Serge Younes: Invited to the Party

Serge Younes is Global Head of Sustainability at Invest Industrial. With a PhD in renewable energy and decades of experience in both consulting and private equity, he brings a technical and commercial grounding that shapes how he works with portfolio companies. In this episode, he joins Jenn to talk about what it actually takes to make sustainability land in a business and what the head of sustainability role might look like in ten years' time.

Useful Links:

Follow Serge on LinkedIn here

Find out more about Invest Industrial here

Read Serge's book recommendation: The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

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This podcast is brought to you by Re:Co, a tech-powered advisory company helping private market investors pursue sustainability objectives and value creation in tandem. 

Produced by Chris Attaway

Artwork by Harriet Richardson

Music by Cody Martin

Transcript

Future in Sound - Episode 47 - Serge Younes - Invited to the Party

[00:00:00] JENN: Dr. Serge Younes is Global Head of Sustainability at Invest Industrial, where he leads the firm's sustainability, responsible investment, impact, and sustainable value creation agenda across the entire investment life cycle. He oversees ESG integration from due diligence through to portfolio management, working closely with investment teams and company management to drive operational improvements, risk management, and long-term value creation.

[00:00:27] JENN: His work also includes climate strategy, supply chain sustainability, governance, and stakeholder engagement across a global portfolio. Dr. Younes brings 15 years or more, experience in sustainability and responsible investment, alongside a broader career spanning more than two decades in sustainability, strategy, and consulting.

[00:00:49] JENN: Prior to Invest Industrial, he was strategy director at Accenture Strategy, where he led global clean energy and low carbon transformation initiatives, and previously was a director of sustainability services at WSP Environment & Energy. He holds a PhD in renewable energy and is a mechanical and environmental engineer by training.

[00:01:10] JENN: He's a published author and has worked extensively across Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa, supporting clients across multiple sectors, including financial services, industrials, infrastructure, and consumer industries. Alongside his role, Dr. Younes is active in shaping sustainability practices in private equity, including chairing the steering committee of Initiative Climat, uh, Internationale.

[00:01:35] JENN: Sels will have to correct my French pronunciation. Um, and contributing to industry bodies such as PRI, Invest Europe, and academic institutions. Dr. Sels Younes, welcome to the Future in Sound podcast. 

[00:01:50] SERGE: Thank you, Jen. It's, uh, great to, uh, join in. 

[00:01:52] JENN: Now, I've read the formal, uh, introduction to you. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to share on your background and what really brought you to this role as global head of sustainability at Invest Industrial.

[00:02:03] SERGE: thanks, Jen. I think it's probably, uh, I might repeat some of what you said in the bio, but I'll give it a bit of angle that kind of anchors the rest of our conversation, So as you said, I trained originally as a mechanical engineer. I did a PhD in renewable energy, and focused actually on climate science.

[00:02:20] SERGE: So I actually came into sustainability from a very technical angle. You know, it's energy systems, it's infrastructure, it's environmental performance. Before I transitioned and moved into strategy and then, then into private equity. So, and, you know, as, as you mentioned, before joining Invest Industrial, I spent a decade and a half in consulting working with a diverse range of clients across industries in sustainability.

[00:02:45] SERGE: So that consulting period was important because it exposed me to many different sectors and business models. It taught me that actually sustainability never looks exactly the same from one company to the other. The issues may have similar labels, climate, energy, waterways, supply chain, governance, et cetera, but the business context, whether it's regional or whatever, it, it's always different.

[00:03:11] JENN: Mm. 

[00:03:11] SERGE: So that's probably one of the lessons that I've carried mostly with me into private equity, and maybe makes me slightly different in how I view things. So within Invest Industrial, I've been very, very fortunate to have joined a private equity firm that actually believes in sustainability, and they've had a program that is now 20 years.

[00:03:30] SERGE: I mean, I joined eight years ago, and while my role, as you mentioned, integrates sustainability across the investment life cycle, I bring a lot of that knowledge that I had in consulting looking at different companies in automotive and oil and gas and food and retail and so on to bear into our portfolio.

