From Commitments to Measurable Action

[00:00:02] Keith Zakheim:

Welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast. I am your host, Keith Zakheim. Today, as we do with every podcast, we're going to ask our guest one question and one question only. What is your Age of Climate adoption story?

A little bit about the Age of Adoption: We live in an era where enterprises of every shape and size, regardless of industry, must rapidly transform to become more sustainable and climate sensitive. My day job is CEO of the marketing public relations firm Antenna Group. Our agency works exclusively with conscious brands.

What is a conscious brand? It is a brand that is conscious of its responsibility to be on the right side of history. Like most businesses, our clients are experiencing a transition from an age of innovation, an era in which technologists, entrepreneurs and investors focused on innovating climate and sustainable solutions, to this age of adoption which characterizes the world today.

So, if you accept the Age of Adoption hypothesis, then there's really only one salient question to be asked: What is your Age of Adoption story?

Joe Speicher’s career path reads like a case study in bridging worlds that rarely speak the same language. He started on Wall Street at Deutsche Bank, then shocked his managing director by announcing one day he was going to leave to join the Peace Corps in the Philippines. From finance to volunteering to corporate philanthropy to climate tech investing, each stop informed how Joe thinks about deploying capital and measuring impact. When Joe joined Autodesk 12 years ago to lead corporate philanthropy, the mandate was simple: invest in design and engineering solutions for societal benefit. But all the interesting work was happening in the commercial sector, not in nonprofits. So Autodesk started investing its philanthropic corpus in low-carbon technology companies. That's how Joe cut his teeth on sustainability and eventually became Autodesk's Chief Sustainability Officer. Sustainability cannot be a sidecar. That's the mantra that guides Joe's work. Historically, CSO teams were siloed. Someone would run the business, then report sustainability metrics downstream. Joe recognized that carbon intelligence needs to be embedded directly into the tools people use every day. Autodesk serves industries responsible for 40% of global emissions: architecture, engineering, construction, and operations. If sustainability decisions are made only at reporting time, well, then it's too late. What to do? Well, build carbon analytics into design workflows, procurement decisions, and operational maintenance. And voila. That's what Autodesk does and does well today. On the Age of Adoption podcast, Joe explains why 40% of global electricity now comes from renewables and nuclear, why celebrating incremental wins matters more than demanding radical change, and why having a finance background makes you better at ripping apart both balance sheets and climate risk. Back with Joe in a New York minute.

[3:19] Keith Zakheim:

Hey, Joe, welcome to the Age of Adoption podcast.

[3:23] Joe Speicher:

Thank you, Keith. I'm excited to be here.

[3:26] Keith Zakheim:

Likewise. We appreciate you coming on. And, you know, I don't want to put any pressure on you, but I think the last guest we had was a Stanley Cup-winning goaltender who's now in the sustainability and climate industry. So you have a cool background, which I'm excited for you to get to, but winning a game seven in the Stanley Cup, I'm not sure that's in your biography, although I could be wrong.

[3:49] Joe Speicher:

No, you did not miss any championships, global titles, or medals in my history. I'll try to punch above my weight here.

[3:59] Keith Zakheim:

Nevertheless, your background is fascinating and as Chief Sustainability Officer at Autodesk, and we've been fortunate to have numerous conversations with CSOs from some of the world's largest companies. But I don't think to date, anyone in software, a CSO in software. So that also, you know, for us is interesting. And of course, the convergence of real estate and sustainability for us because, you know, we're also a communications and PR agency and those are our two main practice areas. So anything that brings those two industries together is fascinating for us. But for those who don't know, you know, Joe leads sustainability and ESG strategy, which really is embedding climate considerations into products, operations and workflows. And I know a lot of your work focuses on design, data and AI to reduce emissions across a built environment. Everybody's heard over and over again the real impact of the built environment on carbon emissions and the percentage it accounts for, which is huge. And so Autodesk ultimately has developed solutions to try to solve for that and other things as well. So with that, Joe, I'm going to ask you to share your career journey. I know it also kind of started in finance and went into this, so I'm excited to learn more about it. And from there we'll get into the only question that matters.

