their work really well right now? What are they doing differently?

I have a lot of appreciation for the steady drumbeat Amazon and Google are maintaining matching their investments across impact/sustainability with targeted communications that are clearly targeted for specific audiences. Google does well by leading with the data and the expected impact while Amazon is doing a good job of translating their work into “why should I care” framing, which is so so critical to rebuild the trust institutions overall have lost in recent years with the average consumer.