Corporate Sustainability, Human Centric Work Culture, and Starting a Business with Kristen Rowe

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Kristen Rowe, CEO and Founder of NextGen ESG & LCA about Corporate Sustainability, Human Centric Work Culture, and Starting a Business.   Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes:
1:13  Nic & Laura talk about personality & work culture
7:00  Interview Starts
10:37  Starting a business
18:22  Corporate sustainability
26:26  Field Notes
33:24  Human centric work culture

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Kristen Rowe at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-rowe-b2985817/

Guest Bio:
Kristen Rowe, CEO and Founder of NextGen ESG & LCA, brings over 16 years of expertise in sustainability and life cycle assessment advising. She's renowned for advancing sustainability initiatives across sectors like consumer products, technology, healthcare, and more. As a thought leader, Kristen specializes in guiding companies of all sizes and stages of maturity on their sustainability journeys. NextGen’s company core values priorities authentic human connections, fostering trust with clients and colleagues, while striving to add substantial business value. Committed to a sustainable work culture, NextGen prioritizes the human experience and integrates technology to support clients on their sustainability journey.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Laura  
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite and burn Londres, Nick and Laura. On today's episode we're gonna talk about personality and work culture and talk to Kristin Rowe about corporate sustainability human centric work culture in starting a business. And finally, black widow spider is our rents that are known for the females unique and striking appearance as well as their rumored tendency to eat them mates are like that are considered to be one of the most venomous spiders in North America, however, their bite is rarely fatal to humans. The venom of the female Black Widow is 15 times stronger than the rattlesnakes, and they have the ability to paralyze large prey. Wow, that's crazy. That music

the annual nav conference and training symposium will occur coming up very soon. Sunday, May 5 through Wednesday, May 8 at the Renaissance Minneapolis hotel in Minneapolis. Minnesota is always a great time and will feature your favorite planning sessions with a regional fare register@www.sap.org And we'll see you there. Let's get to our segment. What do you want to talk about Nick? Well, I

Nic  
mean, like she talked about, like, using a more robust personality type systems to, you know, engage employees and like we're literally doing that right now for our staff at Dawson, which has been a really fun exercise that we've just just started to give people kind of

Laura  
not using sprays.

Nic  
No, we're not No, no, we're using clip and assessments, which is more like the reason I like it anyway. Is because it gives you a range of characteristics because it's like we talked about in the interview, nobody has ever just one thing, or you're not just introverted or just extroverted, doesn't put it in that framework. It puts it much more and I do have a tendency to like this, you know, you have a tendency to prefer repeating tasks. Over and over and that gives you satisfaction or you like to do these different things, and there's a lot of them. So it's not just one thing that you're reading. And so sometimes people will like that you have quadrants and they do all these things. Oh, you do these two things. Even that isn't real. It's not like people are that simple, but it's you know, it's more like, I like it because it's kind of like consistently who you are.

Laura  
Right? Well, she mentioned the anagrams, which I think is similar because it has your main tendency and then what you kind of fall back on. Yeah,

Nic  
and I think that's the one that's like the one that gives you like champion or something like that really cool term, I think it's that one, or it's like you're a commander or something like that. But what's that? What has numbers does that okay? So yeah, there's lots of different ones. I don't think there's ever necessarily one below one. You know, to us. It's really more about what you and your team find valuable I think, and you have to go into it with a healthy dose of like, this does not mean that you are always this way doesn't mean that you are only this category. I think if you can reiterate that I think people tend to accept it a little bit more. You know,

Laura  
like what what is yours?

