Impact Interview: Lisa Hendrickson

Name: Lisa Hendrickson

Role/Function: Co-Founder, Austin Sustainability Professionals

What are you working on these days?

I’m working on redesigning corporate sustainability as a thesis for pivoting toward sustainability as innovation — business model innovation, product design innovation, accounting innovation, such that our industry can move beyond the concerns of deregulation and find that innovative solutions are the new table stakes for sustainability. 

Close to my heart is the work of the Austin Sustainability Professionals community I co-founded in Austin with my friend, Jessica Dusek.  Austin Sustainability Professionals is a whisper network of individuals and companies that are building the sustainable economy in Central Texas. The origin story goes like this: I’m on the coffee line at GreenBiz 2023 in Tempe where I’m ahead of Jessica. We started talking and realized we lived 20 minutes away from each other in Austin. We wondered why it wasn’t this easy to meet each other in Texas. Austin Sustainability Professionals was born.

Since launching, we have grown from 0 to almost 1000 community members, all with some sort of focus on sustainability in their work.  We have a very simple model: no membership fees, no marketing funnel, no spam. Just events hosted behind our raison d'être — community and conversations. Our hosts are corporations that pay to put on these events. They have been super supportive of our activities. Most recently, we launched Climate Confidential, a Chatham House rule event with Edelman. Upcoming, we have a demo day with re:3D, the inventor and manufacturer of the world’s largest 3D printer, Current EV Motors, a conversion company taking classic cars and turning them into EVs, and Restore, our spotlighted non-profit.

I can get excited about the breakthroughs and good works of companies and help spotlight these activities. I think it’s great for the community to see progress continue, even in the current deregulatory environment. Sustainability is an ethos, not a regulatory body. We’re still living what we believe.

What was the “aha” moment that sparked your interest in social and environmental impact? 

When I was six, I went to the deli with my dad. We stood at the counter and I saw something on a shelf and said “that looks like a tongue.” My dad replied, “that’s because it is.” I understood in that instance, the life and death consequences of our choices. It was the beginning of my consciousness around animals, food, the earth, waste and how humans were at the center of how we move forward as a more conscious society and planet.

Professionally, I had the opportunity to be the COO of HCC, one of the first sustainable design and manufacturing companies in NYC. When we were creating the plans for the factory, I thought, “why would we build a plant like it’s a post-WWll type of factory? Shouldn’t this be a circular design factory? Isn’t that more innovative? Isn’t that at the end of the day a much better way to build something new?” We didn’t set out initially to build a circular business, but we did think deeply about innovative solutions. It brought me to sustainability as a means to innovate, cost cut and take more market share.

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 didn’t ask permission. I started building circular and sustainable systems behind a values-based corporate strategy. I built a virtuous circle that positioned employees to have careers not just jobs. We saw the training and management efforts of leadership as a way to help build the company and add positivity to the world knowing that we were leaders training leaders. We used innovation as the key driver to showing ROI and market share as the benefit to building a circular design and product company. There was a business rationale that led to the expansion of sustainability. 

My recommendation to anyone who is interested in breaking into sustainability and impact now? Just start. Find a project, own it and bring it to life. Don’t wait, don’t ask permission. Just make it. Just do it. There is confidence on the other side of learning how. When you join a volunteer team or work on a preexisting project you can help your local community plus have a chance to get the experience you want under your belt.  

I recommend that if you do not have a job in sustainability or you were reorged or whatever has happened to the job you thought you would have but because of the market you don’t have the job, just start being the change you want to see in the world. I promise, you will find satisfaction, a community and an opening to building something worthwhile. People usually find their next role with their community. Take the action and build something.

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?

Being a change agent involves a number of character traits, including the willingness to be driven by a mission or purpose, the integrity to step toward what you believe and the courage to own personal responsibility for the change you wish to see. As with all good work, it starts with self-reflection and emotional intelligence. I have the good fortune of having the personality traits that mix a clarity of vision with the gift of persistence and grit. These traits, although some are inherent to one’s nature and temperament, are honed over time through experience. You might say you can apply these traits to any kind of change, not specifically to sustainability and impact.

The biggest struggle I often have is whether stepping up to the plate to create change is worth the struggle with the status quo. There is a personal cost to being a change agent, so making sure you are willing to push the Sisyphean rock up the hill for a particular outcome, you will want to make certain you’re willing to go through the peaks and valleys of the process of change. Seems like a simple ask, but this question is filled with complexity.

What most excites you about the impact space right now?

2025 has been a year where we’ve seen deregulation, anti-climate science activities making gains and an overall shift from what we perceived as “good work” in the climate and impact space. What most excites me about this (and I get it sounds antithetical) is the fact that we as a community get to move away from the compliance mindset and move toward bolder strategies connecting sustainability activities with innovation activities. I believe the compliance movement made corporate sustainability strategies and innovation take a back seat to figuring out reporting and scope 3 reporting especially. I believe organizations can find the “opportunity in crisis” to inspire and empower sustainability professionals to do the good work of innovating and embedding these innovations across the entire organization. We do have great options to innovate if we keep the foundations of our commitments to moving toward a low carbon economy. I often remind people I co-authored a book on innovation, not sustainability. I see sustainability as the world’s largest change management project ever sitting squarely in the innovation column of the work we do to build better outcomes for our lives, the communities we serve and life on earth.

This season, our Impact Interviews series features members of the Change Hub, our membership community for busy sustainable business professionals. Tap into trainings, tools and a trusted network of fellow impact practitioners (including Lisa!) by JOINING US HERE.