For the past four years, the Vogue Business Sustainability Leaders Survey has gathered insights from the pioneers driving corporate sustainability forward, hoping to understand what ultimately makes a sustainability team successful.

In 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, we surveyed brand sustainability teams — as well as the consultancies, third-party suppliers, industry bodies, and certification schemes in their orbit — to unpack the common challenges and emerging best practices.

What we found is that many sustainability teams are chronically under-resourced and over-stretched, often tasked with delivering ambitious systems change on shoestring budgets and working in siloes. There is limited cross-functional collaboration, despite the fact that meeting sustainability targets means working with stakeholders throughout the supply chain. And sustainability professionals frequently experience burnout.

This year, we decided to turn those insights into something more actionable: a toolkit for building a winning sustainability team, and creating the right system of incentives and influence to set them up for success. It’s not a one-size-fits-all blueprint, but a variety of case studies and sustainability archetypes you can pick and choose from, depending on the scale and needs of your organization.

The nine sustainability archetypes each represent a core skill that sustainability teams need in different combinations at different times. “Working in sustainability can mean so many different things, and really, all jobs have a sustainability element. You can take the experience you already have and use it to make a positive impact,” explains Hannah Phang, co-founder and chief marketing officer of sustainability consultancy The Now Work, who developed the archetypes. “They can be quite fluid, too. You might be in a meeting with your COO playing the translator role, then your CEO might ask you about the direction of the organization and you might have to flex into visionary mode.”

Just as a startup might switch CEOs from early stage to growth stage to late stage, which archetypes are most relevant can also evolve over time. A decade ago, sustainability was largely considered a technical challenge, where engineer/designer archetypes lead the charge. Now, a lot of teams have dealt with the low-hanging fruit and they need to take on really big transformations, so the storyteller/influencer and diplomat/negotiator roles are coming to the fore. “You don’t necessarily need all of these skills in your team permanently, but you can employ them at different times,” says Phang. That’s why The Now Work has seen so much demand for its matchmaking service, which connects businesses with freelance or fractional experts and contractors as needed.

As businesses mature, their sustainability teams shift, too. Rather than making the moral case for sustainability, many teams are now making the business case, focusing on supply chain resilience, risk mitigation, and driving long-term value. “As sustainability becomes more embedded, sustainability teams start handing off more work to other departments,” says Phang. “This is where translators and bridge-builders become really important, so it doesn’t seem like a naggy list of to-dos, but something other departments are excited to take accountability for. Marketers can see how sustainability creates more interesting stories and new ways to engage consumers, operational teams can see how it drives efficiency and cost savings, and everyone knows how sustainability supports their other KPIs.”

Once you understand the archetypes, you can build a team structure that sets them up for success. That means addressing how teams come together, how workflows and processes are designed, who is responsible for different buckets of work, how people are incentivized, whether sustainability aligns with their other targets and metrics of success, and so on. “In the past, sustainability felt like a technical challenge, because we didn’t know the steps businesses should take to become more sustainable,” says Phang. “Now, we do know what needs to happen; the real challenge is creating the organizational structures and culture to bring it to life.”

This is where sustainability really becomes embedded in the core business, she continues. “Businesses are navigating an increasingly volatile market, and things are changing quickly. Some sustainability teams are being cut, but those that know how to make the business case for sustainability are still growing and being given resources. Maybe it’s a survival tactic or something innate to them, but they know how to prove their value.”

Below, Vogue Business shares six brand case studies, showing how the archetypes come to life, from Tekla, Vivobarefoot, Reformation, Tapestry, Kering, and Veja. Copenhagen-based lifestyle brand Tekla demonstrates how smaller teams skew toward more generalist roles, where one or two people have to embody multiple archetypes. On the opposite end of the spectrum, luxury conglomerate Kering shows that sometimes, one archetype can be built out into an entire team. French sneaker brand Veja doesn’t have a sustainability team at all, instead working on the basis that it’s everyone’s job to drive progress.

“Which structure creates the most success depends on the size, maturity, complexity, and people within your business. It should be designed intentionally for that specific organization,” says Phang. “You need to understand how work currently gets done to drive organizational change and navigate those dynamics successfully.”

Tekla: Lean on external partners

The vast majority of fashion businesses are small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). With limited headcount and budget to dedicate to sustainability, it often falls on one person, sometimes on top of their full-time job. Tekla recently graduated from one sustainability person to two, when head of sustainability Pippa Smart hired a sustainability coordinator to act as a much-needed sparring partner and ease the administrative burden of sustainability reporting, so she could focus more on big-picture strategy. As a one-person team, Smart was juggling competing priorities, balancing short-term wins with long-term investments, and often feeling overstretched — she had to embody all of the archetypes at once. Incoming regulations made it even harder to prioritize, and pigeonholed Smart into the enforcer and integrator roles. “It’s a great thing that the industry is starting to mandate and regulate sustainability, but it was a big part of why we expanded the team,” she says, noting that she now gets to lean into the visionary archetype more.