[00:03:49] SERGE: So having started 20 years ago working with, you know, the large global businesses, the Unilevers, M&S, BMW, you name it, and bring that knowledge into small cap companies and help them on that journey I think is incredible,very valuable for them. So I think about my role in very simple terms.

[00:04:10] SERGE: You know, sustainability Isn't a parallel universe. You know, it, it, it doesn't sit in a report or a side conversation or a framework that nobody uses. You know, when you talk to somebody about GRI or SFDR, like, you've lost people already, right? So a way, what I'm doing is connecting real operating priorities of businesses that are in our portfolio, you know, growth, cost, risk, people, innovation, you know, customers, all of those topics, into something actionable.

[00:04:41] SERGE: So that's the thing that I find the most exciting in my role in private equity, is it became very practical. You're, you're very close to ownership, you're close to the management, you're close to those decisions, and you're building a trust that makes sustainability relevant to those businesses that I'm working with in the portfolio, and going from theory to action very quickly.

[00:05:04] SERGE: And because you're part of the ownership, you're accountable, right? In, in consulting, you've done your report, you've worked your 8 to 12 weeks and you walked away and kind of, "Good luck." There is no good luck here. I'm here for 5, 10 years, right? I'm accountable for, for what I've done effectively. 

[00:05:21] JENN: It's really interesting speaking to the point where sustainability looks a little bit different for every company, and it makes a lot of sense when you describe the importance of really understanding the true objectives and priorities for the company and matching sustainability to those priorities.

[00:05:36] JENN: My next question links to how you really get to know the company and build trust and influence, because to a lot of sustainability professionals, you know, they might read, okay, there's this strategy or value creation plan, but it doesn't really come to life because they're covering a bunch of companies, they don't maybe know the companies that well.

[00:05:55] JENN: So I'm interested, how do you build trust and influence within your portfolio? 

[00:06:00] SERGE: for me, trust starts with humility. You really can't walk into a company and say, "Hey, I'm from sustainability, and here's a gazillion things that I want you to do." That, that doesn't work, and frankly, it shouldn't.

[00:06:13] SERGE: And if you don't get thrown out of the room, you know, good luck. for me, you kind of have to earn the right to be in that room, to be in that boardroom, in that company, and the way that you earn that right is by showing that you understand the business and you're here to help, not to police. That's, that's a really important bit.

[00:06:32] SERGE: You know, you're not, you're not the cops. You're, you're here as part of getting them on the journey, a- and helping them. So I often say that my job is to get yourself invited to the party. And, and the way that you do it is not by pushing an agenda. It's actually by asking better questions. What keeps that CEO awake at night?

[00:06:55] SERGE: You know, why are the costs increasing? What are the customers asking? What's new? Where are the regulation going? Why are they becoming so complex? Why is the company exposed operationally? And then try to help them to understand, can sustainability be a source of differentiation, of growth, of strengthening that business?

[00:07:15] SERGE: And actually, once the management team sees that you're trying to support their priorities, you're not adding noise, right? Then the conversation changes. You move from, "Ugh, here's your reporting," to, "Hey, you know, they're here to help my company be stronger," right? So i- in a nutshell, you don't build influence by bringing a bigger list.

[00:07:38] SERGE: You build influence by making that list relevant. It could be two bullet points,you and I spoke in the past about one of our portfolio companies in the US, and yeah, my shopping list would have been massive, but the one problem they had is staff turnover. We've been spending the last two years dealing with staff turnover.

[00:07:56] SERGE: That's it. Nothing else matters. It's about business survival, making that business strong. Once that's done, then there goes the big list for the next three years, right? So look, influence in private equity is about... It's about building it through relevance. If you can translate sustainability into language of business, you're far more likely to be heard.

[00:08:19] SERGE: You're talking their language 

[00:08:21] JENN: when it comes to actually building those sort of conduits, you know, getting yourself invited to the party, et cetera, can you take us through, it can be a fictional example or a real example, like, how do you actually do that in practice? You've just acquired a company, you know, what does that look like?

[00:08:37] JENN: What conversations are you setting up, um, and how do you go about it? 

