Sarah Severn

Sarah Severn has an extensive background in consumer research and advertising prior to joining Nike where she has spent the last 14 years in a variety of roles. Originally recruited in 1993 to establish a consumer insights department in Nike’s European headquarters she moved into an environmental role and in 1995 relocated to World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon as Global Director of the Environmental Action Team. From 1995 to 2000 she led the company’s early efforts to integrate sustainability into the business, from operations through to product design and manufacturing.

In June 2000 Sarah was appointed Director of Sustainable Development. In this role she focused primarily on stakeholder engagement, corporate responsibility reporting and the identification of emerging issues.

In 2005 Sarah took on the newly created role of Director of Horizons within the Corporate Responsibility team. The Horizons function has responsibility for  “looking long” and identifying future trends, opportunities and issues at the intersection of business and sustainability. For the past 10 years she has lead Nike’s efforts around climate change and is also now focused on developing Nike’s climate change advocacy strategy.

In 2009, Nike transitioned its focus from corporate responsibility to Sustainable Business and Innovation (SB&I).  The increased focus is more seamlessly integrated across the company's business strategies, creating a more sustainable approach aimed at providing greater returns to Nike's business, communities, contract factory workers, consumers and the planet.  Sarah’s role as part of the SB&I team is as the Director of Stakeholder Mobilization.

Sarah served on the Pacific Northwest regional council of the President’s Council for Sustainable Development from 1995 to1997, the board of The Natural Step U.S from 1997 to 2004 and the State of Oregon Governor’s Climate Change Integration Group from 2007-2008. Currently she serves on the board of Focus the Nation, the Advisory Boards of Sustainable Northwest and the Oregon Natural Step network and is a core faculty member and Senior Fellow of the Prince of Wales and University of Cambridge Business and Environment Programme.