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“We are not a green lifestyle newsletter. We are not sending out organic bento recipes. What we are is very, very ambitious. We wanted to put P&G in a leading position in terms of sustainable culture.”
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That’s Maggie Lee, a 2017 UW Sustainable Management master’s degree graduate, during her impassioned TEDx presentation last summer. She spoke of her path to becoming a founder of Procter & Gamble’s sustainability team in Singapore.

We loved the entirety of Maggie’s presentation, but here are our four favorite moments.  

• “What it means to be Canadian, aside from being friendly, is that we’re taught about the environment from a young age… It was as natural as learning math in school.”
• “My every habit, every choice, affects the environment.”
• “I started chatting up anyone who would listen, telling them, ‘I want to do environmental sustainability.’ Sure enough, I found many people who were like-minded. After a while, I was given responsibilities of sustainability for P&G Hong Kong and Taiwan.”
• “Sheer passion of talking about what I wanted to do and all my dreams won’t make my dreams come true. I need the right skills.”

In her presentation, Maggie talked briefly about her University of Wisconsin Master of Science in Sustainable Management. She enrolled, knowing that juggling a heavy course load with her full-time responsibilities at work would be tough. “I had to build up even more habits. Habits like working on my papers at lunch hours and in between night calls with the U.S. and downloading the lecture notes to read on planes.”

But the effort was worth it. Maggie said she felt fortunate to be able to apply her knowledge of environmental sustainability and sustainable management directly to her work with the Singapore sustainability team.

Recently, Maggie landed a new position as market transformation manager for the World Wildlife Fund in Singapore. 

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