[00:08:41] SERGE: It's actually a, a fun anecdote. So I, I or my team tend to attend most management meetings. We're participating in due diligence. We're there on site during that kind of pre-investment period. And actually, 99% of the time, we actually don't announce who we are.

[00:09:04] SERGE: They might think we're part of the consulting team or, or some of the advisors that are there. And when you come back after you've signed and you're closed, they go, "Hey, I've seen you before." Like, "Yeah, I've been here." Like, I know what was going on in your business, and therefore we can have a conversation about what's happening.

[00:09:22] SERGE: I've been studying you for six month now, right? I don't know everything about you, but I've got enough to have a real meaningful conversation. You know, I'm on the investment committee. I've actually read every single reports, you know, legal due diligence, commercial due di- diligence, you name it. I, I know what's happening in your business, and I know the plan, and I know how difficult that plan will be, and I'm here to be part of helping you to get to that plan.

[00:09:49] SERGE: So again, it's what I said earlier, i- is you're talking the business language, you're understanding where they're coming from, and you bring your credibility. For me, it's giving examples. You know, if you're in the food business, I'm telling them what I did in consulting and what I did with the three other portfolio companies and how we won this client and, you know, how we streamlined supply chains and how much we saved on energy.

[00:10:13] SERGE: And I, I tell them all of this and say, "Are you ready? Let's do this. Let's get on the journey." You know, I remember, um, another US portfolio company, and we went to present to them the plan. And we were, you know, it was my team and I were giving them, you know, the spiel, but in a business context. And, 

[00:10:33] SERGE: I remember the CFO raised his hand, and in my heart was like, "Oh, God, no." Like- ... they're, the fight now starts. You know, I've been talking for an hour. I've presented the plan that we had in mind, competitive analysis, things that are working, things that are not working. I got into the nitty-gritty of what's going on.

[00:10:53] SERGE: I was like, this guy's gonna shoot, right? I could feel the room, but actually I felt the room wrong because he said, "So you say we need to do this in three to five years. Actually, we need to, to do this by end of the year. How can we do this?" I, I was on the floor. I was like, "Whoa." Right?

[00:11:11] JENN: Absolutely. And it would be one of these moments where, because usually there's this, especially with the CFO's office, how can we afford this? Is this really gonna have a return? You know, oh, it's sustainability, therefore it's gotta come at a cost. And it sounds like you're using business language so that, you know, it really resonated examples to show that it could work.

[00:11:31] JENN: I think that's really powerful. And Celge, before we started recording, you mentioned that y- you travel quite a lot, right? You, you know, you're on the road.

[00:11:40] JENN: O- one of the things that I've noticed that's, uh, different when I chat to you versus, uh, maybe some of your peers is y- you spend a lot of time on the ground with companies on site. You're not calling in. Can you share a little bit about your philosophy there, and if there's anything specific you do when you go to site, and what you're looking for, and how that helps you be effective in your role?

[00:12:05] SERGE: Yeah, absolutely, Jen. I mean, look, I live in my suitcase, but I absolutely love it. as you said, I spend a lot of time with the portfolio companies. and my view is that sustainability is very hard to understand from a spreadsheet alone. There's a lot that you can learn from data, but there's a lot of things that you learn differently when you're walking the factory floor or visit the plant or sit with management, speak to operations team.

[00:12:30] SERGE: You actually get to process how everything actually works, right? you actually learn things on the factory floor that you'll never learn from looking at a spreadsheet or sitting in a board meeting. You have to be there. When you're walking around, you notice how energy's used, you notice how water intensity, where is the waste coming from, scrap.

[00:12:52] SERGE: You notice if the team has a good operational discipline. You notice, is safety part of the culture or is it just a dashboard somewhere? Y- you also notice if people are innovating. Maybe they're doing really cool stuff but they're not calling it sustainability 'cause it never came to their mind that this actually might be sustainability, and you get the culture, right?

[00:13:13] SERGE: You know, I, I, I make a point, I go and- Eat at the factory canteens. I get to feel people. Actually, I don't walk in a suit and a tie. You, you'll see me on a factory floor in jeans and my trainers and a shirt, and actually people get surprised. "Whoa, was that part of the shareholders?" Like, I'm one of you guys, right?

