How IBM's Chief Sustainability Officer Christina Shim Sees the Future of Technology & Sustainability
How IBM's Chief Sustainability Officer Christina Shim Sees the Future of Technology & Sustainability
And how this future includes partnership with innovative startups
During New York Climate Week, we had the honor of hosting IBM’s Chief Sustainability Officer Christina Shim at a dinner with sustainability startup founders in New York. It was a great opportunity to showcase some of the latest innovations from the startup world to Christina and her team - and also for all of us to learn more about IBM’s sustainability efforts, innovation and how they work with startups to make an impact. Check out some of the insights from our conversation below.
IBM’s Sustainability Journey
IBM’s been in the sustainability game for decades, with its first environmental policy dating all the way back to 1971. Christina admits that she initially didn’t see herself joining IBM, thinking of it as "your grandfather’s company," but was drawn in by its deep and long-standing commitment to sustainability and innovation.
Today, IBM has evolved from a manufacturing giant to a leader in hybrid cloud and AI under CEO Arvind Krishna. IBM also will be net-zero by 2030 and is tackling 21 other environmental goals like reducing waste and water pollution by partnering across the business units and leveraging the innovation of IBM Research.
AI and Sustainability
A key focus for Christina is the intersection of AI and sustainability - both how AI can drive acceleration in supporting IBM and its partners’ sustainability goals and how IBM can build a more sustainable AI lifecycle. While AI has enormous potential to drive innovation in business and sustainability, it also comes with challenges. Christina noted the growing concern around the high energy consumption of AI models, as well as the water and resources required to power massive data centers. With AI playing an increasing role in industries like climate tech, it's essential to address its environmental footprint.
Making AI itself more sustainable includes finding ways to reduce the energy and resource demands of AI technologies. IBM is involved in driving everything from more efficient AI chips to increasing data center efficiency to creating smaller - and therefore more sustainable - AI models and data training/inferencing. For Christina, balancing these two priorities is critical, ensuring that AI can be a tool for positive environmental change without adding to the problem.
Partnering with Startups
One of the most exciting parts of Christina’s job is working with startups. Through IBM Ventures’ $500 million AI fund, they’re investing in startups at the intersection of AI, automation, cybersecurity and sustainability. Christina believes there’s a lot to learn from the startup ecosystem, and she’s eager to build more partnerships to drive innovation.
She acknowledged that while IBM invests in and acquires startups, there’s still room to grow in terms of how the company partners with the startup community. Christina is working closely with the new head of IBM Ventures to develop strategies that foster more effective collaborations, and she’s eager to hear ideas from entrepreneurs on how IBM can better support them.
What’s Overhyped and What’s Underhyped?
Christina has strong opinions on which areas of sustainability are getting too much attention — and which ones deserve more. When it comes to what’s overhyped, she singled out the carbon offset market. While offsets can be useful, Christina believes there’s too much focus on adding new players rather than improving how offsets are verified, validated and scaled. She argues that, without proper checks in place, the market risks becoming a superficial solution that doesn’t drive real progress in reducing emissions.
On the flip side, Christina feels there’s a huge amount of untapped potential in underhyped areas of climate tech. The world is facing a serious crisis, and many enterprises are still figuring out how to meet their net-zero targets. Although climate tech is a growing field, it hasn’t yet scaled enough to make a substantial impact. She emphasized that there are many promising solutions out there — from methane reduction technologies to insect farming — that could help reduce emissions and make a real difference. However, the sector isn’t getting the investment or attention it needs to achieve the scale required to address the global climate crisis.
David vs Goliath?
It was truly fascinating to see the broad range of perspectives around the table - with some founders very focused on very specific solutions (such as those looking at a specific strain of fungi), and the contrast of hearing the perspective of IBM as a company with 270k employees worldwide and the daily impact this one company makes across all sectors.
Importantly though, this really isn’t a David vs Goliath type of situation. It was evident that from both sides of the spectrum, everyone is set on finding eco-friendly and sustainable innovations that set up society, communities and our businesses long into the future - and that startups and large corporations alike are eager to work together to find winning solutions.
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Nyca Partners is a venture capital firm connecting innovative companies to the global financial system. In this talk, we'll hear from Nyca Investor Jasleen Kaur, who leads investments at the fund in companies focused on Wealthtech, Capital Markets, and Commerce Enablement.
Who should attend: Founders who are focused on fintech.
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The Agenda
3:30 pm - Check-in and Founder networking
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Come hang out with other early stage technology startup founders who are tackling ambitious dreams. We'll have good food, good company & good vibes. This dinner has very limited space and will be held in a restaurant in lower-midtown NYC.
Who should attend: Early stage female founders
October 29: Inside: Harlem Capital w/ Gabby Cazeau
Harlem Capital is a VC firm on a mission to change the face of entrepreneurship by investing in 1,000 diverse founders over the next 20 years. Harlem Capital invests at the early stage, focused on backing women and diverse founders building B2B SaaS companies. In this talk, we'll hear first from Partner Gabby Cazeau about Harlem Capital's investment philosophy and approach. Lunch will be served during this event.
Who should attend: Founders who are building B2B SaaS companies
November 7: Inside: South Park Commons
South Park Commons is a community of builders & technologists that specializes in helping founders build conviction in an idea - or as they put it "moving from -1 to 0.” In this talk, we'll hear from Arian Agrawal (Partner) and Dylan Itzikowitz (Principal) on their unique approach to investing in founders and where they see the biggest opportunities.
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