Nic  
What is my like my like chart. So my mind was like, ideation. Right? So I love coming up with new ideas. I love thinking about complex problems and how to solve them and unique and new ways. arranger which is like I like to sort complex things into like bite sized chunks and empathy, which is, you know, pretty self explanatory, right? I mean, people need to manage them a bit for them to do that with like and understand where people are coming from developers is probably my personal favorite, because that's a basically it's like the coach one right where you'd love to bring out the best in people and help them see their full potential. And then the last one I got was to treat you and so those are my top five anyway. And so strategic is exactly what sounds like you'd like to strategize, think of new ways to get work and how that can come to be. You can kind of look at it as a an overall theme. Like, it tells you, it's probably good for me to be in marketing, it's probably good for me to be in a leadership role, because I'm going to really enjoy bringing people up and it helps the organization right so there's kind of like those combined themes. Which fits really well with what I do. So it's kind of just really fun to see. Everybody's got different ones. And I like to remind people that there's no right way to do things and even if I have a good one for my job, that doesn't mean that that's the only way to do my job. And I think people sometimes forget that. That's me. That's what I am. So I don't know what do you think or what do you do you approve?

Unknown Speaker  
Remember that off the top of your head?

Nic  
Yeah, but you know, I kind of have the right I've talked about it a lot, so I gotta at least have an idea of what it is.

Laura  
Yeah, I feel like I feel like as you're saying that it's like, are those your things because that's what you would have done or is that are those your things because that's what you do.

Nic  
Right, right. Exactly. In theory, that assessment, and it's not supposed to change a whole lot, which you know, but it does. It's been like a decade or so sometimes it'll change and so the last time I took it was like parents 12 years ago, and it was slightly different so I didn't have the developer or the arranger so i i picked up mentorship and executive skills, but it doesn't mean I don't have other things either. It just like came through and so you know, it's funny point, though, because it's also how I see myself, right? And it's my evaluation of me, which sometimes can also be a little bias. And so, we're also going to try to do a 360 evaluation where other people tell you how they see you, which is almost a little more helpful, right? Because that's really how the world sees you and not just how you see yourself. It doesn't mean those aren't both valuable. But yeah, I think that's the next step for us. Yeah,

Laura  
I think without having a third party, evaluate whether they think that the things that they came up with, like, you know, plus having your employees tell you to your face, whether they think that like oh no, you're not a great strategize er, like so doing 3/63 party person is makes a lot more sense.

Nic  
Yeah, exactly. And it's anonymous too. And you have to find the right people because it honestly like, one of the things I tried to reiterate are different things to different people. And we have different relationships with different people. So you may use like a part of your personality a little bit more in one area or a little bit less than another. Because again, people aren't static. We're not just one zero. So yeah, exactly. That's why it's important to have that independent evaluation two.

Speaker 1  
All right, cool. Well, it sounds like that's progress over there in the culture side. So let's get to our interview and see what customers say. Perfect.

Speaker 2  
Hello, and welcome to EPR. Today we have Kristin Rowe, the CEO and founder of next gen ESG and LCA on the show. Welcome, Kristin. Thank you glad to be here. All right. So workers through your your experience here like you, you have two degrees in engineering and International Affairs. So how did those two things come together? And how does that lead you to where you are today? Yeah.

Kristen Rowe  
So I when I started out in college, like most people, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. But I was really excited about engineering and science and thought I want to be like an international business person. So I just kind of leaned into that. And as I kind of went along in my college career started to really take an interest in more of the environmental engineering side, just through different projects. I got involved in different initiatives. So the international affairs degree has been useful just from a liberal arts perspective. But yeah, after college or as I was graduating college, trying to figure out what I wanted to do decided to just stay in school to avoid working. I also just didn't feel quite prepared, and so was looking at different graduate programs and really leaned into the environmental side. So I went to Duke to get my master of environmental management when then of course, I couldn't avoid working any longer. So yeah, I applied to different positions right out of grad school, and the one that was most appealing to me was a consulting position and have been in consulting pretty much ever since. Very,

Nic  
very cool. So before we dive into your consulting career, because that's right up my alley, you did your graduate research in New Zealand, you got a project in New Zealand. Is that true?