[00:13:35] SERGE: I, I go from being the private equity guy to the engineer, right? And but I... You're also bringing that personal touch. So kind of for me, the plant tours are not industrial tourism, right? They're incredibly useful because they ground every single conversation you have after that. You know, when I get a call from a COO that says, "We had an incident," for example, I'm just thinking the worst-case scenario, you know exactly visually where it happens, and you know why it happened.

[00:14:05] SERGE: You've been there. You've walked that floor, and you can have the con... Is it by that red door on the right as you enter? And you're having a, "Yeah, that, that looked to me it was dangerous. Remember we had that conversation last year about it. Y- you know, we should do something better to avoid having another accident," or whatever it is, right?

[00:14:22] SERGE: So sustainability tend to be very abstract. Talk about climate, biodiversity, human rights, regulation. It's actually important that it becomes practical. You know, when you're standing there on the kind of factory lines and production lines, you have a conversation, "Hey, where's the heat loss? Why is there so much material being wasted?

[00:14:45] SERGE: You know, what happens to all this off-spec products that you threw away? By the way, how often does the line stop, or have you had customer audits?" All of those conversations become Practical. You know, they're not up in, the clouds. So also when you're having this conversation, that's when the best conversations on interventions come from.

[00:15:07] SERGE: You're walking the line, and you go, "Hey, you know, what if we don't do it that way?" Or, "That scrap material, you know, can somebody go there and, and, and spin those three pieces and maybe we can reuse it?" y- you start to have that thinking, and they go, "Oh, yeah, we never really thought about that," or, you know, "That might be expensive, but actually you're right.

[00:15:25] SERGE: C- that's true. We saw it, we spoke about it five years ago, but let's revisit it. Maybe the economics changed." Right? So y- y- you go from maybe imposing some framework, you know, the invest industrial way, to actually understanding the real industrial reality of those guys and, and being credible in helping them, right?

[00:15:46] SERGE: So coming back to how do you engage, how do you get yourself invited to the room, if the management team sees that you're taking the time to understand their business, they're actually more likely to see you as a partner. 

[00:15:59] JENN: Mm-hmm. And it's, it's really interesting, 'cause I'm there with you on the, the plant floor as you're discussing the, the red door and that kinda...

[00:16:06] JENN: And I can remember in my previous role working with manufacturing companies and in the plants that, I remember doing the plant tours, and the plants where things were organized, the tools were kept in the right place. There, you know, you could tell that there was a sort of meth- methodical approach to clean up every day.

[00:16:25] JENN: Like, those kinds of things, they had the best safety. And they had the lowest waste. 

[00:16:30] SERGE: Yeah. 

[00:16:30] JENN: And you see it again and again, and it, it has to do with, you know, businesses are groups of people who make decisions, and how effectively they make those decisions efficiently and how they learn if the decisions aren't working is all, you know, it works on every front of the business, but definitely on ops.

[00:16:45] JENN: And you can see that in a very short period of time walking around a plant floor. 

[00:16:50] SERGE: It's all about culture, and sometimes having the right leadership to bring that culture. It's, it's incredible how, you know, I've seen it multiple times, you bring in a new chief operating officer who's, on top of their game, and in a month it's, it's a different business.

[00:17:07] SERGE: It's just, it's incredible to see. 

[00:17:09] JENN: That's amazing. And now I'm gonna get, uh, you know, talking about being practical, let's move into maybe a bit more of the abstract and high level. we have talked about, how the sustainability vantage point is different than potentially- Mm ... others in organizations. So how is time horizon for sustainability professionals different, and does that provide us with a differentiated point of view in a business?

[00:17:34] SERGE: I think one of the most distinctive things- About a sustainability professional, I don't think everybody does it right, is we're kinda often looking around the corner. We're, we're out there. You know, if you look at businesses, most of the management is looking at the next quarter, the next budget cycle, next customer issue, next integration milestone, whatever is necessary.

