Samantha McKeough - Sustainability Consultant at HealthPartners
Samantha is currently the Sustainability Consultant at HealthPartners, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has been an integral part of the nationally recognized Sustainability program for over four years. In this role, she works to identify opportunities to strengthen the triple bottom line: people, prosperity, and planet. Such opportunities include, reducing waste, efficient energy management, environmentally preferred purchasing, and employee engagement. Samantha is responsible for implementing and managing sustainability programming across the HealthPartners family of care which includes 8 hospitals, over 70 clinics, and more than 26,000 employees.
Samantha Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:
What hospitals are doing to address sustainability
Climate change, human health impacts and the health care industry's role in this dynamic
Leading an organization's first GHG emissions inventory
The Minnesota Sustainable Growth Coalition
Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders
Samantha's Final Five Question Responses:
What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?
I would say to be patient yet persistent. I think sustainability work, at least my experience, has been most successful when you bring a lot of different stakeholders with different perspectives together to really collaborate on how to solve these issues. That takes a lot of time, so patience and then also persistence. Sometimes the first time you suggest a project or an idea and might get shot down, but don't give up on it if it's something that you really know will have a big impact or something that you really believe in.
What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?
The way that it brings people together. Going back to the Minnesota Sustainable Growth Coalition, getting businesses which may traditionally be seen as competitors all in the same room together, talking about environmental stewardship in sustainability and troubleshooting and sharing stories and barriers so we can all learn from each other. This is something that's really unique to this area. ROI and shareholders are always a part of the conversation, but also there's that recognition and understanding that the work that we're doing is greater than ourselves and our businesses and really is is the right thing to do.
What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?
I think for those people who are interested then in learning more about sustainable health care, Kathy Gerwig, she is currently the vice president of environmental stewardship for Kaiser Permanente. She wrote a book called Greening Health Care and really has been a trailblazer in the healthcare sustainability world. I think it gives a good overview on the issues healthcare is facing today and the initiatives and projects that the healthcare industry could work on to help improve the health of their communities.
What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?
So we're members of an organization called Practice Green Health. They're the national premier health care sustainability organization. This is where I go every time I run into a question or an issue or a barrier. They have a website with a ton of great resources. They also have amazing knowledgeable staff that are there to help.
Where can people go to learn more about you and the work being done at Health Partners?
We have a public website at healthpartners.com and search for sustainability. There's a great summary there of all the work we're doing and our future goals. For my work personally, people can check out my LinkedIn page. I'm active on LinkedIn. I love to share updates about things we've got going on here at Health Partners and also some initiatives going on outside of work.