Reflections on leadership, seasonality and the quiet work of change - an intimate monthly essay series from Between Seasons, exploring the deeper “why” behind sustainability and creative leadership. An invitation to pause, reflect and reconnect with your inner landscape.
Every team has a story that’s told about them when they’re not in the room.
The reasons you were or weren’t invited to the meeting. The requests that land in your inbox because it’s your work. The shorthand people use to describe who you are and what you do.
That’s your brand. Whether you built it or not.
For most sustainability and impact teams, that brand is inherited — not intentional.
It’s shaped by old assumptions, small frustrations and half-remembered stereotypes.
It’s the feeling people get when they hear the word sustainability and picture something slower, harder or more expensive.
It’s the memory of a product that didn’t quite work, a process that added extra steps, or a conversation that felt like being told no.
It’s the well-intentioned colleague who still associates you with the recycling bins.
That’s the brand the business gives you — unless you claim it first.
I learned this lesson the long way — and on more than one occasion.
Early in my career, I built a set of tools for creative teams — designers, marketers, product developers. It was a guide to using sustainability certifications in marketing: what claims could be made, what language to avoid, where the lines were.
It wasn’t new. The same information had been shared before (probably more than once). But I rebranded it.
I stripped out the jargon. I made it visual. I designed it with their world in mind. It didn’t look like compliance. It looked like creativity. So, it got used.
They even thanked me for creating the guide — as if they’d never had it before.
Then there were the Forecasting Forums: open-invite sessions across the business to explore the trends and innovations shaping retail for sustainability and impact.
Suddenly, the view of our team shifted.
We weren’t (just) the sustainability police anymore. We were a centre of excellence — a team with insight, ideas and energy that felt exciting and new.
That’s the quiet power of branding: same information, different delivery, completely different impact.
Inside organisations, branding isn’t about logos or campaigns. It’s about identity and story. It’s the impression your team leaves behind after a meeting, a deck or an email.
It’s how people feel when they work with you.
And if you don’t define it intentionally, the system will do it for you. Whether you like the story that’s told or not.
Because when your internal brand is built by default, it sounds like:
They’re the team that slows things down.
They always say no or put limits on things.
They make everything harder and more expensive.
And that kind of story sticks because people “bond” over the shared experience of working with the sustainability team, or having sustainability and impact expectations dropped on their desk.
Once that perception takes hold, you start every project on the back foot. You become the “sustainability police” — the team people avoid until they have no other choice. Or, people don’t understand your value and your purpose, so they don’t bring you into the fold until the last minute or until you find out what they’re doing and go knocking (queue, sustainability police).
You end up doing too much and carrying too much, and you burn out quietly while the work inches forward.
But when you brand yourself with intention — when you decide what you stand for, what tone you carry, what value you bring — everything changes.
You stop being the obstacle and you become the guide.
A strong sustainability brand inside a business looks like a centre of excellence.You’re not the doers of everything — you’re the advisors, the catalysts, the steady hands guiding the system toward better decisions.
You’re still practical and grounded, but you’re also aspirational. You represent clarity, connection and long-term thinking. You’re where people go for perspective, not permission.
Ok… sometimes for permission.
That shift doesn’t happen through job titles or new frameworks. It happens through story and the way you show up.
It starts by knowing your audience.
The way you speak to a designer is not the way you speak to a CFO. The language of supply chain isn’t the language of brand. And yet, sustainability teams often use one voice for everyone — a technical, cautious voice that satisfies accuracy but not understanding.
To brand yourself differently, you have to translate. You have to design your communication the same way you’d design a product: for the people who’ll use it.
Ask yourself: What does this team value? How do they define success? What language feels like theirs?
Then build from there.
Because branding your sustainability team isn’t about spin — it’s about translation, empathy and design. It’s how you shape the experience people have when they encounter your work.
I’ll be exploring this in more detail, with practical ways to apply it inside your business, in my LinkedIn newsletter, The Butter Field Brief, this Friday. Subscribe there if you’d like to get it in your inbox.
When you brand yourself, and your team, and you start to live into it everyday and in every interaction. When you translate, design, and tell your story with intention — something subtle begins to shift.
People stop seeing sustainability as something extra and they start seeing it as something essential. They drop the stereotypes and the pre-assumed judgement. They stop bracing when you walk into the room and they start inviting you in sooner.
You move from being the team of no to being the team of how.
That’s what embedding really looks like.
Not just systems or processes — but reputation, identity, trust.
Because the culture of sustainability, impact and business-as-a-force-for-good, doesn’t only live in policies or reports. It lives in perception. And perception is shaped, every day, by the way you brand yourself.
If you don’t take control of that story, it will be written for you.
And chances are, it won’t sound like the work you’ve actually done or the value that you really provide.
So here’s the invitation:
What’s the story people tell about your team when you’re not in the room?
What does your brand say — about your tone, your values, your purpose?
Does it sound like partnership, creativity, innovation?Or does it sound like policing, friction, fatigue?
Every sustainability team — even if only a team of one — already has a brand.
The question is: are you defining it? Or are you letting it happen by accident?
Because when you own your story and brand yourself as a centre of excellence — sustainability stops being a side project.
It becomes part of the culture.
And that’s where the real work begins.
Thanks for musing with me.
Rooting for you always,
