Her answer is deceptively simple: follow the money.

“If we can quantify the financial impact of aspects of sustainability, it will get the attention of the people that make the decisions,” Rebecca explains. “It pains me to say it, but money makes the world go round. So why don’t we try and make it work for us?”

This pragmatic, almost clinical recognition—that the path to impact runs through balance sheets—sets Rebecca apart from many in her field. For her, leadership isn’t about inspiring slogans or glossy ESG reports; it’s about building a language that boards and CFOs can’t ignore.

From Science to Strategy

Rebecca’s path into sustainability was neither linear nor preordained. A geophysics degree at Durham gave her the tools to interrogate the natural world—from the mechanics of California wildfires to the physics of the Earth’s core. But it was the undeniability of climate science, laid bare by her lecturers, that sharpened her resolve.

“These lecturers were able to describe it and put out the evidence in such a way that it felt so undeniable that I just couldn’t ignore it basically.”

Yet her first job, in a manufacturing firm, revealed a different frontier: gender inequality. Just 25% of the workforce were women. Rebecca threw herself into a gender balance working group, pushing back against everyday microaggressions and building awareness. Responsibility, she realised, is as much about culture as carbon.

The Double Materiality Moment

Today, Rebecca works at the cutting edge of “double materiality”—the idea that sustainability is no longer just about a company’s impact on the planet, but also the planet’s impact on the company. The EU’s CSRD regulations have made this dual lens unavoidable.

For Rebecca, this shift represents both a professional opportunity and a philosophical pivot: finally, the environmental crises of our age are being translated into the one language corporations fully understand—risk and return.

But she warns against complacency. Reports, she notes, can often feel like sterile artefacts of what’s already happened. The challenge is to make them drivers of change—spotlights that illuminate failure and possibility in equal measure.

Women in STEM, and the Power of Storytelling

Rebecca is also passionate about who gets to shape these narratives. Having studied in male-dominated science departments, she has seen how representation—or its absence—matters.

She lights up when discussing a recent article celebrating women scientists whose contributions have been forgotten, their names erased from the textbooks.

“If we want to get more women and young girls interested in science and then studying it, potentially then having a career in it, they need to see the role models and feel inspired by them.”

Here, communication is as critical as science. The stories that stick—the ones that change who sees themselves as a “scientist”—are often told not through reports, but through film, books, even TikTok reels. Sustainability, in other words, is as much cultural as it is technical.

Leadership at the Edge

What does it take to lead responsibly in this environment? For Rebecca, it is the ability to hold two ideas in tension: optimism and realism.

“Some of the clients I work with make me feel better about it. Some of them don’t… but I think you have to remain optimistic in this job, or what’s the point?”

That pragmatism is a lesson for leaders everywhere. Hope without realism is naivety; realism without hope is paralysis. The responsible edge lies in the uncomfortable space between.