Brian Tippens recently took the reins as HPE’s Chief Sustainability Officer. We sat down with him to talk about future plans with his new team.
Tell us a little bit about your new role as VP, Chief Sustainability Officer at HPE? What are your roles and responsibilities?
I’ve been tasked to oversee a global team that is focused on driving measurable and transparent Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies that benefit our customers, investors, employees, and the communities in which we work. My team and I will provide expertise to set corporate-wide targets and initiatives that will drive enhancement around our offerings to our stakeholders to help them focus on their own ESG priorities.
How do you plan to leverage your experience to knit together HPE’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategy?
Last October marked my 20-year anniversary with HPE – time flies when you are having a good time! In the last 20 years, I’ve had the opportunity to serve in a range of different departments from supply chain to procurement to global real estate to human resources. Holding different roles in different departments has proven to be incredibly useful. I’ve learned all aspects of our organization. I also served as HPE’s Chief Diversity Officer for several years and I plan to leverage my inclusion and diversity experience to help identify opportunities for HPE to further enhance our impact and connect the dots across the social issues most critical to our business success.
I’m also a Member of the Board for the HPE Political Action Committee (PAC) and HPE Foundation, and a member HPE’s newly founded Inclusion & Diversity Council.
We’ve heard Antonio discuss the new Age of Insight – what role does sustainability play here?
In the last decade we have generated and captured a tremendous amount of data. As Antonio mentioned at World Economic Forum, we are now entering an era where our ability to analyze this data will yield previously unimaginable levels of insight and discovery. Sustainability plays a major role here, especially if we want to build communities that are not only resilient, but inclusive. Our company has a clear purpose: to advance the way people live and work, so we are always looking for new opportunities to help our customers build transformational solutions in areas like healthcare, climate science, and food security, among others. Building on our current ESG efforts, we can meet our customers’ needs by helping them unlock their data to fuel new discoveries and innovations that improve the wellbeing of people and our planet
Something else Antonio has discussed is the importance of bridging the digital divide to create a world where everyone benefits and not just those who can afford it. Again, our ESG strategy and roadmap plays an important role here. We recently transitioned HPE Gives, our global community investment program, to sit within our Living Progress ESG team, which will help us broaden our social focus to complement our existing sustainability efforts.
HPE has committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, how do you plan to achieve this goal?
We are taking a phased, yet holistic approach to becoming net-zero by 2050. Currently, we have a suite of intermediate targets that focus on both our upstream and downstream emissions. We detail our progress toward our targets in our annual Living Progress Report, which is published every June.
Our biggest contribution will come from minimizing emissions during the use phase of our products, or in other words, helping our customers implement and utilize the most efficient IT solutions possible. For example, through HPE GreenLake we are helping our customers adopt an efficient hybrid multi-cloud delivery model that can reduce energy consumption and costs by one-third by ensuring our customers are only using what they need.
What are your priorities and goals for the upcoming year?
Working with my colleagues across the company to evolve a world leading ESG strategy and ensure we’re meeting the rising tide of focus on the “S” agenda. Also, bringing a fresh lens to how we approach ESG-related issues as we continue to pivot to becoming the edge-to-cloud platform as-a-service company.
Brian Tippens, Vice President, Chief Sustainability Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Brian oversees a global team focused on driving measurable and transparent Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies that benefit our customers, investors, employees and the communities in which we work.
He currently serves as a board member of the HPE Foundation and the HPE Political Action Committee. In his prior role, Brian was responsible for fostering an innovative and inclusive culture as Chief Diversity Officer at HPE. Brian holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Management from the University of San Francisco, and a Juris Doctor from the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California.
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