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah, that was really cool. Well, on the surface, it sounds really cool. So there was a professor at Duke who was transitioning over to the University of Auckland and trying to create a partnership with the Duke school and so I was the guinea pig, which had some great moments and some not so great moments, but yet got the chance to go over there. Beautiful country, as I'm sure everyone has heard and spent what was my summer of course in New Zealand, the other side of the world so not there somewhere there and got to do some sightseeing as well, some research, the topic area was around local water contamination and there was a connection to a local, the Maori people or the native people there. There had been a site that had been contaminated so it's just doing some research around that. So that's a really cool experience.

Nic  
How did that relate to what you ended up doing for work?

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah, great question. So at the time in graduate school, I was focused on like a concentration they called it which was water and air resources and I was doing research around water contamination and ground contamination. And then kind of towards the end of my graduate career, I pivoted a little bit and started to take some courses in climate science and policy. And so my final concentration actually ended up being more climate focused, but all of that coursework obviously counted. And because it was a master's degree didn't really need to differentiate. So when I started out in consulting, I was at an all environmental consulting firm, so we were, you know, sustainability wasn't even really a thing at the time. And so I was kind of like toggling across all different disciplines within that as a junior staff doing groundwater sampling and soil sampling and phase one and two site assessments and air verdicts. So it was a great I think foundation to be able to have that diversity and exposure.

Nic  
So and then which is honestly this was one of the benefits of consulting right? We work at a firm like that, especially larger ones. You have a lot more opportunity to figure out what do I actually like to do? So is that kind of how you decided to start your own company or it just kind of come to you a different way?

Kristen Rowe  
I think that's pretty much how it happened. Right? So you start to if you have the freedom within your job right to be able to have the flexibility to be able to try different projects, which I feel very fortunate that I was able to do that. Then you start to learn what you like and then you know if the leadership is okay with you leaning into the things that you really like and leaning away from the things that are not You're not as passionate about, then I think that that's that's what makes consultants really happy. Right? And so, right early in my career a few years in when I started to kind of figure out, you know, what I did and didn't like, quite as much. I mean, there wasn't really anything that I that I didn't like it just was my preference. Sustainability started to really emerge in the US. Also a parallel EPS greenhouse gas mandatory reporting role. was coming out on the early days, which is not directly connected, but still has obviously lots of companies are looking at their greenhouse gas emissions in their sustainability program. And because I had done some related undergraduate and graduate research in this area, and had an interest in it, I was able to get connected to that work in the early days when the company I was working for didn't have a huge team of experienced practitioners. So I was able to lean into that and then everything just kind of built off of that. I still did support a lot of like kind of traditional barbell compliance work earlier in my career, even after that point, but that's kind of how I started to really focus after the first three or four years in sustainability and so since then, that's really been a focus area for me.

Nic  
Yeah, and so even having the idea is wonderful, right? Yeah, I'm gonna start my own company. This is going to be so easy read is going to be even if you don't have you know, your eyes in this guy. It's hard. It's a hard thing to do. So, how did you kind of get through those initial steps because I even like the idea of it sounds incredibly daunting to me. So how did you get through it?

Kristen Rowe  
Well, I wouldn't quite say I'm through it, but I have watched

Nic  
this Yeah.

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah, so I think you know, it was a good 15 years of consulting and working for both a large and then a smaller firm that I also helped grow prior to launching next gen that gave me a lot of experience, a little bit of confidence and just an understanding of what might work really well. It might not and I think seeing different cultures within consulting, both from my own personal experience, as well as, you know, as I build out teams and lead teams and supportive teams kind of hearing their stories or like what what was the great aspects of their consulting work and the not so great aspects, I think, really helped me understand at least formulate for myself and the team here at Next Gen kind of what we're looking for in terms of our mission. So

Nic  
tell us a little bit more about it. What is your mission? What's your day to day

