Impact Interview: Nicki McClung

Name: Nicki McClung

Role/Function: Senior Manager, Product Environmental Impact, Aritzia

1. What are you working on these days?

For the last year and a half I've been working with Aritzia, a Vancouver-based women's fashion brand, on our climate strategy. I’ve been helping teams understand why it's important to measure the impacts of what we're doing, since the choices we're making in terms of products really have a toll on our total emissions. 

Officially, my role focuses on product sustainability, but that tends to cover a little bit of everything right now. I have been working with our teams to ensure that we are making the products that customers want with the lowest impact possible. We are a really cautious company, so we don't like to talk about the things that we're doing or put a lot of numbers out there until we know for sure that we're making an impact.

It's really important to us that we're able to offer our customers knowledge of exactly what they're buying and that we can stand behind the certifications and claims we make. We are also looking at the waste impact coming from packaging, stores, operations and support offices. The great part about this job is there are a lot of different things that pop up to work on.

2. What was the “aha” moment that sparked your interest in social impact?

When I first started my career, I was in accounting and finance, which was a great job with lots of stability. After a couple of years in North America, I decided to move to Australia and wound up getting a couple of different accounting and finance contract roles with large mining and minerals companies. Through my work and the friends I knew, I started to see these images of the degradation of Northern and Western Australia — miles and miles of wasteland in every direction. People and animals were displaced by fires, and it was a very hot summer that year. It just seemed like this was not a sustainable way to continue operating.

Soon after, my partner and I moved to the U.S. and I tried to find impact careers in finance but found it really hard. So I decided to go back to university. I got my MPA with a concentration in international development and technology entrepreneurship. I wanted to help communities that were most adversely affected by climate change. 

3. How did you break into the social impact space?

I tried so hard to get into the space. I networked and felt like I met with every possible person in companies that were doing great social impact work. But I was just not having any luck, even with internships and unpaid research opportunities. 

Finally I got my first internship through the Environmental Defense Fund, with the EDF Climate Corps. All of a sudden I was with 115 other people, some of whom were late-career professionals who had returned for their degrees after already achieving so much. Others, like me, had only a few years of experience, maybe not tailored in the environmental space, but had a strong passion for impact. It created this network of people that helped to open doors and understand what opportunities were available. 

I was first placed with Boston Public Schools to develop a green revolving fund for them. I then used that experience to get my next internship on the philanthropy team at JPMorgan Chase. After JPMorgan, I took an internship with Edelman in their social purpose practice. There I was able to develop more of a communications and storytelling lens. 

My big break came from networking through my involvement with Net Impact, when I was able to connect with someone on the Starbucks environmental impact team. I didn’t have the exact experience they were looking for, but I did have all of the requisite skill sets to be successful. 

It took more than six months after I graduated from my master's program to find that first job at Starbucks. I had hundreds of rejections. It just took someone at the right point in time passing a resume to the right person who saw something in me. 

4. Working in social 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?

Adaptability is the skill that has been the most important for me. My job is rarely clearly defined. It has more to do with: have I brought along the right stakeholders? Have I bought people into my initiatives? Do I have the program set up properly? Unexpected issues can come up and require the entire company to change. I can't get too attached to anything.

5. What most excites you about the social impact space right now?

The rate of innovation, specifically in apparel manufacturing and recycling, is fascinating. As we're looking through our footprints, our products are the biggest part of our total emissions. Specifically, products derived from animal materials. You can have a net-zero ambition, but nobody really knows how to get there. That’s starting to change. 

Customer pressure on circularity and addressing what happens at a product’s end of life is also driving change. I’ve already seen a lot of amazing resale and upcycling companies emerge. 

Another thing that doesn’t quite fit into the five questions, but which I think a lot about, is how white and western-centric the industry is. We forget that great things are happening in sourcing countries like China, Vietnam and India. There are companies that are manufacturing our clothes for us, that are doing amazing things for their communities. Those stories aren't told. That's something that weighs on me a lot. How can I incorporate more of an environmental justice lens into my work? How can I be a change agent knowing what I know, and having the privilege that I have? When I think about mentoring the next generation of people who are coming up in this industry, I think about who it is that's reaching out to me and which resumes are at the top of the pile. 

*Image credit to Stephen Matera Photography.

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