Issue 01: How to make everyone in your organization part of the sustainability team, with EILEEN FISHER's Amy Hall
A manual for sustainability teams (or person, I see you there), grounded in 25+ years of experience building a world-renowned values-driven business from the inside out.
Welcome to La Purpose Brand 🫒. I’m Donatela and each how-to guide breaks down how bold brands are driving real impact, regardless of size. Honest stories, practical strategies, and a little rebellion.
This one's special. It's the first of many how-to guides you'll see here, and I got to do it with someone who's genuinely changed how we all think about sustainability. Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed creating it.
La Introduction
Name the top 5 sustainable fashion brands. Go!
I bet EILEEN FISHER is on that list.
From their website:
When Eileen started the company in 1984, she was working as an interior and graphic designer and had trouble finding clothes. She kept imagining simple, timeless pieces like the kimono, which people have worn for thousands of years. That vision led to her "aha" moment: a system of shapes that worked together to make getting dressed easy.
But it didn't start as a fully integrated sustainability approach spanning the entire garment lifecycle. That transformation happened later, and there's one person who made it all possible.
Meet Amy Hall, Strategic Advisor for Social Consciousness and former Head of Social Consciousness at EILEEN FISHER. She's the one who laid the foundation and defined a sustainability strategy before it was cool.
Amy Hall is one of those rare people who's even more impressive in person than on paper. She has this laser focus on what needs to happen, combined with a warmth that makes you want to follow her lead. She's the type who'll spend an hour helping a sustainability newbie figure out their strategy, not because she has to, but because she genuinely believes in lifting others up.
And the story on how she ended up in that role is as remarkable.
Amy didn't start in fashion. With degrees in Chinese and Applied Linguistics, she was working in education and nonprofits when she landed an entry-level role at EILEEN FISHER. Classic case of right person, right place, right time. They asked her to handle philanthropic work. Then one project led to another, and another...
Before anyone knew it, she'd built the brand's groundbreaking Social Consciousness team and completely reimagined what sustainability could look like in fashion.
Which brings us to her secret sauce: how she turned an entire company into sustainability champions.
La Guide
Step 1: Get buy-in from the top, then pack the room
This is your make-or-break moment. Without leadership backing, sustainability becomes "that nice thing the hippies (aka you) do" instead of "how we run this business." You need someone with real power, someone who believes in the mission, can knock down barriers, and will fight for your budget when the quarterly numbers get ugly. So, here is how she did it.
Start with a business case. Whether it’s reputational risk, regulatory pressure, or the long-term upside of resilient supply chains, senior leaders need to see the value in $.
In the late 1990s, sweatshop headlines dominated the news, and major brands were getting hammered for supply chain violations. Amy’s approach was brilliant in its simplicity: she created large poster boards (this was pre-PowerPoint) and invited senior leaders into a room:
“I put large posters together and had to show that there's more and more interest from the public and the media. And with a little bit of investment, look at what we could turn around and the kind of impact we could have for the people, the specific individual people in factories. And that's how we got it started.”
My tip: Look into the ROSI methodology (see EILEEN FISHER’s case study here) to calculate business case, and I am always here to chat if you need help. :)
Bring someone from the outside. There's something powerful about bringing in an outsider that brings credibility to any issue.
“There's nothing like bringing in somebody from the outside, even if you have all the knowledge inside the company. For some reason, when you bring somebody else in, it just takes on a different level of integrity or seniority or something that people want to believe.”
Once Amy secured her senior sponsor, she convinced them to fund a retreat with an external facilitator. The goal? Teach the team systems thinking and get everyone rowing in the same direction.
The facilitator organized a three-day retreat in nature with leaders from every corner of the company: design, merchandising, sourcing, sales, social impact, etc. Even Eileen Fisher showed up. The event was positioned as a privilege, and exclusive opportunity. Everyone would want to be a part of it. And it worked. That weekend, something shifted.
Mi tip for doing this on a budget: ok, so maybe you do not have the funding for a full retreat, but you can get scrappy. Reserve a short term rental for 2 nights, somewhere connected with nature, and plan the activities yourself.
Aim high, think of the art of the possible. Get people excited about the future. Get them to imagine what's possible. Then, work your way backwards in both time and initiatives. Over the course of three days, the group imagined a future 20 to 30 years out. Then they worked backward to define goals. Big ones: carbon neutrality, fair wages, responsible materials. These weren't mandates handed down by leadership. They were ideas created by the people in the room, so they stuck.
"When people set their own goals, they can't argue with the results."
Each of those goals became a seed that sprouted sub-goals, working groups, and cross-departmental collaboration. Over the years, they kept regrouping, realigning, and expanding the reach.
Amy's advice? Don't be afraid to set goals that feel far away. Even if you don't meet every one, you'll go further than you imagined.
That retreat became the launchpad for what would become a cross-functional, company-wide movement. It started with the right sponsor. Then it spread.
