Carbon Neutrality & Finance: Michelle Bilodeau’s Insights from IdeaScale
This week, the RyeStrategy team virtually sat down with Michelle Bilodeau, Controller for idea management company IdeaScale. At the beginning of 2020, we were fortunate enough to work with IdeaScale as our inaugural client, calculating their 2019 carbon footprint, building a custom offset portfolio, and designing a collection of tailored mitigation strategies. During this process, Michelle began to reimagine how IdeaScale did its accounting -- incorporating environmental impact into the traditional financial documentation. Read on to learn more about Michelle’s work in helping her company go carbon neutral, what impact she has seen since doing so, and her thoughts on why sustainability matters.
Carbon Neutrality with Michelle Bilodeau
What is your current role with IdeaScale?
As Controller for IdeaScale, I am responsible for all the accounting related activities within the company. This includes accounts payable and receivables, payroll, assisting with the preparation of the operating budgets, and overseeing financial reporting.
How did you contribute to the company’s initiative to go carbon neutral?
When IdeaScale decided to go carbon neutral, I had to look at all those dollars and cents in a new way: how does our spending reflect our carbon footprint? We had to start seeing those dollars as emissions. Every Lyft reimbursement and every meal had an impact, so we needed to now organize our data not just for our financial reporting, but to understand how we could reduce our emissions and pay for those that we couldn’t eliminate.
How have the ways in which you track traditional organizational finances changed since implementing a more carbon-focused approach?
Since we started this project, we have created specific codes to track things like carbon offsets, mass transit reimbursements, and electric car rentals. It really helps see what positive choices our employees are making, but also where we’re emitting and could reduce our spending just like a regular budget.
Have you run into any major challenges since adopting this approach?
We haven’t run into any major hurdles at this time - but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen…. Especially as we think about going carbon negative.
We know that sustainability programs benefit numerous facets of a business, including work culture. Have you noticed a change within IdeaScale’s culture?
We’ve seen all of our social good work have a positive impact on our workplace. The more engaged we’ve become as a company, the better it’s been for our customers and our workforce. I think IdeaScale is a special place to work at because we are continually working on initiatives that uphold our values.
It sounds like IdeaScale places a lot of emphasis on their CSR. Can you tell us more about other programs you have in place to uphold this value? We’d love to learn more!
We asked all workers globally to take part in the Global Climate Strikes in September 2019, sharing that message with our customers and giving time off work to all employees. Every year for holiday gifts, we send gift cards from TisBest so each of our customers can pick their favorite nonprofit to receive a donation.
As social justice became a focus this spring, we gathered great ideas from everyone on our team and put together groups to implement some of these ideas. For example, as a company we decided to donate to Black Girls Code and I am excited that we are working on a scholarship program that will help minority groups get into tech. We have also signed the Path for Progress pledge and are working to improve our D&I programs and dismantle systemic injustice.
Lastly, for years we have given employees time off to vote after having signed the Time To Vote pledge. Voting is the number one thing people can do to support all of our values!
All of this has given purpose and meaning to my work as a Controller and I know I’m not the only employee who feels that way.
Lastly, can you tell us why sustainability matters to you personally and professionally?
I’m a mom, so I put my kids first in everything. I know I won’t always be there to take care of them. I care about sustainability because I want a livable, equitable planet for my children where they don’t have to worry about access to clean air or water.
I’m also interested in being part of a company that prioritizes sustainability as we grow. Often these types of values are hard to hold onto as a company scales and we do not want to see that happen here - embedding this sort of carbon tracking in our financial data now will make it easier to set that precedent as we grow.
Commitment to Sustainable Development
We’re grateful to see our work directly impact an organization’s sustainability endeavors, and hope that more companies will take the initiative in absorbing these types of measures into their corporate programs. Taking a company down the carbon neutrality path goes beyond simply embedding carbon data tracking into organizational finances -- it's also about demonstrating commitment to sustainable development, and strengthening company values, culture, and long-term goals.
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About RyeStrategy
Based in Seattle, RyeStrategy is a CDP-accredited, mission-oriented company specialized in carbon accounting, mitigation coaching, and climate disclosure solutions for organizations at any point in their sustainability journey. Learn how RyeStrategy helped Salesforce, Ideascale, and Wazoku achieve their sustainability goals.
From exhaustive carbon footprinting and mitigation coaching, to setting science-based targets and reporting climate data to CDP, SBTi or custom reporting platforms, RyeStrategy acts as a hands-on extension of the team, custom-tailoring services to fulfill climate disclosure requirements easily and accurately.
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