With limited resources, Tekla relies heavily on external working groups, industry bodies, and software platforms to expand its capacity. Smart works with French platform Fairly Made on traceability, supplier data, and product footprints, as well as global platform Carbon Trail on carbon accounting. “These systems are constantly evolving, as are our internal systems, and we’re trying to streamline and automate processes where we can,” says Smart. For guidance and standards, Tekla leans on non-profits like Textile Exchange, and for regulation updates, it turns to local industry body Dansk Mode & Textil (DM&T). Smart is also part of an informal working group of local peers, who share best practices and help each other tackle common challenges. “It helps to see how other people are approaching implementation, and the practicalities of rolling out certain policies, in a more conversational setting,” she adds. “That’s been really brilliant.”

Executive buy-in can be transformative for small teams. At Tekla, Smart reports to the managing director. Having a direct line to top management is great for visibility, she says. The same is true for her counterparts in operations and product development — a dynamic, she says, is critical to put sustainability on an “equal footing” with the two functions she collaborates most closely with. This sets up the sustainability team for success by including them in decision-making processes early on, which can be especially helpful when it comes to engaging, auditing, and improving supplier partners.

To win and maintain this level of buy-in, Smart says internal engagement is key. “It can sometimes seem like you’re coming in with a lot of requirements and extra work, and if you don’t take the time to explain the problems you’re solving, it can be more challenging to get people on board. If someone has a lot on their plate already, it’s more a question of how you can simplify it to support them?” she explains. Celebrating small victories helps, too. “When we first certified as B Corp, I was obviously very proud, but I underestimated what it meant to everyone else. It was so valuable to unify a lot of complicated work, and it had a lot more power than I expected, internally.”

Vivobarefoot: Think beyond traditional hierarchies

British footwear company Vivobarefoot has one of the most atypical team structures in sustainability. Co-founders Galahad Clark and Asher Clark — seventh generation descendants of the Clarks shoemaking family — practice regenerative leadership, a model designed to move beyond tick-box corporate sustainability and deliver systems-level change.

Regeneration lead Charlotte Pumford manages the unconventional organizational structure, which swaps the family tree-style hierarchy used by most companies for cross-functional ‘circles’, which allow individuals across the business to get involved with collaborative projects that pique their interest. These could be more consistent challenges, like integrating more sustainable materials or implementing a triple bottom line, where a company prioritizes people, planet, and profit in equal measure. They could be projects like B Corp re-certification, which happens every few years (here, circle members are known as B-Keepers), or short-term sprints, like when Vivobarefoot launched its online natural health platform, Vivohealth. “The circles are kind of like transitional departments,” explains Pumford. “People have clear overlaps, similarities, and cross-working partnerships within the circles. We don’t think an organization should be rigid or top-down; it should be a living, breathing ecosystem that can be reactive to opportunities.”

As with many companies, the sustainability team at Vivobarefoot is constantly evolving. The brand recently hired a senior compliance and impact analyst to help track more than 30 pieces of incoming regulation and act as the glue for all the cross-functional work required to comply. Outside compliance and reporting — which Pumford says “seems to be taking over” in recent years, with the influx of EU regulations on sustainable fashion — Vivobarefoot has also hired a compliance and engagement manager in Vietnam, allowing the brand to scale back third-party supply chain audits and own more of that process internally.

Operating with such a unique hierarchy means Vivobarefoot attracts thinkers who are open to disrupting the status quo — people who might feel most at home in the visionary, innovator, or system-shaper roles. This is crucial to advance sustainability, says Pumford. “You need people who can hold the complexity of the system in order to change it, but at the same time, sustainability requires granular detail and the ability to distill that into simple terms for people who aren’t as immersed in the day-to-day,” she explains. One of the key perks — and a tool for getting more people to tap into sustainability — is regular trips to Barley Wood, the brand’s Nature HQ, where employees can immerse themselves in nature, be it for individual reflection, team-building, or meetings.

Reformation: There’s nothing wrong with a personality hire

When Reformation’s chief sustainability officer and VP of operations Kathleen Talbot joined the brand in 2014, she was a one-woman band. Now, she sits on the executive team and the buckets of responsibility she covered as a generalist each have dedicated teams and workflows. As she grew the sustainability function, Talbot says she was careful to hire the right people, keenly aware of how much personality type could dictate their success. Because her role sits across sustainability and operations, she was also able to lobby for sustainability-minded hires in other departments. “We needed a sourcing person who could build our fiber standards into the procurement process, and a communications person who could make sure we were sticking to our responsible marketing policies,” she explains. “We have several people with sustainability degrees that sit in different departments and don’t have sustainability in their job title at all. That has been such a gift.”

