Meet our team: Emma Neudegg, Junior Consultant

What is your professional background and experience?

After my masters I become a data/business analyst for two different renewable energy companies; it helped me to fully realise that data will and is changing the world. Data can tell you everything you would ever need to know, but you first need to understand what the right questions to ask are, how the data should be presented so it’s meaningful and actionable and have an idea of the wider context. I’ve seen first-hand that by looking at data, presenting it in a meaningful way and offering actionable insights you can change an entire company’s direction. 

Why did you decide to come to Rio?

Discovering Rio was like a lightbulb moment for me. Rio took two of my greatest loves, data and ESG, bought them together and are striving to make real, meaningful change. Rio sees the importance of data and reporting to understand a company’s current performance, pulling that
together with expert knowledge of different frameworks and then working together with companies to implement policies and strategies to not just reduce environmental impact but improve company culture, employee wellbeing and save money. 

With new regulations that companies are mandated to meet coming out all the time to the IPCC reports highlighting just how bad the impacts to businesses could be with things like supply chain issues leading to increased prices and a fall in production. Then combine that with over a
third of global consumers willing to pay more for sustainable products (Global Sustainability Study 2021), we start to see a very different world shaping up before us – a much more ESG orientated one. This makes me very excited to be part of Rio at such a transformative time and be at the forefront of such widespread innovation, ultimately working towards bettering our environment and society.

Why and how did you get into sustainability?

Throughout my analyst role, I became fascinated with ESG. ESG offered me a way to look at combatting climate change from a more holistic point of view as it goes across any company, rather than just one industry. ESG within itself I think could also be considered a holistic approach, it’s not just one static goal, say, for example, increasing recycling by 20%. It’s an
entire framework of environmental considerations from energy consumption to waste or water usage, but other important aspects too like gender diversity, employee wellbeing and company culture. Then, on top of that, it considers how companies operate and what their specific
policies or strategies are.

What subjects are you most passionate about in your work?

My biggest passion and first love is the ocean, it’s always at the heart of what I do. The ocean is amazing, all life on Earth originated there, it covers over 70% of our planet and yet more than 80% has never been explored or even seen. When I was studying Ocean Science it became
apparent very quickly that the single biggest threat to the ocean and its inhabitants is Climate Change. Things like ocean acidification, rising temperatures, changes in ocean currents all have further knock-on impacts on a broad spectrum of areas like biodiversity and extreme weather events around the world. This passion led me to study for my master’s in Climate Change Science and Policy.