Lisa Koep, Tirlán’s new Chief ESG Officer, chats to Overherd about her ambitions for her new role

Lisa Koep joined Tirlán as Chief ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) Officer last December in a newly created Executive Leadership Team role that will define and drive our organisation’s agenda as we advocate for a more sustainable and responsible business. Lisa is responsible for building on Tirlán’s existing ESG initiatives and plans, while guiding the execution of our strategy with further ESG ambitions and targets for our business.

Overherd at Tirlán was delighted to catch up with Lisa after her first couple of weeks in the job to learn more about who she is, her first impressions and what she hopes to achieve in her new role.

Lisa, thanks for taking the time to sit down with Overherd during what we’re sure has been a busy few weeks for you. Perhaps you could tell us a little about yourself?

It’s my pleasure, I’ve really enjoyed meeting as many people as possible since I started and I’m delighted to be introduced to Overherd’s readers.

I’m originally from a city called Kiel in Northern Germany, which is about 90km north of Hamburg. I’m 43, have two daughters aged 11 and 12, I’m married to an Irish man and we have a Cocker Spaniel called Johnny. I am currently living in Kilkenny and we are planning on moving to my husband’s family farm in Borris, County Carlow in the coming months. My family has had strong connections with Ireland for four generations and I’ve fond memories of frequent holidays spent exploring the country. While still in secondary school, I came to Dublin for a school exchange and liked it so much that I didn’t return to Germany for many years!

After school I went on to study economics and geography at Trinity College, with a focus on resource economics and sustainable development. I then did a Masters in communications before I started my professional career in 2006, when I joined Lidl Ireland in a project management role. One of those roles was to set up Lidl’s first CSR programme. After seven years with Lidl, I returned to university to pursue a PhD in business with a focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability. For the first time in many years, I then returned to live in Germany where I lectured and researched sustainable business practices at a German university before re-joining Lidl as their Head of CSR/Sustainability in 2019.

It sounds like you went full circle with Lidl. That must’ve been a very interesting journey over the years?

It certainly was! I worked in many different functions with Lidl when I started, which was really exciting and interesting as I got broad experience in the food retail industry. It was also great to get out and do applied work as opposed to theory in college as I’m a very hands-on type of person.

I’ve always had a really strong interest in sustainability. As an undergrad studying geography and economics, there was a big focus on resource and environmental economics, as well as sustainable development. At the beginning of my career with Lidl, they were only just starting to embrace corporate citizenship and social responsibility, while not so much the sustainability side. I was very interested in sustainable business practices, so that’s when I decided to go back to university and do my PhD and also work as a postdoc, where the focus was on sustainable and responsible business management practices. What I really learned here was how to measure sustainability and translate it into business terms, in addition to the positive environmental impacts of sustainable business. In a nutshell, what’s good for the environment can be good for business too.

Following a number of years in academia, I returned to Lidl Germany as Head of their Sustainability Department. There, I was responsible for the environmental and also the social strategies to really drive and implement the sustainability agenda. I was also responsible for internal as well as external communications.

One of the most interesting turn of events during my time with Lidl was in 2020 when the company encountered farmers protesting against the retailer, with complaints that we were neglecting the supply chain. Even though Lidl didn’t deal directly with farmers, the company realised that there was a potential to provide support in the form of farmer advocacy on issues such as animal welfare. This led to us looking at the supply chain in its entirety, developing a successful programme which supported farmer’s interests and how as a retailer we could help them transition to higher animal welfare standards and future oriented farming.

Now, I’m delighted to return to Ireland and join such a professional and ambitious organisation with a really people-focused culture and a great commitment to sustainability.

ESG is a very broad ranging three letter abbreviation. With Tirlán in mind, can you tell us more about what Environmental, Social and Governance actually means?There is a lot of talk in the business world around ESG. Simply put, it refers to a business’s impact and two-way interactions with environment and society, as well as how robust and transparent its governance is. More specifically, it measures how a business integrates environmental, social and governance practices into operations, as well as the business model, its impact and its sustainability. In the agri-food-sector, it’s becoming increasingly important to reduce the environmental footprint and to report on it. As a result, it is a very dynamic area with plenty of new requirements and changes happening. At Tirlán, there are a lot of activities already underway from an ESG point of view; it’s a matter of tying these together and adding a little more structure and strategic outlook. There’s already so much going on in the organisation and a fantastic pool of knowledge and talent working on the Living Proof agenda. My aim is to further develop our sustainability strategy, to drive its execution and to strengthen the governance mechanism within the organisation to really push the sustainability agenda from an environmental and social perspective. That starts with asking a range of questions – how are our teams structured around ESG, how are decisions made around it and how do we make sure that we are fully compliant with the reporting aspects? We’re operating in a highly dynamic environment so it’s about translating everything that’s happening outside of Tirlán from a sustainability governance, regulatory and political perspective, understanding what this means for our organisation and developing proactive strategies around that to achieve the targets and progress required of the agri-food sector.

Following your first weeks here, what are your first impressions of Tirlán?

From an ESG perspective, Tirlán has a strong heritage of implementing environmental health and safety mechanisms, which is an excellent basis for good and strong sustainability management. There are a lot of experts already working together in the Sustainability Hub on these matters and I think for people that are not so close to this team, they might not realise how many people are already involved in sustainability and ESG related issues. The task in hand now is to structure all ongoing activity, making it transparent and ensuring everyone across the organisation is strategically aligned. I really must pay a lot of credit to what has been done already. The Living Proof strategy, the targets that have been communicated and the activity that’s already taking place are a great foundation and have put us in a good position to achieve our targets over the time frames that we’ve set out.

From a personal perspective and a more general perspective of Tirlán, I’m really delighted to have joined. It is hard to know what to expect when changing jobs, but as soon as I arrived in Abbey Quarter I felt very at home. This is due to a number of factors. One is the level of professionalism and business excellence which is comparable to any high-level international organisation. Another aspect that is impressive is the fact that Tirlán is a farmer owned cooperative. It shows how business can be done in a socially responsible way through cooperation.

Most importantly, there’s a very strong commitment to sustainability, which is fantastic – Tirlán is really positioning itself as a future oriented company. And of course, what makes all this work is the people. It’s a very people focused culture here with a little bit of a family feel which has been nice to experience – all while still hitting targets, which can sometimes be a difficult balance to achieve. People here at Tirlán are very committed, they work extremely hard and they’re dedicated to ensuring organisation’s success.

Looking in the short to medium term, what do you want to achieve in your new role?

That’s of course a very big question and there are a number of pieces we need to knit together to tell the story. Firstly, it is to review how do we work together to achieve our Living Proof targets. We have a very good foundation with our existing Living Proof strategy; now it’s about challenging it and then finetuning it to focus on results and progress. What’s going to be hugely important is the implementation and execution piece, documenting in an evidence-based manner how we are moving towards our targets and what actions and results we have achieved. A hugely important aspect for 2023 will be how we report on sustainability, thinking about the established reporting standards we want to adopt as an organisation and how we use them to help us drive our own agenda. Driving awareness of ESG KPIs within our business is hugely important as is our external stakeholder management – how do we let people know what we’re working on and what we have achieved? Showing what we’ve achieved and being evidence based is a very strong story – Tirlán has a lot to tell. We need to create that awareness amongst our customers and be a more proactive and confident about what we offer. And then of course, it’s about how we drive the sustainability agenda through our organisation by creating a culture in which every Tirlán colleague feels part of the sustainability agenda and understands how their actions make a difference – that’s hugely important in this journey. I really look forward to meeting more Tirlán folks over the coming weeks and months and achieving this together!