Journey To Regeneration

Chris Marquis
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  • Business
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Journey to Regeneration explores how forward-looking companies create long-term advantage by repairing the ecological and social systems they rely on. Hosted by Cambridge professor Christopher Marquis, the show features CEOs, sustainability strategists, climate innovators, and scholars who turn big ideas into actionable moves—unpacking what “net positive” really looks like, the policies accelerating the shift, and the practical hurdles leaders face on the ground. It’s a show for decision-makers who want to create resilient growth without greenwashing.

  1. 3d ago

    When Growth Becomes Climate Strategy: Caroline Reid on Oatly and Food-System Change

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Caroline Reid, Senior Director of Sustainability at Oatly, about what it takes for a company to move from reducing its own environmental footprint to challenging the system in which it operates. Drawing on more than fifteen years of sustainability work at IKEA and an engineering background, Reid contrasts the efficiencies available within an established business model with Oatly's effort to shift consumption away from higher-impact dairy products. She explains why Oatly views conversion rather than additional consumption as central to its climate impact, and how the company uses consumer surveys, sales volumes, and life-cycle assessments to calculate avoided emissions while keeping those claims separate from its own corporate footprint. The discussion examines Oatly's early adoption of product-level climate labeling, the Climate Solutions Framework, and the tensions that arise when conventional emissions targets are applied to growing companies whose products are designed to displace more carbon-intensive incumbents. Reid also describes Oatly's approach to regenerative agriculture, including working through mills as leverage points across crop rotations and collaborating with other food buyers to support farmers. The result is a wider discussion about how companies can identify the places where they genuinely have influence—across consumer culture, supply chains, finance, and industry standards—and use business growth not simply to sell more, but to accelerate a transition toward a lower-impact food system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  2. Sep 10

    Helen Crowley on Moving Business From Less Harm to Nature Positive

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Dr. Helen Crowley, Co-Founder and CEO of Nature Matters, a conservation biologist whose career has taken her from field-based biodiversity work with the Wildlife Conservation Society to corporate sustainability leadership at Kering and, more recently, nature-focused advisory and education. Crowley explains why addressing biodiversity loss requires companies to look beyond operational footprints and understand how decisions about materials, sourcing, and supply chains shape ecosystems far from corporate headquarters. Drawing on her work on Kering’s pioneering Environmental Profit and Loss account, she discusses how natural-capital measurement can become a tool for prioritization and change rather than simply another disclosure exercise. The conversation examines cashmere sourcing in Mongolia as a case study, where evidence of land degradation led not to abandoning the material but to work on regenerative grazing, herder livelihoods, animal husbandry, and wildlife protection. Crowley also reflects on the responsibilities and opportunities of luxury companies, the relationship between nature-positive strategies and long-term resilience, and the limits of sustainability approaches built primarily around reducing negative impacts. Through her work at Nature Matters, she argues for bringing ecological complexity, scientific understanding, and compelling storytelling back into business decision-making. The result is a broader argument for regeneration: companies need to understand where they depend on and affect nature, then move from minimizing damage toward actively improving the systems on which both business and society depend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  3. Sep 3

    People First in the Age of AI: How Vebego Turns Employment into Social Impact

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Ton Goedmakers, CEO of Vebego, a third-generation family-owned facility-services company employing around 40,000 people, about what it means to build social inclusion into the operating model of a business. Goedmakers discusses Vebego’s commitment to creating meaningful work for people who face a “distance to the labor market,” and its ambition to increase their share of the company’s workforce from around 10 percent today to 30 percent by 2030. The conversation explores why inclusion depends on much more than recruitment: managers need to recognize and develop overlooked potential, clients must value social outcomes, and public policy can either enable or constrain new employment models. Goedmakers also explains how Vebego has worked to quantify the wider societal value created by bringing people into employment, challenging conventional measures of productivity and business performance. A theme of the discussion is the importance of kindness as a business strategy, which Goedmakers distinguishes from niceness by emphasizing honesty, accountability, and a willingness to enter uncomfortable conversations. Finally, he considers the implications of AI, automation, and robotics for lower-skilled and labor-intensive work, arguing for technology that supports people rather than simply displaces them. The conversation offers a broader view of regenerative business in which work itself can become a means of rebuilding participation, dignity, capability, and social value. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  4. Aug 13

    Steward Ownership: Redesigning Business for Long-Term Purpose

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Esther Welles, co-founder of We Are Stewards, an organization advancing steward ownership as a new approach to business governance and long-term purpose. Steward ownership challenges the assumption that companies must ultimately be controlled by financial owners seeking maximum returns. Instead, it separates voting rights from economic rights so that control remains with people committed to protecting the company’s mission. Esther explains why ownership structures are often overlooked in sustainability discussions, even though they determine whether regenerative commitments can survive changes in leadership, investment, and market pressures. The conversation explores examples including Patagonia, Bosch, Novo Nordisk, and steward-owned companies in Denmark and the Netherlands, as well as different models such as foundation ownership, shareholder foundations, and golden shares. Esther also discusses the challenges entrepreneurs face when transitioning ownership, the importance of mission-aligned investors, and the need to educate lawyers, financial advisors, and other ecosystem actors about alternative ownership models. The discussion highlights a broader question for regenerative business: if companies are meant to create long-term value for society and the planet, how should ownership itself be redesigned to support that purpose? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  5. Aug 6

