Sustainability with AI – Christina Shim, IBM

This Is Techstrong tv. Hi, I'm Bonnie Schneider for Techstrong tv. Joining me now is Christina Shim, vice president and global head of Product Management and strategy at I B M sustainability software.

Christina's global experience and innovative approach have been instrumental in driving IBM's sustainability efforts. Today she's here to share how I b m leverages AI and data to fuel smarter and more sustainable decisions for organizations worldwide. Christina, it is a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you so much, Bonnie. Great to be here. Well, can you share more about your background and innovation and sustainability that led you to your current role at I B M?

Yeah, absolutely. So interestingly, my background is more in management consulting at the intersection of technology impact and strategy. And I say impact deliberately because I think the idea of sustainability has really become popular in the last, let's say five, 10 years before that organizations were thinking about impact a little bit differently, um, but increasingly kind of continued to focus more and more on the technology and impact side.

And that intersection and most recently stood up a sustainability and e s g consulting practice at a global impact firm called Palladium. And they do a lot of impact projects from all around the world, mostly with different governments. So say like reforestation project in Brazil or building a public health clinic in India increasingly wanted to ensure that private capital and corporations were also part of this mission and thinking about this from a corporate citizenship perspective.

So with that, I transitioned and last year joined I B M as the, um, head of sustainability and strategy for our sustainability software division. And this year took over for product management as well. And so it's been an interesting journey, you know, across different functions, but at the end of the day, really focus on this intersection, as I mentioned, of technology growth, innovation and impact, and how we can, you know, make a difference in our world with the technology and, uh, business that we're all running.

That's great. So how is I B M using AI to empower organizations when it comes to making these more en, environmentally friendly decisions? Specifically, we're, we're interested in TECHRON for the IT departments.

That's a lot of the people that are watching us now, and they're, they're under the gun really to, uh, be more sustainable and to reduce emissions. So I'm interested in how you're using AI to do that. Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, Bonnie, at the end of the day, a lot of what we're learning from our customers is that the biggest challenge around sustainability is not agreeing that we need to do something or not agreeing on what that commitment is. It's really on actioning and operationalizing that, right? And, and how do you do that?

The issue is that the data that's needed to actually understand what's going on within your business and within the core of your business operations and then actually put that into action to achieve your goals is very difficult to manage. We're talking about, if you think about, you know, sustainability more broadly, right? You think about all of the different facets.

So all of your buildings and what you're doing there and all of your metering and your bills and electricity, all of your data centers, everything that's happening in your supply chain, everything that's happening in your factories and your facilities, um, how, you know, weather operations affects and impacts your operations, right? I mean, these are all things that are happening real time today for all enterprises and organizations. If you think about all of the different data sources and systems that we just mentioned, how that would have to come together for organizations to really get a sense holistically about their enterprise's footprints from a sustainability lens, it's very, very difficult.

And, you know, a lot of one-on-one conversations or Chatham House rules, uh, events, they're very, you know, CIOs. So IT professionals, CEOs, CSOs, COOs, very open about the fact that they're still using spreadsheets to try to manage this, and it's really difficult to get a handle on what to do and how to go about doing that. So, um, I think a combination of these pressures of, Hey, I need to do something.

This is the right thing to do. We have commitments that we've articulated. And then also on the other side, uh, pressures coming from regulations globally as well as investors and customers.

It's really putting kind of a pressure cooker, uh, in, in terms of the expectations of what companies need to be doing. I think especially you mentioned from the IT side, you know, how do we then think about how AI can help to manage the complexity of all of this data? How do we think about how AI can help support, you know, understanding what's going on and actioning on that?

These are the ways that, I'm happy to go into more detail on this, but like, these are the ways that we're thinking about and working with our customers on leveraging AI to get them further along in their sustainability journey. And it's not necessarily specific to any one function, but for sure IT departments and CTOs, I mean, they for sure have to think about this. Um, but it's actually relevant across multiple functions in any organization.

Yeah, that, that definitely makes sense. Um, going back to IBM's approach, uh, when it comes to combining data insights and AI to address complexities of an organization's, um, effort to reduce their carbon footprint, um, maybe if you can give us some examples if you've worked with some companies and, and, and talk about how they've handled these challenges. Yeah, absolutely.

Uh, there was one actually, I was in Australia a few months ago, and I had met with a company called Downer Group. Um, they're essentially responsible, if you wanna say like all civil infrastructure for the most part in Australia and New Zealand. And they joked that they were managing the world's largest pivot table, just data from all over the place, all kind of smashed into an Excel spreadsheet.