[00:17:57] SERGE: And that's very important for a business. That's the discipline, right? But actually, sustainability asks kind of different questions. What could affect this business in five, 10 years, or 20 years? It could be climate, it could be resource scarcity, regulation, changed customer expectations, access to talent, you name it, nature, biodiversity, social license to operate.

[00:18:21] SERGE: But the trick here is the role shouldn't be theoretical or alarmist. And I know some of my peers tend to fall into this trap. The role is actually bringing long-term lens into today's decision, right? we are there to look at risks and opportunities that are not yet visible in the financials but will be.

[00:18:41] SERGE: So for example, if a company's making a CapEx decision today, it might be considering future energy prices or future carbon prices or future requirements, et cetera. If a company's building a supply chain strategy, it should be thinking about resilience and tran- traceability. If a company's looking at new product, is it thinking where the market is moving or the regulation is moving for that product?

[00:19:05] SERGE: So you need somebody in there that has that long-term perspective, and it could be incredibly valuable, because as I said, it's not yet visible in your financials. Now, in private equity we're lucky because we have that slightly longer term horizon, you know. But we're also defined by the ownership periods, uh, which is, you know, the typical fund 10 plus two, 12 years, right?

[00:19:29] SERGE: The question that we often should think is, "What do I need to build now so that the company is more resilient, more competitive, and more valuable in the future for the next buyer, but also for the buyer after that?" So you shouldn't be thinking, like maybe many of our colleagues in PE, about the current holding period.

[00:19:51] SERGE: "What am I doing now? You know, I need to sell this in five years or whatever." Actually, what is it going... what is going to make this business interesting for the next buyer for them to see value when they sell it to the following buyer? So you're thinking three holding periods. Yours, the next one, and the one afterwards.

[00:20:10] JENN: It's so interesting that you say that. I know that, you know, we've, we've got a couple more questions to go through and limited time, but I've just gotta say as a Canadian, there's this indigenous principle which is the seven generation principle, thinking multiple generations, different communities have different views.

[00:20:26] JENN: Some say, you know, it's seven generations into the future. How do I make decisions today that are gonna make seven generations into the future better off? Others say, I'm in the middle, how do I honor the past three generations and, you know, the future three? But I hadn't really connected the dots between generations, uh, in private equity, but it's almost thinking multiple investment cycles, multiple investment generations in advance- That's

[00:20:52] JENN: in a way that no one else is necessarily gonna be doing. 

[00:20:56] SERGE: No, I mean, look, it came to me through one of our investors many years ago. I think I was probably one year into my role, and it's one of the religious groups, and they asked me, "Serge, you know, this company that you guys have bought, what's gonna happen to it in 100 years?"

[00:21:14] SERGE: I just kind of stopped there. I look at them. We're like, "Are they mad? I don't know." I go, "Like, I'm not alive in 100 years." Then I thought, you know, those guys are thinking millennials. And then it, you know, it came to me and I was like, hold on, insurance companies are looking a century ahead. You know, all our investors, endowments, except everybody thinking centuries, and we're looking at the next quarter, right?

[00:21:42] SERGE: Uh, and, you know, we also had another conversation a few years back with actually, uh, our founder a- and in passing, he's like, "Yeah, we've seen that factory already once or twice in the past," and we've been a private equity firm for over 30 years. So for us to see one factory, not once, but twice and three times in 30 years in different guises, like, Those things are gonna stay around for decades and centuries 

[00:22:11] JENN: It's incredible. And when we think about sort of zooming out with this longer term perspective and looking to the future, I mean, ESG was sort of huge in 2021, and then it changed, and then we've had backlash, and then, you know, a variety of different things.

[00:22:28] JENN: We're focusing more on embedding in business these days. What does sustainability in PE look like if we even zoom out to, say, 2035? I mean, impossible to answer the question, but any ideas would be welcome. 

[00:22:42] SERGE: if you had asked me that question at the beginning of my career, I would have given you exactly the same answer, which is I, I actually don't think that the role should stay siloed.

