#22: Antje von Dewitz: How 'responsibility' applies to all sizes of company

Listen to Antje von Dewitz, CEO of the mountain sports outdoor products manufacturer Vaude.

Frankly Speaking welcomes Antje von Dewitz, Chief Executive Officer of the mountain sports outdoor products manufacturer Vaude, based in rural southern Germany. Vaude has won awards as Germany's greenest company and Antje is an ambassador for the Economy for the Common Good, served as vice president of her industry body, the European Outdoor Group, and she is a past winner of Vanity Fair's Changing Your Mind award.

Listen in and share our conversation about:

Why making Vaude a sustainable company
How to convince suppliers to change, to become carbon neutral
Criticisms of the Germany Supply Chain Act and what we can learn from it?
Sustainability being perceived as a burden for a medium-sized company
Why liability is a necessary part of due diligence
Difficulty of strengthening workers’ rights in non-democratic countries
Being one of a few women business leaders in the mountain sports and outdoor goods industry
The question of growth and scaling up a sustainable business
Taking sabbaticals

“Compare sustainability to digitalization: You would never say that you're too small to be digitalized. If you're not going to learn it, you're going to be erased by the market. I think it's the same thing with sustainability. It is doable! It's the responsibility of every company to know what they do, to know about the things they produce, also outside of Germany. So no matter what size you are, this is the beginning of being capable of responsibility.”

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Antje von Dewitz in Frankly Speaking

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