Member Story: Sarah Walkley, Senior Sustainability Writer, Context Europe

Sarah Walkley is Senior Sustainability Writer at sustainability strategy and communications agency Context Europe.

She has over 25 years of professional writing and editing experience across multiple formats and has written for a broad range of audiences from business and government to academics and consumers. She is a former member of the Executive Leadership team at Autovista Group where she headed up development of the group’s sustainability strategy.

Sarah is an expert on reporting frameworks and requirements, including CSRD. You can read her recent overview of the 2023 sustainability landscape, covering CSRD and more, here.

She holds a Master’s with Distinction in Sustainability Leadership from the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership, part of the University of Cambridge.

1.How did you get into CR&S, and why did you choose this profession 

I have always been interested in nature and the environment. I also come from a family with a strong sense of social justice and what is the right thing to do ethically.

At school, I was naturally better at languages than sciences. At the time, there were few options to use my skills as a wordsmith to make a difference — environmental impact seemed like the preserve of ecologists. So, I studied Modern Languages and went into business journalism, covering everything from healthcare to food, agrichemicals and insurance.

As my career in publishing progressed, I moved into commercial management — eventually being part of the executive leadership at a company providing business information to the automotive industry.

Over that time, the CR&S field also developed. It is now very clear that effective communication is critical to achieving wide-spread change. And with an explosion in regulatory requirements, sustainability reporting is becoming an increasing challenge for organisations.

At Context Europe, I now have the opportunity to combine my editorial and commercial background and understanding of multiple industries with my sustainability knowledge to make a positive impact. On a daily basis, I have to quickly get to grips with a client’s business model and impacts, risks and opportunities and then explain them clearly and succinctly to the client’s stakeholders through their sustainability report, a strategy document or other communication.

2. What makes your sector unique from a CRS Perspective

As a sustainability consultancy, Context Europe is in a unique position to be able to work with companies from lots of different sectors. Of course, some sectors are more mature than others — just as some clients are further along their sustainability journey. But many of them face the same strategic challenges around understanding their impact, defining the biggest opportunities, engaging stakeholders and communicating progress in an open and compelling way.

What makes our role so fulfilling is that we can bring our experience from one sector and apply it to another, helping clients tackle these common challenges. It’s a collaborative approach that enables us all to make progress together.

3. What do you need to do your job brilliantly?

I think the most important thing is to have boundless curiosity. We work with companies of different sizes and across many sectors, so it is essential to get to know the client, their challenges and where we can help them make a difference.

The CR&S field is constantly evolving. So, you need to be curious about what’s coming round the corner and be keen to learn and grow.

It also helps to be a lateral thinker to work out how a new solution or approach developed for one client or sector could be applied elsewhere. For example, I wrote my dissertation for the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership on how languages — particularly learning Welsh — could help us to better appreciate the landscape and connect with nature. Before that, I’d never really appreciated that there could be a link! If you are interested to find out more, you can read about the project here.

4. Anything else you’d like to share?

A few years ago, I did some research with sustainability professionals. One overstretched head of CR&S surprised me by saying that he didn’t need more people in their sustainability team. He went on to add that he just needed more people to do their core job more sustainably. It’s one of the most striking things that anyone has said to me about CR&S — and one that inspired me to work out how I could use my core skills for greater impact.

I’ve since appreciated how profound a comment that was. We need a variety of skills and perspectives united by a passion for sustainability to achieve change at scale. But also, the bravery to challenge each other’s thinking and come up with new solutions. For Context Europe, part of that is contributing to broader conversations in our industry with fresh thinking on everything from the future of sustainability reporting to the connections between the words we choose and our actions.