Jane Abernethy, Humanscale Chief Sustainability Officer, is a 2018 winner of the Women in Sustainability Leadership Awards (WSLA), an award program recognizing women achieving a positive impact on the world through efforts in sustainability. Jane was recognized for her achievement at an Awards reception in Chicago. The award is presented in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council and Halstead/MetroFlor.
Now in it's fifth year, WSLA was established to promote sustainability and encourage awareness, advancement, and support for women in sustainability leadership. Developed around the values of environmental stewardship, conduits for change, and giving back, previous winners include Hillary Clinton, Arielle Bertman (Google) and Jeanne Gang (Studio Gang Architects).
The ultimate goal of the program is to create a global hub that identifies and connects the most powerful women at the forefront of sustainability. WSLA looks to recognize and advance these top-level female sustainability executives who can then, in turn, support younger women with dreams of reaching such levels of success.
The award comes shortly after Jane's promotion to Chief Sustainability Officer at Humanscale.
She took on sustainability as a designer when she implemented the Design for Environment Program in 2012. She knew it was important to make decisions about sustainability as early as possible to allow greater flexibility in the design process, to instruct material decisions, and to avoid the use of harmful materials and chemicals. The program made sustainability an integral part of the design process.
She continues to work to implement numerous programs to make design and manufacturing a more sustainable enterprise and to help Humanscale achieve its goal of having a net positive impact on the environment. Her work in these efforts includes R+D, partnerships and community engagement. She's an active participant in the design process at Humanscale, works closely with those in Humanscale's manufacturing facilities to ensure operations are sustainable and has forged relationships at every level of Humanscale's supply chain and with other organizations and experts in sustainability across industries. She also implemented the Sustainability Champions program at Humanscale. Sustainability champions expand and enhance sustainable culture across company offices and locations, implementing practices to reduce waste, source sustainable resources and inform and engage other employees. Seven of Humanscale's ten sustainability champions are women from varying offices and with varying roles and tenures at the company. Jane comments, "It’s been a joy to offer myself as a resource for these women and to watch them find passion and inspiration in making the world a better place through their jobs."