Kristen Rowe  
so you know, I think at Epicor the way we make money obviously is providing consulting services, but that's just a means to an end right. I think the thing that I'm most excited about is the namesake next gen really has significant meaning and that we are trying to run a next gen culture that is really prioritizing human experience really making human connections, understanding how relationships with our teammates, with our clients, with our different stakeholders and partners, make or break kind of your work experience and how you can really lean into that to just to cultivate a Healthier Work Environment or navigate different tricky situations, right? Because at the end of the day, we're humans first and professional second, and if we can't get that, right, we can't get the professional part. Right. So we have a lot of very intentional infrastructure that we're building out around, just trying to help cultivate the whole human here. To the extent you can in a professional setting. So that's kind of part of next gen. The other part is that we are integrating artificial intelligence like lots of organizations. Of course, that's not entirely unique, but trying to do it, you know, as accelerated as possible, trying to keep up with the trends in order to not only enhance the value that our work can bring in day to day in terms of how we do our work, but also in in helping bring understanding and expertise to our clients because a lot of the work we do is very data and information heavy and historically, a lot of human labor has gone into that and AI is automating that and advancing has the potential to advance sustainability beyond at a pace beyond what any of us I think could even imagine. And so really trying to help our clients get to that point so that they can focus more on impact and data collection, reporting, etc. And then, of course, for me, I have kids, so you know, doing this, what gets me up every day is them. And so I think about that in my day to day life, and if I'm coming to work and my people aren't happy and I don't feel happy and I'm not fulfilled as a whole person. I can't serve them as well. And so from the human side, that's important. But then also, I do actually ever be passionate about environmental causes. And I think getting to work with both small and very large companies is where I can have a lot of impact from a pure like environmental impact standpoint.

Nic  
I mean that you touched on something that's really something I think about all the time, right. So when you're in a position where you you're not just doing a service, you're not just providing service for clients, you're also providing value to your team members. And if you don't do your job, a lot of people can be hurt by that, you know, financially or otherwise. It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure and easy. You've got a family, my kids, how do you manage that pressure?

Kristen Rowe  
through many years of therapy I love that question. I think, you know, it's not quite as taboo anymore to talk about mental health, but that's just as important as physical health and, and all the other things and I think, again, coming back to the human experience, the human connection piece, like we all wake up every day with different emotions and different experiences that are shaping the emotional state that we might be in from one moment to the next and I think it's been a long journey. Like we're all human, we're all going to have both positive and afflictive emotions, you know, just identifying ways to first of all, just recognize that and then manage it is really important. So that's not to say that I don't ever feel stressed or angry or you know, all of the things but I have I feel like I've built a toolbox just to help manage it. And then you know, just trying to keep perspective on what really matters in life. Like at the end of the day. The work is really important and keeping the business afloat, especially now as the kind of as the leader of a company is really important. But again, we have to balance all of the things across our lives in order to be able to feel like we're managing things well.

Nic  
Yeah, exactly. And I say I love the idea to like so many times we love to put labels on things, you know someone's an introvert or an extrovert and if you talk to any one person and you ask them to give them a story about being alone or being in a group of people, they'll have many. So no matter what, people do extroverted things all the time people do introverted things all the time. It's really hard to say I'm only this right and it almost limits people's way of thinking like, Oh, I'm an introvert. I can't talk to human beings. Have you talked to human beings? Yes, a lot, actually. Now that I think about it, right? So it's kind of one of the funny things we'd like to talk about in the show. Because so so often, people get really confused on that. So I'd love to hear it. I really, really do. But like tell us like, you know, what interesting projects are you working on? So you got the framework, you've got the the setup, what are you working on?

