Meet your Co-Founders: Heather Mak
Who are you?
I’m Heather Mak, an entrepreneur, volunteer, daughter, mom, wife, and sister. In my day-to-day life, I work in the field of sustainability consulting, mostly with consumer facing companies, and I was also one of the co-founders of Diversity in Sustainability.
What made you realize that you should be in the field?
Earlier on in my life, I remember doing projects on rainforest destruction in the Amazon, acid rain and the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska- it seemed insane to me at that young age the destructive impact that humans had on the Earth. In university, I remember taking a course at McGill called the Social Context of Business with Prof. Louis Chauvin that really formed the basis of my knowledge, and that same summer I had an internship at a major consumer packaged goods company. We had an internal conference with hundreds of people in attendance, and I remember walking over to the microphone and asking the president of the company a question that I had struggled with – “how are we supposed to be sustainable if we rely on pushing people to consume more?” He was so shocked by the question, and really had to think about the answer. It drove home for me how much more needed to be done by business.
However, it still didn’t occur to me that I could work on sustainability in business or for a consumer goods company – until at my first full-time job for a German candy company. Walmart was one of our big customers, and they had announced their 100% renewable energy, zero waste goals. It then made me realize that I could combine my interest in business and sustainability, and that business had a role to play – and I haven’t looked back since.
What was your first job in sustainability? What did you learn from that experience?
My first job in sustainability was at Canadian Business for Social Responsibility, which I obtained after I finished my MBA in Business and Sustainability at Schulich. Amazingly, it was a completely speculative application at the height of the financial crisis, so I wasn’t expecting a reply. I hadn’t been a consultant before, but I had previously worked in consumer goods, and I think they liked that I had that practical experience. I credit my boss at the time, Andrea Baldwin, for building up my consulting skills. I also enjoyed learning from all my colleagues who each had a different experience and expertise to bear – it was a great place to learn and meet others in the industry. I’m still quite close with many of my colleagues and members - including Marie, who is one of the co-founders of Diversity in Sustainability.
Why do you think diversity in sustainability is important?
I think it’s important for several reasons. I think for the longest time, sustainability has been approached from a colonial perspective, and I’ve come to realize that incorporating more diverse perspectives will help us come up with more equitable solutions. It is no secret that people of colour are also disproportionately affected by the consequences of environmental problems.
This past year, in addition to books about anti-racism, I’ve been digging deep into books about the history and traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples, as well as books about my own Chinese heritage, and of minorities in China. There is so much wisdom in traditional knowledge, which has been discounted for so long.
I’m also seeing a generational shift occurring among people of colour as well in relation to societal systems and institutions. Where I would say that people in my parents’ generation and before would have been excluded from participating in them, people in my generation (the late millennial, almost Gen X crowd) have been trying to exact change within systems that were designed by a homogeneous group. And now younger people have declared that these systems are no longer working, and we must redesign from the ground up. If we are redesigning from the ground up, we have to make sure it is as inclusive as possible.
Why did you want to get involved in Diversity in Sustainability?
George Floyd’s murder really shook me to the core. I began to think about the tangible things we could do to combat systemic racism beyond reading and speaking up and donating to different causes. And I thought about this pocket of the universe in sustainability – and started initiating discussions with other BIPOC people, and came to the conclusion that we could and should do something really impactful.
What advice would you give to students, young professionals or mid-career professionals that want to get into the field?
My advice to them would be to meet as many people as you can in the field and learn from them, and also to find your niche. This is a quickly emerging field with new developments every day. There is more than enough work to go around - we absolutely need all hands on deck.
“I would actually say that we don’t have enough people working on these issues– and these are huge, intractable problems that urgently need to be solved. ”
Do you have a mentor? How have they helped you in your career or personal growth?
I don’t have a formal mentor per se, but I have many people that I often speak to for guidance and I am someone who naturally likes to keep in touch with people. One of my friends in the field, Lara Kortizke, once gave me the advice that it’s important to have someone that you go to for advice who is 10 years older than you and another who is 10 years younger than you. I’ve found this to be true - it helps to anticipate what’s to come, but to also help out the people directly behind you, who more often than not, have a fresh way to approach things that you probably didn’t think of. This principle underlies the reason why we have built a co-mentorship program for Diversity in Sustainability.
When did you first realize that your diversity made you different from your counterparts in the field?
When I grew up, I felt as though I had to hide or minimize my Chinese heritage, as I grew up in a particularly homogenous part of Toronto. As I get older, I’ve come to realize how important it is to embrace your heritage and I’ve been spending a lot of time reading up about Chinese history, politics, and current events and reconciling it with my own family history and how it all relates to sustainability. The past few years, I’ve been working on a few projects that touched on issues related to China and I’ve been able to offer up a lot of nuance to others. More broadly, I think being a person of colour in general – you know what it feels like as an outsider, and I think it makes you more sensitive to cues that other might miss.
What was your proudest moment as a sustainability professional?
My proudest moment was working on solutions for the Canadian apparel industry after the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. It was completely devastating how many lives were lost. But working together with the industry, the government, NGOs and multilateral institutions to come up with workable, systemic solutions was a huge learning experience for me, and it gave me new insight into how institutions work, the political maneuvering of different constituents, and collaborating with unlikely partners. There is, of course, still a lot of work to be done, particularly as it relates to fundamental business models.
What quote do you most live by and why?
One of my favourite quotes comes from one of my heroes, Quincy Jones – “Make decisions out of love, and not fear.” I’ve thought back to my own life and what I’ve realized that whenever I have ever done things out of fear, status or ego reasons, it never works out. However, if you do something you love, things always seem to work out somehow, sometimes in unexpected ways. If I apply that to climate change – how do we work towards a future that we want to see, instead of a future that we’re afraid of – it’s a subtle shift in mindset, but effective in rallying people around your vision.
Heather and her daughter.
What issues in sustainability are you most concerned about?
Since having a daughter, I’ve been increasingly thinking through what world she will grow up in. I was born at a time when the atmospheric CO2 levels were at 341ppm, in the safe threshold. We are now at 415 ppm - and without major changes in how we live, life is going to only be more volatile. I think in general the things I’m most concerned about are:
Climate change – without a doubt the biggest issue of our time. This will affect everyone and will disproportionately hurt those who don’t have the means to protect themselves. The idea of equity is very important and often overlooked and our intention with Diversity in Sustainability is to shift that lens.
Unfettered consumption – in the Western world people with means seem to consume their way out of every problem. I think it is insanity that we are now at a place where people are buying a monthly subscription box of random things and then putting all these random things into the garbage. I find it insane that there’s an industry of professional “stuff” organizers. We as a society have become extremely wasteful and we are losing our ability to be self-sufficient and to make do with little.
Cancel culture – I think social media has created this mob mentality – instead of reasoned and open dialogue, we’ve moved towards justice with hashtags and memes. This way of approaching complex issues like racism, equity, and climate change, will not be solved in this way.
What development(s) have excited you most in the field?
I’m excited by companies setting carbon negative or restorative targets. It’s not enough to just do our part, but also the idea of giving back more than you take is powerful.
I’m also excited by learning from our ancestors on how to protect the environment. The more I dig into different solutions from the past in how to protect soil and water - the more and more I realize how much wisdom there is in history.
Read more about Heather here: http://www.heathermakconsulting.com.