[5:17] Joe Speicher:

Yeah, thank you. I've had a pretty circuitous background and you did note I started my career in finance. So I was in New York, your home base. Since that time, I've spent most of my time at the nexus of business and impact, societal impact. I went on from New York to join the Peace Corps, which was an interesting transition from Wall Street to the Philippines for a few years. And then I came back and kind of focused my career at the nexus of impact and business.

[5:46] Keith Zakheim:

Banking capitalist to the Peace Corps. I mean, that is a path not well trodden.

[5:52] Joe Speicher:

I guess one of the, one of the most challenging things I've ever done was explain to my managing director at Deutsche bank that I was leaving to volunteer my time for many years. It was a fun story. Yeah. And since then I've been focused on how do you leverage the business principles of accountability, measurable impact to social challenges. I was brought on to Autodesk about 12 years ago to lead our corporate philanthropy and through that started actually investing in low-carbon tech. Our mandate was design and engineering solutions for societal benefit. And from a philanthropic lens, all of the interesting stuff was happening in the commercial sector. So we started investing our corpus. That's how I cut my teeth on sustainability. And a few years ago became the Chief Sustainability Officer at Autodesk.

[6:41] Keith Zakheim:

And just kind of retrospectively from finance to where you are today. Anything that is a part of that experience, skill sets, dynamics, whatever that you learned there that you feel like you've applied in this new career.

[6:59] Joe Speicher:

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I'll note that having a varied career background I think is really valuable, particularly today. Now I say that as a person who has now been at Autodesk for 12 years, which is quite some time, but the, the ability to spend some time in Wall street, spend some time in the development world, spend some time in the nonprofit world and subsequently in the investing world, just having that kind of breadth of experience is incredibly informative when thinking about emergent problems like sustainability from a sustainability perspective. We're going through this long term, inexorable march towards a economy powered by lower emissions energy. And it takes a pretty expansive view to how we get there and when we get there. And so I think that all of the experiences I've had in my career, and I'm sure others would experience this as well, have kind of informed that longer term view. And so, yeah, I think it's, I think it's incredibly valuable. I also would note just being in finance and the ability to rip apart a balance sheet or a P and L is also very valuable.

[8:09] Keith Zakheim:

Yeah, I was going to say that I think we're all here to talk about the age of adoption and all the transformation that we've seen over the last 10 years or so or 15 years. But I would think that the typical background of a chief sustainability officer up until five, six years ago would have been more on the nonprofit side of things and the maturation of climate sustainability and the operationalizing of it. Clearly the economics at this point have to be a lot more of the propelling force than the virtue piece. So I kind of feel like your background is absolutely perfect to bridge both. Right. So you're, presumably you're, this is your chosen field because of your passion. There's advocacy there, but at the same time, you being able to speak in business terms, in finance terms, the economic drivers of what you do, that's incredibly powerful for adoption across the board.

[9:08] Joe Speicher:

I talk about this a lot, and a lot of the work is actually kind of storytelling and narrative around this.

[9:15] Keith Zakheim:

We love that.

[9:16] Joe Speicher:

Well, it's an incredibly important aspect of it. I'll note that there's a lot of noise in the sustainability space and it's kind of how do you cut through all that noise and get to the appropriate signals? And lately we're actually, the signals are pretty positive, generally speaking. And, and you know, again, we have a lot of work to do. We are, I, I, we're about a third into the marathon race that's been going on for the last few decades, but 40% of global electricity was generated by renewables, plus nuclear last year. That's, that's huge. And faster than any of the models predicted. 43 countries have put peak emissions in the rearview mirror. We spent globally $2.3 trillion in 2025 on the renewable transition. There's really good data to suggest that we're, we're making progress now. We flattened emissions curve. We need to drive it off a cliff. There's still much more work to do, but, but generally speaking, we need to celebrate those successes and recognize what's positive. And all of those numbers are economics. It's driven by the economics. And I would say that that's doing the work that policy used to do overall.

