—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Lorna is the Senior Advisor to Danone's CEO and a global ambassador for the B Corp movement.
She is passionate about finding new ways for business to be a force for good by changing legislation, third party auditing, and collaboration with other like-minded people.
She is dedicated to supporting Danone and other companies to achieve B Corp certification and become parts of the B Corp movement.
Before Danone, she was the President of Kraft Foods China, then President Kraft's Mondelez's North American biscuits.
Quoting Fortune after Danone acquired White Wave to become America's largest dairy business:
DanoneWave, now tops another ranking and one that has nothing to do with food: On April 12, the day the acquisition of WhiteWave was approved, the newly formed enterprise received its status of "public benefit corporation," the largest company in the U.S. to have that distinction.
"It' a clear statement to the world---and the people in our company---about what we're up to and trying to do," says Lorna Davis, CEO of DanoneWave, "which is to bring healthy food to as many people as possible."
Davis, who joined Kraft as part of the biscuit deal, made her way back to the French dairy company in 2015 as "chief manifesto catalyst." Her mandate was "to bring the purpose of Danone to life." After the WhiteWave acquisition, Danone's CEO asked Davis to run new entity. "As soon as we talked about the business, it was inevitable that it was going to be a public benefit corporation."
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"In 10 years time, people will say its inconceivable that business was done any other way," says Davis. "The notion that a company can only care about profit will be seen as old-fashioned and irresponsible."
Lorna's challenge is one of the longest and most personal at over a year. I also couldn't wait to bring her story to you most because within weeks she was reporting the joys overcoming the challenges. We've become friends through her challenge. Within months she started sending senior executives my way as her sharing her challenge with them led them to follow. In other words, Lorna didn't experience sacrifice or burden. She experienced personal growth and friendship. At least as I heard. Don't take my word. Listen for yourself. Maybe because we met through guests Tensie Whelan, NYU-Stern's head of sustainable business and Vincent Stanley, director at Patagonia, she's outgoing and friendly. Or maybe from her experience leading, which she describes in her TED talk that came toward the end of her year buying no clothes. In any case, I keep having to remind myself she's from the C-suite of Danone, a 30 billion company, and that she helped Danone USA become the largest B-corp yet. If anyone could claim to need clothes, she could. Listen to what she found instead. I hope you find similar relief from compulsion---saving money or time, connecting with family, having more fun, etc---as well as what else she found and shared.
This episode is longer, but full of inside views at a leverage point of leadership and the environment. Consulting firms and business schools wish they had access to global corporate leaders at the frontier of change like Lorna. We spoke in-person about multinationals she's led across the globe. And she takes on one of the longest personal challenges of any guest so far. Lest you think the conversation was all about mega-corporations, we also talked about vegetables and leaders reduced to tears on seeing what environmental values they could have acted on but had put off too long and felt the consequences. Lorna has influenced big, global business, helping shift Danone USA to become a B-corp, working directly with the CEO of the company that made about $30 billion last year with over 100,000 employees. What's a B-corp? What difference does it make? Lorna will explain everything, largely from her personal, inside experiences. I've known about B-corps since studying them in business school over a decade ago. Lorna makes things clearer and more engaging from her experience. The shift in corporate structure is huge, likely a systemic change to capitalism enacted voluntarily by capitalists, not government. I find it intriguing. Even if you know about B-corps, hearing her inside view will -- I don't know any other way to say it -- blow your mind. It's one of the greatest signs of hope and expectation of success I've seen. She also shares her story about changing from wanting to win the rat race but not achieving it to living by her values and succeeding more. Read the transcript.