Green About Media – An Interview With Araceli Almada

Araceli Almada brings her expertise to a new corporate sustainability-focused podcast, Green About Media.

The growing topic of ‘Green Media’ studies is a subdiscipline within the environmental humanities and social sciences. It explores digital media’s impact on the environment in both the positive and negative sense, and looks at how influential it can be on the environmental movement globally.

With a degree in Business Sustainability Management from Cambridge, Araceli Almada, or Ara to her friends, is our resident expert on the Green About Media Podcast. She’s excited to be in a professional position where she can actually implement the effective corporate sustainability changes that she’s studied.

As the lead sustainable development consultant for a rapidly growing and influential company, Almada is overseeing ShowHeroes Group as it goes through a renewed shift and focus on being more sustainable. She’s in a unique position to give her insight into this truly important and rapidly developing topic.

How did you reach your current position?

After my studies in business sustainability management, I realized that I could also use my marketing skills to make the changes I think businesses need in terms of sustainability. As marketers, we can use our creative powers to help get us all out of this climate change mess and stop being part of the problem.

Therefore, I applied to my current Global Marketing role and asked what the company was doing in terms of sustainability. During the interview I realised that the company had all the good intentions to have an ESG strategy in the coming year and not everyone knew how to go about it, what to do, or where to start. So, I proposed that apart from my marketing role I could use my newly acquired skills in sustainability as well and help the company move forward with their sustainability journey.

What attracted you to this field in the first place?

I’ve been working in ad tech for the last 6 years, in Marketing. However, I’ve always been mindful of our environment, since I was young – I grew up as an animal lover and rescuer, and cared very much about preserving our natural resources, etc. For the last 4 years I’d started feeling that my work had to have a greater meaning or at least that I wanted to do something that had a positive impact, because as a marketer I felt responsible for pushing people to overconsume, to buy things that they actually do not need, etc.

Two years ago, I decided to quit my job in adtech and figure out what I wanted to do to have a meaningful and positive-impact job. I had heard the term sustainability, but didn’t really know what it actually meant. I thought it was related only to the environment. I soon realised that ‘sustainability’ is more complex and covers not only environmental aspects, but social and economic ones too.

I therefore decided to go back to school and study Business Sustainability Management. It is an all-encompassing concept concerned with ensuring a future for everyone, and I thought it would be a great compliment to my marketing skills.

Why do you think it’s important that everyday people are more informed about sustainability in the corporate world?

Sustainability is rapidly becoming the new foundational structure of business, and therefore the more you know about it, the more you are able to influence and embed sustainability into your job, team, and organization.

Where would you like to see the company you work for be, with respect to sustainability, in 5 years’ time?

Leading the way in all aspects of their sustainability journey as a company and influencing the industry we are in to be sustainable as well.

What is one key takeaway from the first episode of the new show that you would like people to have?

To realize that sustainability is not just a trend, or a nice thing to have. That it’s not only about being more environmentally friendly, but also more socially conscious without forgetting about the economic aspect as well. It’s a new way of living and doing business that we need to adopt if we want to survive in the future.

Green About Media releases every two weeks and will cover topics such as ESG, CSR, The Carbon Challenge in Media, Sustainable Supply Chains and Greenwashing.

You can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever else you like to listen.

Check out the link below!