Impact Interview: Marlot Kiveron

Name: Marlot Kiveron

Role/Function: Author of De impactmissie and Sustainability Director of KARL LAGERFELD

What are you working on these days?

The question that occupies me most these days isn't actually about sustainability. It's about leadership.

More specifically: what does leadership look like in a world where creating long-term value for business, people and the planet is no longer optional?

Over the past decade, I've had the privilege of building sustainability functions across three different companies focused on retail and consumer goods. Today I lead sustainability at KARL LAGERFELD.

What fascinates me goes far beyond one role or one company.

Through speaking, guest lecturing, hosting network events and writing the book De impactmissie, I find myself exploring the same question from different perspectives: why do some organizations manage to transform while others struggle, even when they have access to the same information?

Every audience teaches me something different. Students ask whether radical change is possible. Executives challenge me to sharpen the business case. Sustainability professionals remind me how emotionally demanding change can be. Those conversations have become an important part of how I learn.

Looking back, I don't think I wrote a book about sustainability. I wrote a book about organizational transformation.

We know far more about what needs to change than we did ten years ago. Yet implementation remains difficult. To me, that suggests the real challenge is no longer only a lack of knowledge. It's understanding how people make decisions, how organizations evolve and how we create environments where people genuinely want to build a better future together.

That curiosity continues to drive everything I do.

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 sometimes joke that I entered sustainability from the dark side. I studied Commercial Economics, which doesn't exactly sound like the obvious route into impact. If we're borrowing from Star Wars, perhaps it was my own Luke Skywalker moment: discovering there was another way to use the skills I'd learned.

Looking back, I wouldn't change that path for anything.

My commercial background taught me something that still shapes how I approach sustainability: ideas only create impact when they resonate with people. Business is ultimately about understanding value, understanding people and understanding why decisions are made. Sustainability isn't any different.

The content of sustainability changes constantly. Regulations evolve. Science advances. Technologies improve. Political priorities shift. But the deeper challenge remains remarkably stable. How do you create something people genuinely want to be part of?

My own turning point came during a factory visit, where I discovered how much material was being wasted and how many human hands were involved. I couldn't unsee it. That moment created a gap between my personal values and my professional reality. I realized I wanted to spend my career helping organizations close the gap between what they aspire to be and how they actually operate.

Many people think creating impact means finding the ultimate sustainable organization. I've come to believe something different. Some of the greatest opportunities for change already exist inside established organizations. They shape industries, supply chains and everyday decisions at a scale few others can.

My advice would therefore be not to become only a sustainability expert. Become a student of organizations. Learn how businesses create value. Be curious about people whose perspectives differ from your own. Build trust before you build strategies.

And never underestimate the influence you already have. Meaningful change often starts with one person having the courage to ask a better question.

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?

If I had to name one skill, it's recognizing opportunities where others mainly see complexity, and bringing people together to turn those opportunities into reality.

I instinctively look for opportunities to create value. Where can we innovate? Which business challenge could sustainability help solve? How can we strengthen what is already working while improving what is not? Over the years, I've learned that the best sustainability initiatives are rarely the ones that shout the loudest. They're the ones that solve real business challenges while creating positive impact.

Early in my career, I thought my role was to convince people. Today, I think my role is to understand them. Whenever I encounter resistance, I try to understand what someone is trying to protect, what success looks like from their perspective and how sustainability might actually help them achieve it.

That shift changed the way I lead. Once people recognize that sustainability strengthens the goals they already care about, conversations become very different. The real work is no longer about persuasion. It's about creating ownership.

I genuinely enjoy bringing together people with different perspectives, expertise and incentives and helping them discover a shared ambition. Some of the strongest coalitions I've seen have been built between people who initially didn't think they had much in common. Those are the moments I enjoy most, because that's when sustainability stops being one person's agenda and becomes part of the organization's way of thinking.

Looking back, I don't see opportunity recognition, communication and coalition building as separate skills. They reinforce one another. Finding opportunities is only valuable if you can communicate them in a way that resonates, and communication only creates lasting change when people feel ownership.

To me, that's what leadership is about: helping people see possibilities they hadn't considered before and creating the conditions for them to turn those possibilities into reality 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?

This is probably where my thinking has changed the most. Earlier in my career, I believed communicating sustainability meant explaining why it mattered. Today, I think communication starts much earlier than that. It starts with creating relevance.

Perhaps my Commercial Economics background never really left me. I keep returning to the SWOT analysis, but from both a business and an impact perspective. Where are the opportunities? Which risks are emerging? Which strengths can sustainability strengthen even further? Which weaknesses can it help solve?

That's where the conversation becomes interesting.

Sometimes sustainability creates entirely new circular revenue streams. Sometimes it reduces costs through smarter material use. Sometimes it improves resilience in the supply chain, strengthens relationships with customers or helps prepare for (future) regulation.

Every organization is different, but the principle is always the same: sustainability creates momentum when it helps solve real business challenges.

I've stopped asking: how do I communicate sustainability?

Instead, I ask: how can sustainability help this organization become better?

The communication follows naturally as you deliver tangible value add. At the same time, I don't believe the business case alone is enough. Purpose creates energy. The business case creates continuity, it anchors the initiative within the commercial guardrails. Lasting transformation happens when personal conviction and commercial value reinforce one another instead of competing.

In general, I strongly believe sustainability itself needs repositioning. We need language that connects rather than divides, that acknowledges complexity without becoming paralyzed by it and that helps more people see themselves as part of the solution.

Ultimately, I hope sustainability becomes something we no longer have to explain separately.

It's simply what good business looks like when you deliver both significant value today as well as in the long run for a wide group of stakeholders (including and not limited to shareholders).

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

The moments I'm proudest of are almost invisible.

They're the moments when sustainability quietly stops belonging to the sustainability team. Someone in Finance starts asking different questions.

A designer proposes a more circular solution before I even enter the room.

A commercial colleague begins talking about long-term value.

Those moments rarely make headlines, but I think they're the clearest sign that real transformation is actually happening.

Looking back, I don't think those moments happened because we found better words. They happened because people experienced sustainability as something that strengthened their own ambitions rather than competing with them.

People don't want to execute someone else's vision. They want to help build a future they recognize themselves in. I believe connection is where lasting change begins.

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

I'm inspired by people who expand the conversation instead of narrowing it.

Climate psychologist Maurits van der Heijde has influenced my thinking through his distinction between passive hope and active hope. Hope isn't something we wait for. It grows through meaningful action. That resonates deeply with me because I've learned that people gain confidence by contributing, not by being convinced.

More broadly, I admire people who resist turning sustainability into a debate between opposing sides. They acknowledge complexity without becoming cynical. They remain ambitious without becoming ideological. Most importantly, they create space for unexpected allies.

I believe that's what this moment asks of us.

The challenges we face are too interconnected to be solved by sustainability professionals alone. We'll need designers, marketers, engineers, entrepreneurs, financiers, policy makers and countless others. People with different expertise and different motivations, discovering that they're working towards the same future.

Ultimately, I don't think the future belongs to organizations that become better at managing sustainability.

I think it belongs to organizations that redefine success altogether. Organizations where creating value for customers, society and the business is no longer seen as a trade-off, but as the very purpose of business itself.

That's the future I'm interested in helping build.