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah, that's a great question. Of course, I think all projects are interesting. Yeah, so we have one. One of our projects is with the beef production company they have are implementing some practices to reduce the emissions from their cattle and pursuing some carbon credits around that. So that's an interesting project just to explore that kind of scientific analysis data collection around those reductions and what the potential is in the marketplace for carbon credits and how that might benefit stakeholders. We are doing some lifecycle assessments, which is you know, like I think the most familiar thing kind of to the audience could be like a product carbon footprint, we're seeing a lot more transparency around carbon. A great example not our client but just a tangible example is Panera. You know, the faster restaurant company has on their menus, like Whole Foods and and warmer foods and you know, all related to a carbon footprint. So we've got some interesting projects around that and helping companies really communicate what the potential environmental advantages are of their projects. And then, I mean, I think the biggest focus area kind of in the ESG sustainability space, just hands down across the board is around climate. So we're doing a lot of work on creating baselines on decarbonisation strategies on thinking about communicating to stakeholders. And then of course, the conversation is now becoming a lot more about business risks and opportunities related to climate and converging with those financial conversations, not just doing it for the right reason, or because we don't want to see the effects of global warming and the impacts on society and our ecosystems, but also how does it directly affect the bottom line of the company? And so I think that's, that's something that is transforming the landscape, the business landscape on how we talk about some of these ESG topics, because we can still have all the benefits that are you know, feel good and we're doing right for society and helping the various ecosystems but also it makes business sense for some of these initiatives that which is it was harder to connect the dots over the years previously.

Laura  
So do you feel like people are getting more unacceptable but you know, easier to buy into bringing us into their companies? Or do you still have to do a lot of education and sales and try to twist people's arms and to say, This is why you should do this, or people becoming more like, I know, I need to do this and why, you know, just looking to hire you.

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah, great question. I think it's more so the ladder and I definitely not this in a pushy salesperson type, but I'm happy to kind of educate and step back and have that conversation around what doesn't doesn't make business sense and really focus that on. You know, at the end of the day, you still have a product or service to deliver in. We want to make sure that you know, these investments on the climate side or on the product carbon footprinting side, make business sense and actually add business value as opposed to just you should do it because it's the right thing to do. And so there is some education because the landscape is rapidly evolving. There's so much information out there. There's so many new regulations, there's so many new guidelines, there's different entities providing, you know, what they would consider best in class guidance in its acronym soup. And so the education piece is really just helping, you know, those clients or those potential clients just get on the same page with what's important kind of where to focus their efforts. But typically, I think the there's just a lot of recognition in the marketplace that these initiatives are important. And obviously, depending on an individual's position within an organization, there might be different drivers and motivations for that, but I think it's much less arm twisting than perhaps it used to be,

Laura  
right. And then when you're working with these clients, is there any like particular aha moment or lessons learned that you know, at some point, the client is like, well, this is cool, but then at some point, you're like, Oh, I we love this like, or anything? Yeah,

Kristen Rowe  
for sure. I mean, I think there's something that I experience, I would say fairly routinely that that is really one of my favorite pieces of these engagements is like as a community, we're really focused on data transparency and collecting data analyzing data in it's almost I use the phrase perfection as the enemy that good because like the numbers will never be perfect, but when will they be good enough? And so really getting to that point as quickly and efficiently as possible, like really minimizing the internal strain on how much data we need and how much analysis we need to do. Of course, it needs to be robust and it needs to meet this or that standard or regulation, but kind of getting to the end of telling that story is like, you know, at the beginning I say I don't think that xy and z is going to matter. So we're not going to focus you know, as much effort, time and resources and budget on that. And then when you get to the end, you can tell a story like within your corporate value chain. Here's where your most significant admission categories are and here's what you might be able to do about it. The light bulb just goes off when you can get to that point. And then you can very quickly, much more easily get to those conversations about what do we do about it because it doesn't feel quite as overwhelming because it's not excuse me that all data matters. It's just that's been most of the data are some of the data matters and it helps kind of ease that overwhelm. But

Laura  
yeah, that's awesome. That makes sense. And for one female entrepreneur to another congrats on starting your business and timing on some other topics, but the one that we wanted to start with is because we all love animals here I'm witnessing a baby calf being born on a dairy farm. When did this happen? And yeah, passing by or

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah, no, I think it was probably 12 plus years ago, fairly early on in my career, but when I had started to lean a little bit more into sustainability, and I got an amazing opportunity to go out to a farm in Kansas. It was a family farm like generations, and they were raising dairy cattle across three or four different operations in the area. And we were there for several days doing so carbon footprinting and sustainability work. And we, you know, of course, we would walk the grounds and they would tell us about their operations. And so just just during one of those moments, a mother a mama was given birth to a calf and it didn't take very long, but of course, they let us watch it and it just, it just was a really cool experience. You know, we do you know, depending on what area you focus on in the environmental field, you get more or less time kind of in the field or boots on the ground. And now my current position, it's much more remote and kind of virtual desktop report, that sort of thing. So I always think back on that experience is something that was just really touching and impactful and memorable. Yeah,

