If a company can generate revenue and produce creative solutions to solve societal problems, it can have a lasting impact.
This morning, Fortune’s annual Change the World list honors companies—from global corporations to startups (some with less than $1 billion in revenue)—meeting this challenge. “The endemic planetary problems that Change the World companies are taking on—climate change, public health crises, gender, and racial inequities, and lack of economic opportunity—require the strengths of big and small companies alike,” Fortune‘s Executive Features Editor Matt Heimer writes in the October/November issue of Fortune magazine.
PayPal earned the No. 1 spot on the list. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the payments giant based in San Jose, California, steered nearly $1 billion to displaced Ukrainians. As of late September, using PayPal’s platform, customers raised more than $600 million for relief efforts in Ukraine. The company has also helped Ukrainian citizens receive and send another $330 million in person-to-person payments and money transfers.
Since launching CFO Daily in 2021, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with finance chiefs at some of the companies changing the world. Brewing giant Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev, headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, is No. 21 on the list.
“In 2022, part of my compensation, part of my bonus is linked to ESG,” Fernando Tennenbaum, CFO at AB InBev, recently told me. “And that should tell you how important [ESG] is for us as a company.” Tennenbaum and I talked this past summer about the world’s largest beer brewer opening a $100 million plant protein production facility at the Anheuser-Busch St. Louis Brewery Campus.
The company is also working to protect the world’s water. AB InBev uses over 42 billion gallons of water each year and is deploying leading-edge conservation tactics in the communities where it operates. How? By developing a seven-step watershed management process for its breweries to implement, and it’s collaborating on water protection projects in 17 countries.
“When I started in my career, the CFO role was about creating shareholder value,” Harmit Singh, EVP and CFO of Levi Strauss & Co. told me earlier this year. “Today, it’s about broader stakeholder value creation.”
The San Francisco-based apparel maker and retailer, No. 27 on the list, is rallying business leaders behind gun-safety legislation. When the company circulated a letter urging Congress to pass gun-safety legislation in February 2019, four CEOs signed it. However, when Levi’s tried again this past June, nearly 550 signed on. The letter assisted in persuading lawmakers to break a decades-old impasse and vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Fortune reported. CEO Chip Bergh told Fortune: “We know that this is a complex issue, but doing nothing is not an option.”
A major part of the CFO role requires being “the strategic right hand of the leader of the business,” Karen Parkhill, EVP, and CFO at Medtronic, once told me. The global medical device company headquartered in Dublin is strategically working hard to allow for the early detection of colorectal cancer that kills nearly 900,000 people a year. The company’s GI Genius module uses A.I., built around 13 million images of colorectal polyps, to detect tiny polyps not easily seen by the human eye.
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. CFO Jack Hartung once told me that he visits the sustainable farms where food for Chipotle is sourced. “I would say the biggest thing that I have learned over the years that has helped me, is to think broader than just finance,” Hartung said.
The company (No. 37), which has more than 3,000 restaurants worldwide, is based in Newport Beach, California. Last year, Chipotle bought more than 35 million pounds of locally-grown produce. And, over the past two years, it has spent an extra $400 million to purchase responsibly sourced and humanely raised ingredients.
Fortune staff teamed up again with Shared Value Initiative, a consultancy that helps companies apply business skills to social problems, to select this year’s honorees. It takes an ongoing commitment that’s embedded in the business strategy to make impactful changes. And the companies on the Change the World list are making great strides.
You can read all about them here.