Where someone sits — and where they will thrive — depends as much on their personality as their experience. Reformation often does “hokey HR stuff” like strength finders to figure out the archetypes they are working with, says Talbot, and the team has explicit conversations about how their personalities should shape team structures and deliverables. The product sustainability team, for example, functions as the “integrity check or ethical compass”, she says. They are typical enforcers and integrators. They care deeply about workers, are data and compliance-oriented, and would happily wile away the hours conducting factory audits.

The vice president of product sustainability started in a supply chain role, but Talbot moved her over to the sustainability team to incorporate a business lens into conversations about sustainability trade-offs and impact recommendations, becoming more of a translator or bridge-builder. Since this happened, the finance team tends to find conversations about sustainability more “commercially grounded”, and there is more trust when the sustainability team proposes a significant investment that they “have a good reason” and “it must be important”, says Talbot.

One of the most transformative skills is getting other departments on-board, Talbot says, pointing to Reformation’s director of sustainability operations, who she reckons might be “the most charismatic person on the planet” — a true engager. Her role covers internal and external engagement, meaning she meets regularly with the company’s 40 directors to cascade sustainability into individual and team goals, before working with HR to integrate it into remuneration and performance reviews. She also owns the internal learning and development program, working with the communications team on responsible marketing controls and campaign messaging. When Reformation undertakes a wider transformation — like adjusting its transportation mix to lower emissions — she discusses the barriers and explains the ‘why’ to different stakeholders, to find a collective way forward. “Everyone wants to be her friend and help her,” says Talbot. “That’s why it’s such a good fit for her to be the person motivating our directors to think about problems in a different way and make hard things happen.”

Tapestry: Where sustainability sits influences how it is seen

A few years ago, Coach and Kate Spade owner Tapestry moved its sustainability team out of the legal function and into supply chain, hoping to recontextualize sustainability as a core business practice in the age of compliance, and to better reflect its priorities in supply chain transformation. “Where the company positions the sustainability team ultimately colors the lens through which people view the function internally,” explains global head of ESG and sustainability Logan Duran, who now reports to the chief supply chain officer and sits on the supply chain leadership team. “Putting sustainability on that level also signals to the rest of the company that this is a priority and one we need to integrate into the broader business.”

Duran has identified four key impact areas for Tapestry, which shape where the 12-person sustainability team spends its time and energy. There’s climate strategy, metrics, and reporting; traceability; product sustainability and circularity; and supply chain responsibility. The first team, which is among the smallest, focuses on compliance and reporting, while the traceability team maps and maintains supplier relationships. The third team is the largest; half is based between Singapore and Vietnam, granting them closer proximity to suppliers, so they can support with energy efficiency, decarbonization, social compliance, worker empowerment, and impact at the factory level. In the US, the fourth team works directly with raw material developers and design teams on product-level sustainability, which covers preferred materials, packaging, product development and circularity, as well as backing up green claims.

To make sure these functions are integrated into broader business decisions, Tapestry developed its Style, Performance and Impact framework. “Design and aesthetic comes first. Second is ensuring the product meets our quality, durability, and cost expectations. Third is about substantiating and reducing the footprint,” explains Duran. Individual brands are free to bring this to life and iron out the details, but the group-level sustainability team is on-hand to “create consistency” and act as a system of “checks and balances”, he adds. The brand design teams, for example, have quarterly meetings with the group sustainability team, and there are sustainability champions — including Coach creative director Stuart Vevers — across the business. Suppliers are also given a scorecard, which puts sustainability on par with their other KPIs, says Duran, which can influence order allocation. “If we have extra demand, it will go toward suppliers who have been consistently performing better against the scorecard.”

In terms of archetypes, Duran says the most important right now is the “corporate chameleon” — someone who can understand different aspects of the business and what is most relevant or compelling to different stakeholders, and communicate them without leaning too heavily on emotional or moral arguments. In recent years, Duran has also encouraged his team to invite people from other departments to attend sustainability conferences with them, to “share the burden” and “give them more exposure to the topic”.

Kering: Embed sustainability in business decisions

Luxury conglomerate Kering has one of the industry’s most mature sustainability functions, led by long-time chief sustainability and institutional affairs officer Marie-Claire Daveu, who combines the visionary, translator and integrator archetypes, deftly positioning sustainability as a way to future-proof the fashion business. In the face of a business turnaround, compounding polycrises affecting fashion supply chains, and a tough political climate for sustainability, the team is now laser-focused on embedding its work in the core business. “Today’s sustainability professionals need to understand not only environmental challenges, but also business realities, financial implications, and operational constraints,” she says. “Sustainability can no longer operate in isolation; it needs to be embedded across business functions and decision-making processes.”