Laura  
that's awesome. We have another episode. We're Rhonda Everman, who was has a family farm was talking about a tragic story. It was a different story in the same story, but different stories. I appreciate your happy story. Well, yeah, and I think to like, you know, as environmentalists, we're not doing this just for the plants in the people, right, the animals and all of the things that are here to you. So that's really all absolutely,

Kristen Rowe  
yeah, and that project did have some animal welfare components to it and kind of going back to the human connection. This was a family farm. This was their livelihood. The work we were doing was not just like some numbers were putting into a database, but like directly impacted them. So those bonds that I formed with those family members were also just really acceptable as well. We've been named one of their cattle, older cattle that had been there that they chose not to send it off the farm even after she was productive. I can't remember the name but that was kind of fun.

Nic  
It was odd. Yeah. Is that Bessie is the first thing that came to my mind. That's like, Tony,

Kristen Rowe  
what's something Yeah, commonplace like that.

Nic  
That's really, really cool. So we have a thing on the show we call field notes where we ask our listeners to share memorable moments about the work that you do in the field. We encourage listeners to share their stories as well, using the hashtag field notes so we can share those on there. But yeah, so that was like that was a really good story. Do you have another field story maybe about spiders that you'd like to hit with?

Kristen Rowe  
So yes, I early in my career when I was supporting, kind of like site investigation remediation work, I got the great fortune to go out into the field and collect lots of groundwater and soil samples. And as a kid growing up, I was a tomboy and had no problems picking up the frogs and digging for worms. But I guess as I got older and life happens, you start to become scared. Even though I love to protect the environment, I prefer it to stay out of my personal space. And a lot of this field work just involved, kind of like more remote areas or areas where there were lots of spiders or snakes. And I just remember this one site that had a family of black widow spiders that lived in like the sampling well, so we'd have to like open the well and then carefully like put the sampling equipment and make sure we're obviously we're not touching the black widow spiders and so that was as close and as intimate as I have been to poisonous, I guess technically voluntarily saying

Nic  
yeah, oh yeah, that's totally makes sense though. I mean, they're, they're you know, intense animals. It's irrational fear.

Laura  
Oh, it's they got ants and spiders all the the equipment shed is always full of creepy crawly. Yes.

Kristen Rowe  
Yes. And people would just make fun of me because I just couldn't contain the like the fear.

Nic  
I had I had a co worker of mine once like we came into it. We're in the forest. We came into a clearing and a turkey just flew away from an ass but like right over her head and she's freaked and then disappeared. I have no idea at the clearing, looking down to the mass of eggs and I'm like, What on earth just It's okay. It could be way worse.

Kristen Rowe  
Thank you. Yeah. We

Nic  
also love to make connections with who we are outside of our jobs. And one of the things we'd love to ask about his hobbies and you are a former division one soccer player and still still love to play and also committed cross CrossFit athletes athletes. So I mean, sorry, Laura, but I'm gonna ask her a bunch of soccer questions now. So where did you play?

Kristen Rowe  
What I got recruited to Lafayette College, which is division one Patriot League, but kind of nerd it out very quickly realized how much commitment it would be to continue with all the practices and games and travel. So within the first year, I actually left the team and it wasn't it wasn't a party or anything like that. It was because I went to activities were an extra extracurricular activities fair. And I was like, Well, I want to be able to do all these things and how can I play soccer and to this and so I ended up leaving the team and just doing intramurals and stuff, but I did play for a little bit on the team. I

Nic  
remember they're still extremely cool and you still see you're in the Raleigh area. Do you ever follow the Raleigh courage by any chance? Yeah, so

Kristen Rowe  
I think they're part of the NCFC division and now that I have kids who are coming up the ranks and soccer it's a whole empire of soccer players. So yeah, we be we go to those games sometimes I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm like devoted fab.
_____
Kristen Rowe  
It's you're coming up the ranks in soccer. It's a whole empire of soccer players. So yeah, we be we go to those games sometimes. I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm like devoted fab, but definitely have got to see some of the games and be a part of the action.

