With a career spanning more than 20 years, always working on topics such as sustainability, environmentalism, human rights and diversity, Suelma Rosa, now at Unilever, has a firm view on the positioning of brands and companies: “There is no such choice for a company not to position itself. There is the choice to leave others with the interpretation of what its position is.”

For Unilever’s Head of Corporate Affairs & Sustainability, nowadays, consumers demand a position on issues of interest to society. “For a long time, the company was considered a foreign body to society, an outsider. And today, it is no longer possible to be assessed. All the interconnections and the impact that a company has on the economy, on social and environmental aspects, no longer allows silence,” she says.

But is it possible for a company to take a stand on all global topics? Unilever’s leader believes so. According to Suelma, widely positioning is necessary, but the important thing is to define priority: “Of course, there is interconnectivity. Even if you choose a priority topic related to the company’s journey, this topic will be transversally impacted by all the others. So it’s important to think about the big picture and choose your engagement priorities.”

The executive was the first guest of WIN World Newsroom’s new series of interviews: BR Talks. Every two weeks, a new name will show what Brazilian leadership has to inspire and share with the world (click here to watch the first episode). Following, other highlights of the chat with Suelma:

Purpose

“There is no way to live that is outside of our values. If there’s anything the pandemic has brought us, it’s reminding us that we are whole human beings. I can’t think of Suelma as not the person who believes that people are equal and that they need to have the same rights and opportunities. We are part of the same absolutely inseparable ecosystem, so it makes no sense, for example, to discuss the environment external to human existence.”

Future leaders

“We leaders, in all leadership positions, need to remember that we human beings are ahead of everyone else. Empathy is the first step to being a leader who has the ability to take the world definitively into the 21st century. When you put yourself in this empathic role and understand that we are all interconnected, all the company’s activity, the way you relate to those you lead, the way you engage, build bridges to outside transforms. And then we can think of a world that is already our present. We have discovered that it is not necessary to be in loco to be connected and productive, but that productivity needs to consider well-being, quality of life and integral health. The leader needs to think empathically and remember that it is all about people-to-people connections.”