[10:30] Keith Zakheim:

Yeah, agreed. And yes, the cost we flattened, I guess the emissions, we obviously have to, as you said, drive it off a cliff. I typically subscribe to more of an incrementalist point of view for any movement, and so I think we need to celebrate those incremental wins. I think maybe part of the backlash we were experiencing in the climate movement today was a lack of that and much more of a progressive movement that wanted radical change versus incremental change. So I echo kind of what you say around, we've made a lot of progress. Let's keep reciting the data points around the progress we've made with obviously the perspective that there's a lot more to do.

[11:07] Joe Speicher:

Yeah, absolutely.

[11:10] Keith Zakheim:

So we're going to get to the question that everybody wants to answer. Certainly people prepare for months beforehand before they join the podcast. But what I think is super cool about Autodesk and your purview. And what I'd love to explore as you answer the question is for us, when we define the age of adoption, it was from innovation to operationalizing those innovations. And I think what's interesting is, you know, what you're solving for is to go from reporting to execution targets to measurable outcomes. Right. Like that is ultimately, you know, we do that now. You are operation, you know, you have to operationalize in order to do that. This is not just in the lab, this is not just in the ivory tower. So I wanted to point that out and there's a number of ways I'm sure you're going to go with your answer. So I'll ask the question. Joe, what is your age of adoption story?

[12:05] Joe Speicher:

I've been eagerly anticipating this question. Keith, thank you. I, having listened to the podcast, I'm. I immediately started thinking, what is my Age of Adoption story? So you teed me up very well. I would, I would say that my story is that historically sustainability teams have been to a certain extent siloed something of a sidecar to the rest of the business, kind of a downstream output, if you will. And so you like, for instance, you run the business and then you report on your sustainability metrics associated with running the business. What we have recognized is that sustainability needs to be embedded into the, as you could say, the operations of the business. And for us as a technology company, built into our tools. So we serve industries that are incredibly carbon intensive. You mentioned the built environment, what we call architecture, engineering, construction operations, that's associated with about 40% of total global emissions and equivalents every year. So we built tools to be able to help our customers identify where carbon sits, surface those decisions and help them make better carbon intelligent decisions overall. We built this in a go to market motions and we built it into our own operations. That's the starting point for any discussion with our customers is are we sustainable? And it's when sustainability has become fully integrated into the business and it's everyone's job versus just one team's job. The work we're doing helps to decarbonize the industries we serve writ large. And it enables better decision making, better carbon decisions and design workflows and procurement decisions, construction workflows, operational and maintenance decisions, that therefore our customers benefit from those and we benefit as well. And I, we can get more into it, but I think that that's the way that we have impact. That's the way that we drive decarbonization in Our industries. And that's my age of adoption story.

[14:04] Keith Zakheim:

Yeah, no, that's great. Let's actually look at one use case which I think is recent and fascinating. And, and it's the California Wildfire recovery and its application to resilient housing. And I know that Autodesk supported that wildfire recovery around kind of modular home designs and AI-powered permitting tools. And so. So you're kind of getting beyond mitigation there and more into climate resilience and adaptation. Love to learn more about that.