Nic  
Super fun. Yeah. It truthfully same same though it's it's always a challenge. I mean, how much has that changed? I remember when I was a kid and like, soccer was always kind of like the maybe fourth sport that they wanted you to try. You know, but I think I feel like that's changed over time. Have you seen that kind of shift?

Kristen Rowe  
I mean, you know, I grew up in the Northeast. And so I think there's also just perhaps something and I now that I live in Raleigh, in the south, there might be culture, I feel like soccer is huge here. And like the leagues are very competitive and intense. So I don't know if it's shifted over time or I just wasn't a part of that. Integrated culture. But of course, there's lots of other sports and things that kids do as well. So yeah,

Nic  
yeah, that's really cool. So okay, anyway, so do you also do do CrossFit, which by itself sounds super intense, is it? Is that a challenge because to me like it just I don't even know if I could get started with it just seems like really like I have to, like my eyes have to be open at all times. I'm not allowed to blink in order to get involved. Am I wrong? Or did tell me about?

Kristen Rowe  
So I think it's a really great question because first of all, cross it can be for any stage of fitness. And the reason I actually started was because I really did want to challenge myself. And then something I realized as I was going to it, it was truly kind of an escape in my kind of one of my investments in in my mental and physical health because it is so challenging. I can't focus on anything but the exercises and the workout when I'm there because if you do, you'll just get hurt. So, and I used to think it was so intimidating, and I actually have only been doing it for maybe a year and a half, two years. So I've not been I mean, there are people who've done it for a decade and are really into it. And so I just love that I can show up every day and get a little bit better each day. And you know like I said, it's for all fitness levels. It definitely requires a certain mindset and you have to really love kind of for the intense physical exercise. It's you know, if you love more so yoga or some of those more gentle exercises which CrossFit is not better or worse that you know, you might not be interested in it but it's just been really fun to challenge myself and have something goals outside of work to kind of progress towards.

Nic  
It's very cool. Yeah, I challenged myself I'm the kind of person like I don't know how to play a sport that's not 110% which is not always a good thing, right doesn't mean you get better at it just means it's like it's way harder. Right now. No, no Calm down, breathe, swing through, you know, kind of stuff and sometimes it's too much. Yes,

Kristen Rowe  
for sure. And it's certainly humbling because in something like CrossFit, there's always going to be lots of people said

Nic  
oh gosh, if you ever want to get over that you just go on a ski slope. Adult and watch five year olds do flips over your head, you know, and you're like, okay, yeah, it's fine. I don't have to be. There's like, like, athletic and there's athlete. You don't have to be at the top. You can just mess

Kristen Rowe  
it. Absolutely. I agree.

Laura  
Yeah, I'm more of one of those persons who prefers yoga to like to sweat

Kristen Rowe  
and that's right. I think I should do more yoga in my life and probably a little bit less CrossFit. I think that we'll

Laura  
have some moderation here. Okay, so we're running out of time, but I want to ask you one more question about the work. So jumping back into work after we jumped out of it, but I'd like to know a little bit more about the human centric aspect of your company and what are the actual initiatives that you do to maintain your employees wellness and that would be what most companies are not doing? Sure.

