Abigail Thomas is a purpose driven sustainability and digital leader with a vision to create positive environmental and social change through innovative solutions. She has more than twenty years’ experience in digital strategy, transformation, sustainability, innovation and product development, having led teams at SBS, Commonwealth Bank, Deloitte, ABC and in the UK Government. She was Vice Chair of the Australian Design Centre and President of not-for-profit One Step Walks which connected local communities with refugee communities. She is intrigued by the ways digital tools and approaches can be used to solve global environmental and social challenges. Abigail is currently Head of Sustainability and Product Strategy at SBS, combining her passion for both sustainability and digital products.

In this episode, Abi shares the story of SBS’s sustainability journey, including her personal story driven by her own passion and commitment to climate action.

She highlights how her experience in change management helped shape her approach to driving sustainable change by building allies—an approach based on recognising that sustainability is everyone’s job; and using data to make a case.

Abi invites us to think about the role of emotion in engaging people within an organisation, sharing a story about how a risk she took in changing how she opened a presentation to the leadership team, paid off. The song and video she references in this story – Paul Kelly’s “Sleep Australia Sleep” can be found here.

She shares stories and examples of actions taken by individuals and departments within SBS, from the TV Show department to Legal, Finance and the Audio and Languages Team. We discuss the impact of action on team morale and how it engages people’s discretionary efforts.

She shares some of the key milestones that SBS have achieved over the last 18 months, as well as their ambition to be a leader in the industry—adopting a collaboration over competition mindset, to help the industry to accelerate their transition to sustainability.

Read about SBS’s sustainability here

Connect with Abi:

On Linkedin