Even if you’re unfamiliar with the work of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), you would probably recognize its logo—a simple but striking black and white panda. As iconic as the branding is, WWF CEO Carter Roberts acknowledges that it may lead people to a limited view of the organization’s work.
“There’s this perception of the WWF as people who are out to save fuzzy animals,” Roberts told his Gamechangers in Sustainability Speak Series audience at Kogod’s Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship. “While that’s part of what we do, it isn’t all we do.”
The full scope of what the WWF does was the main focus of Roberts’ fireside chat with Kogod’s Dean David Marchick. As part of the Gamechangers in Sustainability series, Roberts spoke about the WWF’s domestic and international work, offered his thoughts on today’s sustainability challenges, and stressed the importance of a holistic approach to conservation efforts.
At Kogod, where our mission centers around the intersection of business, government, and sustainability, Roberts’ message resonated with the crowd of students, staff, faculty, and alums.
Roberts knows well how a business background can support a career in conservation; after all, he began his career as an entrepreneur. After earning his MBA, he tried to start a company using the then-emerging internet to help parents purchase sustainable infant care products and deliver them. Though the idea seems straightforward now, he said that he came up with it about a decade too early, and transportation challenges ultimately led to the company stalling. Instead, Roberts shifted to working at the Nature Conservancy, where he spent fifteen years before joining the WWF, where he has been with WWF for twenty years now. Roberts credits his background in business as invaluable for helping him navigate partnerships across sectors.
“We have to be brilliant at the business aspect of the private sector to keep the planet intact,” Roberts said. To him, this means being able to negotiate with governments, corporations, and other non-governmental organizations to support the work WWF wants to do. It also means bringing in a wide range of voices and perspectives to create sturdy frameworks that weather changes in leadership and political climate. For instance, WWF’s work with Brazil’s government has continued through five presidential administrations, and they’ve adopted their model there to work with other governments worldwide. At a time when people are beginning to look more towards the private sector for climate solutions, Roberts promotes a multidisciplinary, cooperative approach.