B Corp Month special: Using your purpose as your superpower

Charmian Love is currently Global Director of Advocacy at Natura &Co, the world’s largest publicly traded B Corp. But she is most-known for co-founding B Lab UK, the non-profit network behind the B Corp movement to transform the global economy to benefit people, communities and the planet. A prominent voice for change, Char has been an activist and advocate for the planet for most of her life, pushing industries and businesses to be forces for good.

In this discussion, Char shares insights into what a B Corp is, how to become one and the importance of having purpose as a driver behind the movement. She also delves into the importance of changing perceptions of what it means to be an activist and an advocate and challenges the current priorities of the ESG agenda.

We also discuss:

• How purpose can be used as a driver for personal and collective action within businesses.
• The B Corp movement and how it’s transforming industries to be better through its continuous process of improvement.
• The importance of addressing the G in ESG in having governance processes in place to enable people to make decisions that activate the E and S.
• Why we should pay more attention to being like ‘zebras’ than ‘unicorns’.
• The differences between activism and advocacy, how these look in the 21 st century and how they connect through the 5 As of Advocacy: Authentic, ambition, agency, activism, allyship.
• The generational shifts in attitudes towards work life and quality of life.
• Tackling procrastination, which Char argues is a product of fear instead of laziness.

Selected links:

The B Corp movement https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/

B Corp and the ESG agenda https://www.esgthereport.com/what-is-a-b-corp/

The power of purpose in business https://hbr.org/2022/03/what-is-the-purpose-of-your-purpose

Jackson Pollock artwork https://www.jackson-pollock.org/

‘Outrage and Optimism’ by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac & Paul Dickinson https://www.outrageandoptimism.org/episodes

Designing a Climate Advocacy Strategy, by Sophie Dembinski, Charmian Love & Beth Thoren https://hbr.org/2023/03/designing-a-climate-advocacy-strategy

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