It was really difficult for them to manage. They're responsible for really like civil infrastructure and construction and development, all these things across both economies. And you think about how much goes into that, how they think about their supply chain, how they think about their current operations, their manufacturing, you know, their people, everything.

Uh, they're, they decided that they were going to invest in one of the products that we have, which is in visi, E S G suite. And that's essentially the single system of record, right? So they said, we need to put all of our data into this one single system of record that will help us to understand holistically what's going on across our entire business and all of the operations.

And that way we can then understand where we need to action some of the biggest problems that we have in order to get us to that goal. So it ended up saving, you know, thousands of man hours. I mean, we're talking about thousands and thousands of data, data points that were going into these.

Um, and it helped them to make sense of where they were, where they were, and where they were going, um, and continues to, to this day. So that's one example that, you know, I just happened to speak with the, the client in person a couple months ago, making sure that they were, you know, excited about how it was helping them achieve their goals. I think increasingly as well, there's a lot of other products that we can, um, support across multitudes of different areas, but, you know, I think the main piece is how do we make sure that we have a handle on, uh, predictive issues and then proactively trying to make sure that we have a handle across all the different data sources.

So that's one example I'd share. Just if, if people are unfamiliar, do you think you can give us an overview just of IBM's sustainability software? com, so I know I B m too, so I know you have great weather data, but, um, maybe you can talk about some of the, the new, the newest, um, generations of your sustainability software, if someone's unfamiliar with it, what, what you're offering now.

Yeah, Absolutely. So it's, um, it's quite a comprehensive group of solutions, right? I'll actually start with, you know, we talk about the single system of record, making sure that we understand how to manage around data and weather, and actually the weather company that we, that you were just mentioning.

So the Weather Company, we actually created an environmental intelligence suite to help support around weather and climate related risks, right? So working with airports and figuring out how to manage their, uh, operations, thinking about, you know, actually these are real time examples thinking about insurance companies and mortgages, uh, mortgage lenders and how they think about even lending out or how they think about, you know, what it means for the portfolio of, uh, companies that they're going to be insuring and what that means, right? In California and Florida and all these places where there's a lot of issues with wildfire and flood and all of that.

So we have those products. We have a product called Maximo that's focused on, you know, physical assets and asset management. So in enterprises like factories or manufacturing floors around predictive maintenance, monitoring and health and having to support and helping to support around, you know, civil infrastructure.

Uh, we have one called tririga, which helps with commercial real estate and building efficiencies. We have turbonomic, which helps around data centers and what that means for data center efficiency and load rebalancing and optimization. And we have a few on the supply chain side that helps with like inventory management with traceability and tracking across supply chain so that, you know, you don't have child labor as part of your supply chain.

You also can measure your scope three emissions as part of your supply chain, and really understanding end-to-end what's happening in your business in that regard. So across all of these different products, and we have, you know, several more, but these are kind of the, the, the core ones where we are making sure that there's integrations between, and also, you know, addressing different operation operational goals that organizations have so that they can really get, and I joke, it's kind of the non-sexy stuff, but really like get into the weeds on how to action the sustainability commitments that the organization has made. And at the end of the day, Bonnie, this is just good business, right?

So what business function doesn't want to have more efficiencies and optimize their costs and optimize, you know, reducing their waste and emissions. I mean, this is all things that are, yes, good for sustainability, also really good for the business, um, and good for the executives, and increasingly have compensation that's tied to sustainability goals as well. Christina, in the era of a data-driven decisions, what are some general tips that you might have for IT practitioners that are looking to reduce their carbon emissions?

Mm-hmm. I think, um, it's really important that people recognize that they're probably somewhere already on the journey. So I think a lot of people have a paralysis, they get nervous about where, oh, I don't even know where to start.

You're probably already doing something that is in the best interest of the sustainability goals that you're trying to achieve. So I would say first, get a handle on your data, understand exactly where the data is, and make sure that you are able to address that towards the gap of reaching particular goals that the corp that the corporation or organization has articulated and committed to. And then as it relates specifically to the function, what are some of the technologies that can come in to help address those gaps?

So this is not, you know, I think one of the things, the challenges is that this is not, you know, one, uh, function by function directive. This is across the entire enterprise. So for IT professionals, it's very important that they are also working with their counterparts and, you know, finance and supply chain and et cetera, to make sure that they have a holistic view on what's needed and what technology is, is going to help them to achieve the goals that they're trying to achieve.