Step 2: Find champions, then hold them accountable
Big goals without clear ownership and accountability become wishful thinking. This is why it is important to create a structured system of champions, working groups, and regular check-ins that keeps momentum alive.
Build your super hero team. After the offsite, Amy formed the Sustainability Design Team, a cross-functional group of decision-makers who met monthly (many from that retreat). This wasn't just another committee. These were people with real authority in their areas.
"Those were people who were decision makers in the company. So there was at least one person from supply chain, one person from design, one person from merchandising, and they were like the leaders of all these areas."
This core team became the engine that drove everything else. They weren't just setting strategy, they were making it happen in their day-to-day work.
Break big goals into small, actionable ones. Big goals need bite-sized actions. You can’t have a target for 50% emissions reduction without breaking it down into smaller initiatives, and those initiatives within those, and so on. Once bold commitments were in place, each function was accountable to breaking them down into sub-goals. Each sub-goal had its own cross-functional working group, led by a representative from the core Sustainability Design Team. These groups weren’t just talk shops. They were tasked with setting clear targets, coordinating across departments, and making real progress.
Reach the tipping point. Here's where Amy's approach gets really smart. She didn't try to convert the entire company at once. Instead, she focused on reaching what Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping point. They estimated that if 10% of the company (around 100 employees at the time) were meaningfully engaged, it would be enough to make sustainability stick.
“We were literally counting. Through all the working groups and invitations, we made sure we reached 100 people. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was enough. That’s what made it stick.”
They tracked participation, encouraged volunteerism, and created a rhythm of monthly full-team meetings and regular touch points. Over time, sustainability stopped being someone else’s job. It became everyone’s.
Step 3: Embed into the day to day, and define structure
The retreat defined the what, the champions were the who. Now comes the hard part: the how. You need structure and operating models to make sure sustainability doesn't just sound good in meetings, it actually gets done.
Make it part of their job. Don't create parallel work. Instead, show people how their existing work connects to sustainability goals.
"If you were in the supply chain team and specifically involved in shipping, then you'd be on the task force for decarbonizing our shipping process. So it was actually drawing the people in who were doing this work already, but maybe not doing it responsibly."
Amy's example is perfect: to reduce air shipping, they needed to build extra time into the design calendar. That meant involving not just logistics people, but designers, merchandisers, and sales teams. Everyone had to understand how their decisions affected the larger goal.
"In order to ship things by sea, you have to build in an extra two months' time to the design calendar. So we had to go back to the people who decide what the items are going to be, sales, merchandising, and get them involved so that everybody can take a step back and agree to open up the design calendar."
This level of coordination required clear ownership. That’s where structure came in.
Make it clear who owns what. If people don’t know what they’re supposed to do, no one will do it. I think everyone will assume, “not me.” Amy used the RACI model to assign roles and bring clarity to each working group.
This brings me flashbacks. TLDR?
RACI is a tool to clarify roles and responsibilities:
R = Responsible. The person who does the work.
A = Accountable. The person ultimately answerable for the outcome, typically a senior leader.
C = Consulted. People who provide input or expertise, typically from other departments.
I = Informed. People who need to be kept in the loop.
It helps teams stay aligned, reduces confusion, and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
Create rhythms that stick. The core Sustainability Design Team met monthly. Working groups met more frequently based on their needs. But it wasn't just about meetings, it was about creating a rhythm that kept the work alive.
Amy's facilitator stayed with them throughout this process, helping with educational workshops and keeping people connected to the larger systems thinking approach.
"She would help lead and facilitate educational workshops to continue to get people invested in this idea of systems thinking... Even though on a day-to-day basis, this person over here may not think they have anything to do with this person over here, their decisions actually impact each other."
Eventually, sustainability wasn't something they did, it was how they worked. Clear roles, shared goals, and structure that actually stuck.
The result? The whole organization became the sustainability team.
PS: Operating models and structures are my bread and butter. I have an open-door policy for any SME sustainability person who needs help with this.
Mi Final Reflections
Amy Hall's wish for the fashion industry rings true to many of us:
"The fashion industry knows how to talk about this stuff. The fashion industry knows what to do, but it's clear that we are not doing enough. I wish the fashion industry would actually do what it says."
Building a culture of sustainability isn't about PowerPoints or policies. It's about people. It's about tapping into purpose and getting enough people believing in it. It requires perseverance and influence.
Amy didn't start with a master plan. She started by saying yes, then figured it out from there. What followed was 25+ years of pioneering work that helped turn EILEEN FISHER into one of the most respected sustainable brands in the world.
After helping hundreds of sustainability teams while leading ESG Insights at McKinsey, I can tell you this is the recipe that actually works.
So, if you're a team of one, or two, or just under-resourced, this is your roadmap for growing your sustainability team to include your whole organization.
The question isn't whether you can do it. The question is: what are you waiting for?
Ready to break industry norms? Subscribe to La Purpose Brand 🫒. We're building a catalog for SME brands bold enough to change the industry.
You think this is great and want to spread the olive love? Share with others.
Got feedback? I actually read these, so tell me what to tackle next.