Midori Sustainability was founded by Kate Chapman
I spent my early career in management consultancy at PwC and for seven years I wondered why I wasn’t very happy. I was earning good money, travelling the world, learning from experts and working with top companies. Yet something didn’t feel right – I didn’t feel comfortable in my role, I didn’t feel like what I did made any positive contribution to society and to the wider world.
By chance I came across an MSc in “Responsibility and Business Practice” at Bath University and decided on the spot to apply. That decision, and the 2 years of study that followed, changed my life. It gave context to the discomfort I was feeling, opened my eyes to the enormous issues and problems facing humanity and helped me explore the role that business plays in maintaining – or challenging - our current (unsustainable) systems. Systems thinking and action inquiry research are two of the disciplines that the MSc taught me, and which have given me a different way of viewing the world.
That was 20 years ago. Halfway through the MSc, I quit my job at PwC, where I was by that time a Principal Consultant working in the area of leadership development and strategic change, and took on a role as Programme Director with a not-for-profit leadership development organisation. I then returned to the business world to head up the business development side of an environmental consultancy and held several roles in the environmental sector. I have subsequently co-founded a sustainability consultancy, worked for LOCOG as part of the London 2012 sustainability team and for the last decade have been working on a range of consultancy assignments focussing on improving both organisational performance and sustainability.
In 2015 I began to get more interested in the purpose led business agenda. Movements such as Economy for the Common Good, A Blueprint for Better Business and B Corps are all working to facilitate a more meaningful kind of business and to provide tools and frameworks to help support it. I worked with the Economy for the Common Good to help launch that movement in the UK and since July 2016 I have been working with B Lab UK to help build the B Corp community across the UK.
After two decades working within mainstream management consultancy, leadership development, environmental management, sustainability and CSR, I am convinced that organisations which embrace and live a purpose beyond profit are the ones that people will want to work for, buy from and do business with.
Clients
I have worked with public, private and third sector organisations (and sometimes with consortia of all three). Notable organisations I have worked for include the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, Arup, Technip, The Department for Transport, London Marathon Events, the Royal Yachting Association and B Lab UK.
Associates
When assignments call for more than one pair of hands, or would be better served by a broader range of skills, I have a strong network of fellow consultants to call on. In recent collaborations I have worked with an OD specialist, an HR expert, leadership and performance coaches, a lawyer and an ecologist.
Other roles
As well as my consulting work with Midori, I am a Board member of West Solent Solar Co-operative – a 2.4 MW community solar farm in Lymington, Hampshire. I am a trustee of Força – Strength Against Cancer, a charity I helped to found in 2012 as well as being a trustee of the Friends of Minstead Study Centre - a fantastic sustainability education centre in the New Forest.