[14:35] Joe Speicher:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Well, I'll note really quickly that the, the AEC industry, AEC industry is, is primarily focused in three areas. It's. You've got the architecture and kind of engineering on the design side of the house. You subsequently have construction like, like are we building to spec? And then operations of the building. Is it, Are we, are we. How's the building running, the asset running? And we get to play across all three of those. We have technology offerings in the design space and the construction space and the digital twin operational space. And when we were looking at what happened in California and wildfires, we recognized that there was a need for technology across all three of those. And resilience really is simulation and analysis. It's how an asset performs when the world around it is changing. Right. We are now subject to more frequent and severe weather events. It really comes down to flooding, drought, wildfire and heat to a certain extent. And so how do those assets perform under those conditions? And we're able to offer that simulation and analysis in our offerings. And so we decided to go out and support the rebuild. There was a group of architects that came together and said, you know what, we're going to, we're going to design a bunch of solutions for families that were displaced in Altadena specifically. And then I think it's grown beyond that and get those permitted. So families can actually just go pick the design that they like and we can accelerate the response. And this is absolutely necessary in an age where we are adapting to a warmer climate. We've got to get better at doing this. And we recognize that we had a unique opportunity to do so. So yeah, Autodesk has a great amount of opportunity ahead of us in terms of helping to decarbonize the environment and so thereby avoiding some of the worst outcomes of a warmer planet and, and adapting to the challenges that we will face as we go towards a 1.5 degree or 2 degrees Celsius. Increase in global service temps.

[16:45] Keith Zakheim:

Yeah. John, I want to double-click on one thing that you mentioned a little bit ago, and that was about sustainability in the past being siloed from operations. And now another area that we've explored as an agency, in fact, we hosted a panel at New York Climate Week around this was comms and storytelling being siloed or being, you know, kind of not integrated with, I guess, sustainability. Right. So you have the CSO and the CCO. What is that dynamic? Like, how are they working together? What potential, what potential issues exist that may be, you know, making that less productive. So I'd love your perspective on it. Again, it's been, you know, you've been doing this a long time. We obviously have been in, you know, talk to your communications people as well. So we know that you are actually attached to the hip, which is great, or certainly work closely together. All joking aside, when you spoke before about storytelling as well and that being so integral to hopefully moving all this forward, where does that kind of, what's the dynamic that you experience?

[17:47] Joe Speicher:

So let me provide a little context first, Keith. So the way that, the way that the role of the Chief Sustainability Officer, I believe, has kind of evolved over time is that we've recognized the private sector has recognized there's a, there's, there's a risk associated with climate and running a business sometime that is, it shows up differently with different sectors, businesses, etc. But really the primary focus is on carbon emissions. And the role of the Chief Sustainability Officer is, okay, we've got a risk. Who's going to manage that risk? And let's make sure that it is appropriately managed and that I've got one neck to choke around managing that risk. And what we've seen happen is that's been kind of downstream and like, you go take care of that. As we see more regulatory motions associated with reporting on climate risk and emissions, reporting that it becomes more visible and clearer. And it also presents opportunities like everybody wants to run a less risky business. Right. And from an Autodesk perspective, the opportunity for us is to help our customers meet those goals. And there are other businesses that do so as well, particularly B2B customers. And so, so where we've kind of, what we've recognized is this, this, this need to mitigate the business impacts of climate change and to help others to do so. And a lot of that involves kind of go to market, board engagement, executive engagement. And so I see the role as the chief Standard officer as something of like a. This is, this is not meant to be pejorative. But like a tour guide, here's what's happening in the world. Here's how you separate the signal from the noise. Let me explain to you the key facts and figures that you need to have in order to make better decisions about running the business, and that that needs to be part and parcel of a narrative and appropriate storytelling to bring folks along. So I present our board regularly. I present to our CEO and executive leadership regularly saying, hey, here's, here's how you should look at the signals and noise. Here's how we get on the same page and, and look at the world in the same way. And here are how we manage the risks and maximize the opportunities associated with all of this data that's coming at us.

[19:56] Keith Zakheim:

Makes sense. Joe, that's a great answer and I think a good way to finish the episode. So, Joe, thanks so much for joining us on the Age of Adoption. Look forward to connecting in person on either my next trip to the west coast or when you're on the East Coast.

[20:12] Joe Speicher:

Yeah, please let me know when you're over here. We'd love to buy a cup of fancy coffee out here.

[20:16] Keith Zakheim:

Great. Thank you.

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