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah. No, I love that question. And because we're kind of newer and smaller, it's not the fancy like we pay X, hundreds of dollars for gym memberships, and that sort of thing. Of course, we'd love to get there but at this stage, it's really about self awareness, interpersonal development, and really vulnerability having those open candid conversations in a professional context, of course, in helping kind of raise awareness and educate staff through different training programs and frameworks that we're building out or the leadership team has used over the years. One example you or listeners may have heard of, is the Enneagram framework that is becoming a little bit more mainstream in the business setting, to Personality Typing. And, you know, just like the Myers Briggs, that sort of thing, but I think it's a little bit more in depth to kind of starting to learn about how you may see the world is different from how other people may see it perceive the world and how you prefer to receive communication, or is most resonant with you might be different than other people. And then that becomes a lightbulb moment because you realize, oh wait, like they don't see the world the way that I do. And so I may need to tailor how I'm communicating or on receiving or how I'm interpreting things and I think that's just it's a slow burn, right? Like it's a muscle like you have to keep exercise again. It has to be integrated into your day to day culture. But what it does is it cultivate some of those harder conversations that other organizations may not be encouraging to have around work. I mean, there's there's work conflicts that come up all the time, you know, if you're frustrated or whatever. And that doesn't mean that you have that has to be a focus of your everyday existence, but that there's mechanisms to resolve healthfully in a very productive way. And ideally, conflict avoidant way working through some of those interpersonal issues that you inevitably face when you work with other human beings. Yeah,

Nic  
it's incredible because like, you know, people sometimes need to be reminded in different ways that people are different. It's amazing. You would think it would be everybody would just know that, but they so don't they also don't.

Kristen Rowe  
Absolutely. And I mean, even when you when you realize that or you practice it or you see the benefits, you still have to remind yourself and I you know, being a parent as well, it's something that I'm trying to teach my kids and I sometimes just take a breath and I'm like like they're not seeing the world and that's a different

Nic  
That's the mark of a good coach, right sometimes the best players aren't the best coaches, because the best players don't have to think about how to do something the way you know, someone who doesn't have the most natural talent does. And so it's absolutely they make better coaches, because they know Oh, this is how I got better. Here's lots of different ways for you to do the same thing. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah,

Laura  
that's great. And I think, you know, some of the bigger companies, they jump right to providing, you know, here's a health plan that gives you a therapy and here's a gym membership, but then we're not going to we're not going to have these conversations at work. And then there's a disconnect, right? Because like if I have to go talk to my therapist about work every day, but I can't talk to my boss about what I'm going through, then. Probably not likely going to fix a problem. Absolutely.

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah. And I think I mean, all of those are important, obviously. But one of the things that I have to remind myself of and as you know, I kind of mentioned the phrase vulnerability, it's something that I try and wear on my sleeve because you do feel uncomfortable sometimes bringing these topics but one of the things I know that I'm working on, is slowing down to have those conversations and create that space. Because you know, I do have a lot going on and I am trying to juggle lots of balls, and I just have to remind myself that equally important of this deliverable or this this client objective is to make the space for my team and I to have those conversations.

Laura  
Yeah, that's awesome. But we are running out of time. Is there anything else you want to talk about that we did not touch on?

Kristen Rowe  
I think the only other thing that I'll that I'll share is just it's just been a great career journey. For me. I think at the stage that I'm at kind of lots of stuff that I've worked on in my personal professional life are coalescing together. And so I feel like there's just harmony, and it's like I see things that I'm leaning into in my in my personal life, helping my professional life and vice versa. And so I think that's kind of part of the beautiful aspect of, you know, what I've learned and it's culture I'm trying to create at Next Gen is that it doesn't have to always be, here's my work life and here's my professional life and it's silent. Like we can have more of a spectrum or those things kind of work together in for me.

Nic  
Yeah, I mean, it's even like doing things like being able to work from home on certain days, or even, you know, just having that as an option in general. helps a lot of people, and so very cool. That's very cool.

Laura  
So where can people get in touch with you? Yeah,

Kristen Rowe  
so LinkedIn, Kristin Rowe, R O, W. E is my last name, or you can visit our company website at WWW dot next gen esg.co.

Laura  
Awesome. Thank you, Kristin, for joining us today. It's been great.

Kristen Rowe  
Yeah, thank you so much. And

Nic  
that's our show. Thank you personally for joining us today.

Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe rate and review. See everybody I

Transcribed by https://otter.ai