So start with understanding the goals that are necessary, the outcome that you're trying to achieve, make sure you have the data, uh, understanding of what you need, and then identify the ones that you, you might need to understand a little better. Make sure you have the right technology to help to enable both the gathering of the data as well as the, the, um, aggregation of the data and the analytics on the data, the reporting of the data, all of the things that the data will help you to achieve. And then most importantly, then that you're working with each of the different functions to action based on what you're learning from that data and from the technology that you're using.

That's great. And, you know, we talked a little bit about the I B M software and sustainability products, but, um, just to recap, are is there any maybe one particular facet that you're particularly excited about? Yeah, I mean, I think, look, everybody right now is talking about ai, and I think AI is amazingly, um, effective in terms of accelerating the goals.

All of this, though, technology is an enabler. It's not the answer to everything. And I do think that it's, it's an incredible enabler.

We're only going to be able to get to where we need to get to by leveraging technology. So for all of your viewers who are IT professionals, but also for everybody else, um, you know, technology affects each one of us every day. And I think with the advent of how we're thinking about AI and, and embedding that as part of our solutions towards, you know, climate change and climate risk, how we're thinking about, uh, day-to-day sustainability initiatives, and importantly our business imperatives and initiatives, I think that that's, you know, really exciting.

We're an exciting right time right now where we're seeing what's happening in the world. We know that there's a lot that we need to do to try to mitigate climate change and climate risk. Um, and we have the technology at our disposal to do that.

We need to just make sure that we're starting to adopt it and move faster in that direction, You know, and that's interesting because one of the next question I was gonna ask you is about, um, global regulations. Like, it depends on where you are at the US E S G, and then in the eu there's, um, new standards that are coming out. So how do you stay on top of all of that and make sure that your tools are able to serve, you know, this changing situation of what a sustainable software solutions need needs to be to assist your clients?

Yeah, it's not easy. I mean, um, you know, we have folks that are full-time following the landscape and you know, it's partly folks that are focused on what the products need to do. It's also internal to I B M.

We have folks on our finance department, we have folks in our regulations and legal department, our public policy department, our, um, our environmental affairs depart mean like so many people across various functions that are following all the regulations to make sure that we are kept abreast of what's going on and what the implications are. We do the same thing on the product side to make sure, you know, we, with the Envizi product, for example, we are able to, uh, support all of the existing frameworks around there, but the regulations continue to change, as you're mentioning. So it really depends on what that regulation is that's coming in.

C S R B is a really big one that is affecting everything in the eu. Mm-hmm. Um, you're right, there are more that are coming out in the, in the us there was one that was passed, you know, in the last several months around human rights in, in Germany and in Mexico and kind of all over.

So there, it's exciting. It's also challenging. It's great opportunity.

I, I personally think that it's necessary. We need to make sure that we do have compliance against these because it's the only way that will help to accelerate this even further, um, in terms of corporate citizenship and what folks are responsible for. But it's definitely, you know, ever changing and evolving landscape and we're, you know, we're keeping on top of it as best as we can.

And what are the future trends that you see at the intersection of sustainability and technology and, um, uh, know from your spec perspective in, in this field and also for I B M, uh, where do you see all of this going? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few things. So one is I hope, and I joke with my friends who are chief sustainability officers, but I hope in five to 10 years there's no such thing as a chief sustainability officer.

Um, I hope that that means that the embedding of what this means is really truly within each of the different functional areas, and therefore, that each of those different functional areas has a technology that they need to be able to, uh, elicit the insights for their businesses. I also think I mentioned earlier on, on the intersection between AI and sustainability and how important that's going to be. You know, one of the things that we talked about the large language models and, and, and how important that will be.

But we also, you know, forget sometimes that there are other, there are other ways of thinking about ai. And so IBM's investing in foundation models more broadly. Uh, one example of that is we're working with NASA and we're using all of their geospatial data to better understand how and what the ramifications are of extreme weather and long-term climate change to businesses, to suppliers, to, um, organizations more broadly.

So I think there's a lot of opportunity here, um, on the technology side as it relates to sustainability, but I think those are kind of the, you know, more broadly some trends that I see. And I think that it will accelerate even further going forward. That sounds great.

Well, it was a pleasure having you on. Christina, Christina Shim, vice President and Global Head of Product Management and strategy at I B M Sustainability software. Christina, thanks for all this information and it was, uh, I think our viewers will find your comments very insightful.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Bye. Alright, well stay with us on Techstrong tv. We're gonna have a lot more after this.