[00:22:51] SERGE: I think it should become much more integrated, and actually it's becoming a much more commercial conversation. I think if I look back 20 years, uh, in my career, some of this started in foundation, some of this started in communication CSR, and it evolved into a more technical space. And I'm not gonna say we're about to move into the commercial space 'cause that's already happened, in large corporates, but I think private equity is starting to catch on that this is actually a deep commercial conversation about where our portfolios are looking like and, and how we're generating value.

[00:23:30] SERGE: I think today sustainability teams manage topics, regulation, boarding, climate, and supply chain, whatever it is, right? I think in 2035, a lot of those topics will be much more embedded into the investment operations and the finance teams, and less needing the, the head of sustainability type, type role, right?

[00:23:54] SERGE: As well, I think the role may become less about persuading people that sustainability matters and more about helping firms make better decisions using the data and having this long-term view. Now, I say that. I've been in the business of change management for 20 years now, right? So it's... Not at one point in my career have I convinced somebody by just saying, "Hi, I'm doing sustainability."

[00:24:17] SERGE: There's always been this long conversation, right, about why it's important and why it needs to happen. so yeah, coming back. Look, i- in private equity, maybe 2035, maybe later, maybe earlier, it's less about persuasion and more about better decisions, better data, clear strategic short-term and also long-term value creation.

[00:24:37] SERGE: It's that balance of the two. Now, I have a different thought about the role as well. I still feel the role should become more and more technical, I think today's sustainability professionals need to understand a breadth of topic, climate, science, regulation, industrial processes, data, AI, God help me, supply chains, finance, et cetera.

[00:25:01] SERGE: It's huge, broad skill sets. But then actually, I... It takes me back. I had... Beginning of my career, I think it must have been maybe 2006, I was sitting down at a dinner next to the CEO of a very, very large and well-known kind of sustainability consulting business, and we were having a chat about the future of the, of the role.

[00:25:25] SERGE: You know, literally what you just asked me. So we're 20 years ago, and he mentioned the inverted T model. Have you heard about the inverted T model? 

[00:25:35] JENN: Tell me about it. 

[00:25:36] SERGE: So an inverted T is, is that breadth of knowledge that you're actually dangerous across many topics, but having incredible expertise in one domain, right?

[00:25:49] SERGE: So breadth, you can be double and triple clicked across multiple things, but you've got a PhD. You're the world expert in something, right? And I think that's kind of what we need, and we need to build teams in sustainability that have a wide breadth of understanding, but multiple people bringing depth of expertise.

[00:26:09] SERGE: You cannot be the climate expert like I am, and be a human rights expert, which I am not, and be an AI expert, which definitely I'm not. Y- you, but you need to bring those people around you to then have an incredibly useful and very dangerous team But more essentially, that human side still matters, and maybe it will matter even more in the future because transformation doesn't happen because you have a framework or a regulation.

[00:26:38] SERGE: It happens because people trust each other, our priorities are clear, we understand each other. And then when sustainability is connected to some of the real choices the business has to make, that's when it becomes Awesome. So look, if I take, yeah, take a step back, 2035, I really hope the role is not a specialty function sitting on the side, but it's really core to private equity management, deal teams, how we operate 

[00:27:07] JENN: Embedded, in how we operate, helping to make decisions.

[00:27:11] JENN: inverted T, so specialization as well as, you know, breadth and having a human touch. 

[00:27:17] SERGE: Yeah. 

[00:27:18] JENN: Okay. All right. I mean, I gotta say, so we need some h- superhumans basically who are embedded and- 

[00:27:24] SERGE: Right ... 

[00:27:25] JENN: building better businesses. at, at the end of the podcast, I wanted to wrap up with a couple of my favorite questions.

[00:27:31] JENN: Um, obviously there's a lot in your diary and you're busy, and you still stay up to speed on multiple topics and, you know, can engage companies on the latest. How do you stay up to speed? Like, what are you reading? What are you listening to? 

[00:27:47] SERGE: I think the first way that I stay up to speed is spend time with the companies. We've spoken about that earlier. It's actually one of the most important sources of learning, 'cause they're in the reality of what's happening in their industries.