Daveu leads the group-level sustainability team, which sets the topline sustainability goals and strategy, including Kering’s novel approach to water, science-based targets for nature, and regenerative agriculture. She regularly meets with brand-level sustainability, creative and business leaders, helping to translate these strategies into product-level change. She is also an active member of Kering’s executive committee. “My role is to provide direction while empowering experts to do their best work,” she says. “A key part of that is being able to speak multiple ‘languages’ across the organization — whether that’s the language of design, sourcing, operations, finance or executive leadership. Driving change requires not only expertise, but also the ability to build bridges, convince stakeholders, and translate sustainability ambitions into business-relevant actions.”

Because sustainability is increasingly recognized as a framework for managing business risks, as well as a financial opportunity and cross-functional competency, Kering spins certain specialist subjects out into independent teams, which essentially act as in-house consultants. In 2013, Kering created the Material Innovation Lab (MIL), which identifies, pilots, and operationalizes innovations, doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes before presenting them to brands. Then, in 2020, it applied the same model to jewelry through the Jewelry Innovation Lab (JIL). In 2022, Kering created a separate sustainable finance department to bridge its economic and environmental activities, to expand on the environmental profit and loss (EP&L) framework it introduced in 2016 to quantify, monitor, and communicate its environmental footprint across the entire value chain.

Sustainability is undoubtedly changing, but Daveu says there will always be a place for a core team of sustainability specialists that drive progress and hold other business functions accountable. Within these teams, there is growing demand for specific expertise in circularity, sustainable materials, biodiversity, climate analytics, sustainable finance, data science, and AI. “The future is not about larger sustainability departments working on their own. It is about building stronger sustainability capabilities throughout the business, supported by a core team of highly specialized experts,” she says.

The most effective sustainability teams have multiple archetypes in play. “You need a mix of engineers, technical experts, innovators, and change agents. Beyond expertise, we look for curiosity, adaptability, resilience, and a collaborative mindset. Sustainability professionals are often tackling complex, long-term challenges, so it’s important not to get discouraged and to keep momentum even when progress takes time.”

Veja: Sustainability is everyone’s mandate

For some born-good companies, like French sneaker brand Veja, sustainability is not a separate function at all. Co-founder and creative director Sébastien Kopp says the function is present across every decision — from sourcing to raw materials and production — and it is every employee’s responsibility to drive it forward. “You cannot make a shoe with sustainability on the side. You’re missing the point if you do that,” he says.

The sourcing team — which comprises around 25 people — is in charge of raw materials and production, from organic cotton to wild rubber that supports conservation in the Amazon. The logistics team deals with the warehouses, most of which are run by NGOs that employ people with “difficult trajectories”, including people who have been formerly incarcerated, and those who struggle with addiction and alcohol abuse. And when Veja opens a new store, it’s the retail team that are charged with lowering its footprint, choosing renewable energy suppliers and ecological paints. There is a dedicated team working on calculating carbon emissions and complying with reporting regulations, but this sits under operations. “Everyone is in charge of sustainability,” says Kopp. As a result, every employee is forced to tap into different archetypes at different times, but there is perhaps less need for the translator, engager, and bridge-builder roles. “It’s a company that wants to evolve and grow, but it’s not a company we need to change, because it has been this way since the beginning.”

For Kopp, this is a more realistic and future-proofed approach, one which acknowledges the chronic burnout among sustainability professionals and attempts to remedy it by sharing the burden. When every employee’s performance is assessed based on how much progress they make, and how well they innovate on sustainability, change happens faster. “It’s impossible to be an expert in every field,” he explains. “It’s much more powerful for everyone to do their part instead of having one person chasing everyone, saying they have to change, but they don’t do it because it’s more expensive or complicated.”

Veja now has over 700 employees around the world, but Kopp says not all of them join with a pre-established interest in sustainability. This comes with time, as they see the supply chain in action, and the positive ripple effect it has. In this way, Kopp and his co-founder François-Ghislain Morillion are the visionaries, and the company they built does the engaging on their behalf. “If people don’t join because of our supply chain, they learn about it and they like it. It gives them a lot more meaning in their work, and a lot of joy at the end of the day,” he says.

Incentivizing these workers to act on sustainability boils down to money. Kopp says Veja regularly pays over the market rate for its raw materials and labor, and employees are not pressured to drive down prices, as is common practice across the fashion industry. The same applies from the catadores (waste pickers) salvaging plastic to be recycled in Brazil, to the head office workers in New York and France calculating carbon emissions. This is possible because the brand doesn’t spend money on advertising or marketing, he adds.

“What [our workers] do is incredible, so we pay well. It creates a positive cycle. I think everybody cares if they’re getting paid enough.”

To learn more about how to build a winning sustainability team, join the Vogue Business webinar with Hannah Phang on Wednesday, June 24 at 10am-11am ET | 3pm–4pm BST | 4pm–5pm CEST. Register here.