    True Pricing: Making the Hidden Costs of Business Visible

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Michel Scholte and Claire van den Broek from True Price, an organization working to transform how businesses and societies understand value by accounting for the hidden social and environmental costs embedded in products and supply chains. We discuss the concept of true pricing — a methodology that identifies impacts such as carbon emissions, water use, soil degradation, poverty wages, and labor exploitation, and what products would cost if these impacts were prevented, repaired, or compensated for. Drawing on examples like bananas, coffee, chocolate, textiles, and other products, Michel and Claire explain how true pricing can reveal risks that companies often overlook and help reshape procurement, consumer choices, and public policy. They explore how businesses can move beyond sustainability reporting toward changing the economic systems that create environmental and social harm, while also addressing important questions around responsibility, affordability, and collective action. The conversation offers a deeper look at how pricing mechanisms can support a more regenerative economy by aligning markets with the real costs of production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  6. Jul 30

    Giving Nature a Voice: Brontie Ansell on Building a Legal System for Nature

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Brontie Ansell, Managing Director and co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, about how legal systems can be transformed to recognize nature as more than an object of regulation. Brontie explains the foundations of the rights of nature movement, arguing that traditional environmental law has often focused on human interests rather than recognizing ecosystems as having intrinsic value and the need for representation. The conversation explores how this perspective can reshape decision-making in governments and businesses, including Lawyers for Nature’s work introducing nature representatives into corporate governance through initiatives such as Faith in Nature’s appointment of nature as a board director. Brontie also discusses the practical challenges of adapting rights of nature principles across different legal systems, the influence of Indigenous perspectives, and the importance of changing cultural understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Rather than framing regeneration as a conflict between business and environmental protection, she highlights how bringing nature into decision-making can help organizations consider new possibilities, manage long-term risks, and create more resilient systems. This conversation offers a compelling perspective on how law, governance, and business can evolve to reflect our deeper interdependence with the living world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  7. Jul 23

    Rethinking Who Owns the Value a Business Creates with Hans van den Broek of The Shore

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Chris Marquis speaks with Hans van den Broek, founder of The Shore, a surf school and organic café in Scheveningen, and a participant in the Netherlands’ Sleipnir network of steward-owned businesses. Van den Broek traces The Shore’s unlikely development from a tiny seasonal surf operation into a valuable year-round beach business, explaining how public permits, real estate, and investor interest forced him to confront questions about where business value comes from and who should benefit from it. Rather than sell equity and create pressure to recover the purchase price through higher margins, cheaper inputs, or reduced labor costs, he transferred the company’s capital into the Sleipnir Foundation. The structure preserves entrepreneurial autonomy while preventing the business from being sold for private gain. The conversation examines ownership as a frequently overlooked constraint on sustainability, as well as the implications of steward ownership for financing, succession, profit, and governance. Van den Broek describes Sleipnir as a form of “business permaculture,” in which independent companies share capital, advice, and practical resources while returning surplus value to the social and ecological systems that enable their success. His experience suggests that regenerative business may depend not only on changing what companies produce, but also on redesigning who owns them and where the value they generate is allowed to flow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  8. Jul 16

    Ocaquatics, Employee Ownership, and the Ripples of Impact

    In this episode of Journey to Regeneration, Christopher Marquis speaks with Miren Oca, founder and CEO of Ocaquatics Swim School, a Miami-based company that has taught more than 3.2 million swim lessons while building a business around safety, employee development, environmental responsibility, and community access. Oca reflects on how a company she began in survival mode as a 19-year-old student evolved into a certified B Corp and, more recently, an employee-owned company through an employee ownership trust. The conversation explores what it means to build regenerative capacity in a service business with a real environmental footprint, from solar panels and pool covers to formalized employee loan programs and impact measurement. It also examines swimming as a public-safety and equity issue in Miami-Dade County, where access to lessons can shape whether children and families are safe around water. At its heart, this episode is about succession, stewardship, and redefining ROI—not only as financial return, but as the ripples of impact a business creates for workers, customers, communities, and the places it calls home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Journey to Regeneration explores how forward-looking companies create long-term advantage by repairing the ecological and social systems they rely on. Hosted by Cambridge professor Christopher Marquis, the show features CEOs, sustainability strategists, climate innovators, and scholars who turn big ideas into actionable moves—unpacking what “net positive” really looks like, the policies accelerating the shift, and the practical hurdles leaders face on the ground. It’s a show for decision-makers who want to create resilient growth without greenwashing.

Information

  • Creator
    Chris Marquis
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    53
  • Copyright
    © Chris Marquis