Sustainability warrior

Drum Roll

by Tom Barry

May 1, 2008

Susan Graff is an idealist who turned her idealism into a thriving company she expects to quadruple in size over the next two to three years as the corporate sustainability movement
gathers speed. "We're all kind of waiting for the world to change, aren't we?" says Graff, founder and CEO of Atlanta-based ERS Global, a 10-employee consulting firm that helps companies reduce their environmental footprint and build that better world, one industrial process at a time.

"My role models are people like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.," says Graff. "They put a stake in the ground, had a dream and stood for it. And that's exactly what we do. We help CEOs create a positive vision of what they want their company to be." Little doubt the zeitgeist is moving in Graff 's direction. More companies are seeking to implement sustainable systems that conserve natural resources and - tellingly - add to the bottom line. Articles about global warming, green building and carbon trading occupy the news. Political change is in the air in Washington.

"The momentum has really built over the last year and a half," says Graff, who adds that she got into the environmental field "before it was cool." Change is certainly afoot in Atlanta. The historic drought has raised fundamental questions about the future of the area: Is the era of go-go growth over? Or can the region change its wastrel water ways and extend the Cinderella story?


"The drought has caused more CEOs to get evaluations of their company's environmental footprint, particularly in the construction and development industries," Graff says. "How they build and site their developments has a big impact on water quality and consumption." Graff was well ahead of the sustainability curve when she founded ERS Global (then Environmental Resource Services) in 1997 after a 13-year stint with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she developed expertise in such areas as risk assessment, waste management and regulatory incentives. "I left to help companies solve problems," she says. "At EPA, I saw that businesses have the resources to act, whereas government has only a fraction of those resources. I just wanted to help [company officials] deal with problems before they became a crisis."

Her company helped businessmen get ahead of the regulatory need for action. "They would ask me, ‘What's most environmentally sound? What's most socially responsible? If I can produce a better product or service, I may be in business a lot longer than my competitors.' It was all about doing well by doing good." Graff, who launched ERS on a self-funded shoestring (later taking on investors), has seen it grow
into an enterprise that serves a roster of Fortune 500 clients, among them The Coca-Cola Co., Unilever, Delta Air Lines, Caterpillar, FedEx and Kraft Foods. Although her core market is U.S. companies with a global reach, ERS also works with governmental entities, from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to the Jekyll Island Authority to Fort Benning and Fort McPherson. John Gray, who has both worked for Graff and used her as a consultant, describes her as a pragmatic idealist.

"Susan's a very committed person who's always been passionate about the environment, even when it wasn't very popular and people weren't listening," says Gray, now an Illinois-based environmental manager for the Minneapolis-headquartered Valspar Corp. "She did some of the leading brownfield work with EPA and was very influential there," Gray says. "She's always believed that if you have a good message, people ultimately will understand and come knocking at your door."

In recent years, ERS Global has expanded its focus to include mid-level companies, business driven to a significant degree by Wal-Mart's decision in 2005 to "go green." "The vast majority of manufacturers in the U.S. sell their products at Wal-Mart, so when CEO Lee Scott stepped up and said he wanted to have a zero-waste stream to landfills, 100 percent renewable energy in stores and sustainable products stocking the shelves, it was a very powerful message," Graff says. Operating ahead of the curve is nothing new for Graff, who grew up in a Chicago suburb and earned a biology degree at Western Illinois University. "I wanted to specialize in something  didn't quite understand that would challenge me."

Building on her biology training, Graff went on to become the first woman to earn a master's degree in technology and science policy from Georgia Tech. "It was tough to move through the ranks at EPA, which had very few female supervisors in the 1980s," she says. "I pretty much grew up at EPA. I went over there as a graduate student to do a project and stayed for 13 years." In cleaning up pollution sites, EPA took "a sound, credible, scientific approach to analyzing data," the same modus operandi Graff employs at ERS Global. For instance, the firm offers companies a sustainability scorecard they can use to assess themselves on both environmental and social factors (how they treat employees, level of engagement in the community, etc.). Graff, who doesn't release revenue figures, anticipates 400 percent growth over the next two to three years.

"Three years out, I expect us to be a $10 million company," she says. One sign of the times: the trend in corporations to create the position of chief sustainability officer. "About 30 percent of the companies we talk to have the position," she says. "By this time next year, I expect it to be 80 percent." Besides its Atlanta presence, ERS Global operates an office in Chicago, and other U.S. cities are in the crosshairs as possible locations.

Inroads into South America are being contemplated as well. Meanwhile, the competition - inevitably- has been heating up. "The market has grown so quickly," Graff says. "I think our biggest challenge going forward will be setting the standard for the industry. In the last year or two, a lot of companies have sprung up overnight. They're passionate [about the environment], which I admire, but they don't have proven
approaches."

A decade after founding her own firm, Graff says she's doing what she set out to do. Call it a blend of pragmatism and idealism aimed at building that most illusive of constructs - a
better world.

"I help companies use sound science in their decisions," she says. "And I help their people get excited about new ways of doing things."