[00:27:59] SERGE: They're the ones who are gonna tell you how fast things are changing, and you get those conversations from the CEO, the CFO, the operations director, sustainability leads, and the commercial and sales teams. I think secondly, I stay very close to investors, my peers, and industry groups. I think sustainability is moving very quickly, and has always moved very quickly, and actually no one has all the answers.

[00:28:25] SERGE: So that collective learning is important. And frankly, some of my closest friends today are my peers. I, I talk to them on a daily basis. I talk to them more than I talk to my family. and then third, I just read, right? I spend a lot of times on planes, so I have tons of time to read. And I read across disciplines, right?

[00:28:43] SERGE: I'm not reading a sustainability report or the latest regulation, I'm reading about business strategy, technology, geopolitics, energy, behavioral change, uh, talent, industrial innovation. You know, I'm, I'm grabbing The Economist, the FT, The Wall Street Journal. I'm... You know, it, it... you have to immerse yourself in a lot of things.

[00:29:02] SERGE: And then finally, and that's actually the most interesting part for me, is I actually try to teach at university, and actually speaking to students and younger professionals is where you're learning so much, teaching, in a way, forces you to simplify your message, but it also forces you to ask- What do I really believe?

[00:29:23] SERGE: What am I passing along in terms of messages? Is it important and it matters for them now, or am I just making noise, right? It's kind of very useful because actually sustainability there's shit loads of noise, right? Everybody just talks noise. Actually bring it to what matters and kind of that's the reason why I think my proximity to our businesses is really what matters, what teaches me, what keeps me awake, and that kind of separates sustainability being a fashionable thing, word, in some parts of the world, very unfashionable in other sides of the world, actually ignores that and makes it useful.

[00:30:04] SERGE: Don't put a label on it. Sustainability, ESG, responsible sourcing, for me it's just good long-term business strategy 

[00:30:12] JENN: You mentioned covering a lot of,topics, reading widely, et cetera. I'm interested... The final question I have for you, Selge, is if you had to choose one book that's most shaped the way you think, which book would that be and why?

[00:30:29] SERGE: oh gosh. Uh, that's an interesting one.

[00:30:33] SERGE: I think a book that really shaped the way that I think is... I think the author is called Andrea Wulf, and the title is The Invention of Nature, which is a story of Alexander von Humboldt. it's actually a book that, um, Invest Industrial's founder, uh, gave to me as a present a few years ago. So I don't know how much you know about von Humboldt, but he's one of those pioneers.

[00:30:58] SERGE: he was in the 18th, 19th century, and he traveled South America. I think his background was... I don't think it's royalty, but it was in the Prussian, army. His father was very senior in government and army, and his brother as well. And he was supposed to have this great career in administration and the military, and decided to go discover the world, 

[00:31:19] SERGE: And he discovered the world, and he discovered amazing things. But what I love about his vision is that he actually saw nature as a system. It's not a collection of separate parts. Everything is deeply interconnected. So the book brings that idea really to light very powerfully. You know, he's... He was looking at climate and geography and plants and people and politics and economics all together way before we had sustainability or system thinking.

[00:31:49] SERGE: A- again, that's 18th, early 19th century. I think he traveled South America from, like, 1799 to 1805 or 1810, right? This is centuries ago. So kind of what brings... Kind of the lesson that I'm thinking about is in private equity, sustainability requires that exact same connected thinking. You can't look at carbon away from energy costs and away from water or operational resilience or regulation or customers.

[00:32:18] SERGE: It- it's all one thing interconnected, right? So if you take the lesson that I took from Humboldt about the world is connected, you actually realize that businesses are also connected to the world around them. You know, they depend on natural systems, social systems, regulatory systems, financial systems, and actually are shaped by society, by the way that we view things.

[00:32:40] SERGE: It's the same concept 200 years later, so for me, it's a book, it's written about history of science, but it isn't really. It kind of reminds us that sustainability is fundamentally the way that we see the whole picture way earlier than most of our peers do. It's helping our companies take those lessons to make better decisions long-term from us.

[00:33:06] JENN: Salz Younes, thank you so much for joining us on The Future in Sound.