Frame it
What's happening, why now, who is exposed. What you need to avoid, and what you could capture.
Board & executive advisory
Sustainability changes the answer.
The moment that carries weight is before approval. I bring independent judgment to Boards, CEOs and executive teams.
Former global sustainability executive. Nearly 30 years inside large, regulated businesses. From operations to the boardroom.
When to bring me in
When sustainability shapes the business question.
It rarely arrives with the label on it. It arrives as a market you are no longer sure of, a deal that doesn't add up, a committee that keeps deferring, an opportunity you can't yet prove. None of this is a failure of management. These are the decisions where the usual evidence runs out, and where capable people inside the business disagree in good faith. I spent nearly thirty years inside these decisions before advising on them from outside.
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Capital, investment & risk
The numbers don't carry the exposure.
A transaction, a capital investment, a financing: close to approval. The sustainability exposure sits outside the model. The question is which assumptions would move risk, return, or the approval conditions themselves. You want that answered before the vote, not after it.
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Product, value chain & market access
A product, a supplier or a market stops being safe.
Regulation moved. Or a customer's requirements did. What you can sell, source or claim has narrowed, and compliance alone no longer settles it. The real decision is what has to change for the product, or the whole chain behind it, to stay viable in every market you serve.
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Growth, innovation & strategic options
The opportunity is real. The case for it isn't built yet.
A product, a market, a resource advantage: something that could create value well beyond compliance. This is where sustainability opens options rather than closing them. But it is not yet a strategic choice, because the test hasn't been run. Does the commercial logic hold? Does the evidence support scaling it, reshaping it, or stopping it?
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Governance & integration
The machinery is in place. The decisions haven't caught up.
Most organisations of this size have invested seriously in expertise, governance and reporting. The harder part is making that work count where the decisions are actually made. The gap is usually structural rather than personal: decision rights nobody can state precisely, and expertise sitting a long way from where the value and the risk are.
How I help
From situation to a decision you can defend.
Sustainability alters what you have to decide. Governance is what gets the implications examined and the trade-offs owned. The result is a better business decision, not a parallel programme, and a decision the people who did not make it can still follow.
Surface the trade-off
Put the competing objectives on the table and show plainly that you cannot have all of them. Often the trade-off is visible to everyone and owned by no one. That is usually why the decision waits.
Test the evidence
Separate what you know from what you're assuming, and what's missing. Bring in specialist verification where it's needed. Then name the one thing that would overturn the answer.
Decide, then govern
Take the recommendation to the right forum, with conditions, an owner and an escalation route attached. My part is the independent challenge and the synthesis. The decision, and what follows it, stays where the accountability sits.
Ways to work
Start with one decision. The rest only follows if it should.
This kind of judgment is needed completely rather than continuously, at a few specific moments: before an approval, inside a live challenge, at a threshold the business hasn't crossed before. I lead every engagement personally, around one clearly defined business question, and bring in specialist depth only where the facts demand it. The independence works for you first: the challenge happens in private, with the people who own the decision, before it ever reaches a board paper.
When one decision needs a clearer basis
Decision Point
Use it before you commit, continue, or change course on a decision where sustainability is decisive.
What you receiveA view you can take to the Board and your executive team: the options, the evidence and the gaps in it, the principal trade-offs, and clear conditions with an owner attached.
When the issue is structural
Governance & Integration
Use it when the Decision Point turns up something deeper: a problem that keeps recurring, decision rights nobody can name, or a capability you need to build, hire or buy.
What you receiveAn operating model sized to the problem: who owns what internally, what you source outside, and where authority and escalation sit. Sized to the problem and what it touches.
When independent challenge is needed over time
Board & Executive Advisory
Use it when you are facing a run of connected decisions and want independent judgment alongside you for all of them.
What you receiveFraming and challenge as things develop, and briefs short enough to be read before the meeting. Your team keeps ownership and delivery.
When the mandate has to reach delivery
Commissioning Support
Use it when the mandate exists but delivery is at risk of stalling, so a sound decision doesn't become another report on a shelf.
What you receiveA properly commissioned engagement: the scope, the specialist options assessed, and milestones someone will check. The mandate, carried through.
Selected experience and governance roles
- Nearly 30 years
- Sustainability, global operations, strategy and governance
- Levi Strauss & Co. (opens in a new tab)
- Global apparel company.Head of Sustainability, EHS & Product Safety for EMEA; Global Senior Director, Sustainability Value Chain; Acting Vice President, Sustainability.
- The Hong Kong Jockey Club (opens in a new tab)
- One of Hong Kong’s largest employers and charitable funders.Former Head of Sustainability.
- Board leadership & multi-stakeholder governance
- Former Chair & Treasurer, ZDHC Foundation (opens in a new tab); Former Council Member, Better Cotton (opens in a new tab).
- Board qualifications
- Board Director Diploma, IMD; Non-Executive Director Diploma (Asia programme), Financial Times; Member, Hong Kong Institute of Directors.
Perspectives
Three convictions, formed where sustainability meets strategy, operations and governance.
They come from executive and board experience, and they are also what I look for: was the evidence examined, was the trade-off owned, did the decision improve.
Being in the room isn't the same as influencing the decision.
Committees, policies and reporting all matter. None of them prove anything on their own. The honest test is whether they improved a business decision. That question is usually answerable.
Context now moves faster than governance can adapt.
Regulatory, competitive and environmental conditions now interact, and they move faster than the governance built to steer them. The answer isn't more activity. It's governance that keeps pace with the business.
Expertise and accountability have to meet in the same room.
Specialists bring evidence and technical depth. Advisers bring scrutiny from outside. Neither replaces the leader who is accountable, and neither works apart from them. The task is to get the evidence and the decision into the same room, in language the person answering for it can use.
Who I am
A practitioner's view, now from the outside.
Manuel Baigorri has spent his working life where sustainability meets the realities of running a business at scale. His career began in Spain at Chocolates Lacasa S.A. and continued through more than two decades at Levi Strauss & Co., including global and regional leadership roles across EMEA, Asia and the Americas. Most recently, he served as Head of Sustainability at The Hong Kong Jockey Club.
He built that perspective from the ground up: environment, health and safety (EHS), product safety and regulated operations first, then human rights, responsible value chains, enterprise strategy, risk, capital and governance. The order matters. It is why he can read specialist evidence without losing sight of the business decision, or of the person who has to answer for it.
His experience also extends beyond individual companies. As Chair and Treasurer of the ZDHC Foundation Board and a Council Member of Better Cotton, he worked across businesses, suppliers and technical experts where progress depended on aligning different interests around shared standards and long-term priorities.
After nearly 30 years, I have seen good intentions lose their force when they arrive too late or in the wrong forum. I want to bring sustainability closer to the decisions that shape strategy, risk, capital and reputation, where I believe my experience can now be most useful.
Current focusIndependent board and executive advisory. Open to selected non-executive, advisory board and council appointments.
Contact
Let’s start with the business question in front of you.
A short, confidential note is enough. Tell me what is being decided, why now, and where the uncertainty sits. If the decision is still some way off, that is a good time to write as well. I reply personally, within two working days. The first conversation is thirty minutes, at no cost, and its purpose is to establish whether I am the right person for this decision. If I am, scope and timing are agreed before any work starts.
- What is being decided
- Why now
- Where the uncertainty sits
For anything else, write to info@manuelbaigorri.com. Enquiries are confidential, and stay that way whether or not we work together. See the privacy note for how they are handled.