Private Sector with Purpose: Sustainability, Corporate Responsibility, & Human Rights Roles
On July 29, 2025, Whitney Mayer, Head of Global Sustainability at the Hershey Company; Jill Davies, Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights at Best Buy; Nikki de Almeida, Business Integration Lead on Human Rights and Social Impact at Amazon; and Allie Stauss, Senior Project Manager of Supply Chain Sustainability at Keurig Dr. Pepper spoke with attendees about professional opportunities in the private sector for those interested in sustainability, corporate responsibility, and human rights work. The event was moderated by Putra Kusdarman (Georgetown SFS) with Steve Radelet (Georgetown SFS) also providing commentary.
This session was the second in our Pivot to New Career Paths seminar series, designed to offer attendees the opportunity to hear from colleagues who have already made these important career transitions and glean how to best embark on these changes themselves.
Each featured speaker shared their professional journey with session participants, highlighting how they navigated difficult job markets in the past to transition to private sector roles.
The panelists agreed that our backgrounds in international development are highly attractive to private sector firms. Indeed, the speakers from our previous “Pivoting to New Career Paths” session (please feel free to access this event’s summary! ) argued that private sector companies worldwide are taking a greater interest in global political developments, economic trends, and societal shifts. Thus, our international experiences and expertise is in high-demand – particularly as companies take a greater interest in their human rights and environmental impact.
Of course, we should remind ourselves that all private companies are different. Some firms will prioritize certain skills and prior interests differently than others. That said, there are universal skills that we all possess that we can leverage to benefit our potential private sector employers.
For instance, both Davies and De Almeida introduced themselves by revealing how they had leaned on their international development and stakeholder engagement experience to help spearhead their respective employers’ efforts to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence regarding their projects and supply chains.
As private companies expand their footprint around the world, extract resources from new regions, and work with new communities, our abilities and knowledge will be prized to ensure smooth and ethical business operations.
This skill is also highly beneficial when working through internal conflicts. The relationships teams within a private firm nurture are often just as central to their core duties as managing external partners. Our inclination to translate and code switch between departments, functions, and locations is another valuable skill.
In their opening remarks, Mayer and Strauss also highlighted the importance of risk management for private sector firms. Companies will undoubtedly need personnel to be able to evaluate the risks of entering certain partnerships and, by equal measure, identify potential positive impacts they can make in source communities or foreign markets.
These examples underscore the significant overlap in skills between private and public sector careers, as well as the importance of the soft skills we have honed across our professional lives in international development.
Referencing comments made by other panelists, Davies emphasized how crucial managing and analyzing risk is for many private sector firms. In our previous work experiences, we needed to measure and quantify risks through a variety of lenses. Though a “softer” skill, it is one we should lead with during our job search and career pivoting processes.
Offering a “hard” skill, De Almeida stressed how heavily private sectors firms weigh program and project management in evaluating potential job candidates. This critical skill is especially important when navigating nuanced and complex challenges that inevitably arise at the intersection between human rights and business interests.
She emphasized how overseeing and evaluating projects and initiatives are central duties we all have honed across our careers in international development. We have been trained to identify core objectives and how we should go about achieving them. This skill is indispensable and will serve us well in a variety of private sector roles or organizations.
Ultimately, the problems we will often be tasked to analyze or resolve for private sector employers will stem from systemic issues. These companies lean on individuals with our backgrounds to analyze and evaluate the risks poverty, conflict, and public health crises pose to their business interests. In this vein, our prior work experiences position us well to contribute to this invaluable work.
Similar to our discussions in other Pivot with Purpose sessions (especially Steve Dalton’s “Writing a Compelling Cover Letter” event), the core “ask” of any employer is remarkably consistent across sectors. We just need to know how to best package and communicate these skills.
Given the significant overlap between private sector and international development skills, there is no doubt that we possess the know-how required to thrive in various private sector roles. Yet, there is still a disconnect between these communities. This gap is particularly notable concerning how we translate and talk about our expertise.
To address this disconnect, it is vital that we adopt the language and terms our potential private sector employers use when discussing our experiences (and their organizational objectives or interests). As Strauss explained to event participants: “Don’t force them to connect the dots; connect those dots for them.”
By using private sector terminology in our resumes, cover letters, and interviews, we will make it clear what skills we possess and how we will contribute value to them in terms they will understand.
Strauss also encouraged attendees to go directly to private companies’ websites to read their corporate responsibility or sustainability reports and use the same language when discussing our own value-add. Combing through these materials will also illuminate a given company’s priorities, granting us insights into our potential employer’s goals and interests.
It is equally crucial to remember that there are numerous similarities between private sector and international development industries. We all operate under tight budgets and timelines; we all are expected to communicate our value-add clearly for a variety of stakeholders; we all will need to manage conflict and evaluate various programs; and we will always be expected to solve major problems effectively.
All employers – regardless of the industry – place high value on our resourcefulness, creativity, interpersonal skills, and problem-solving capabilities. All of these skills contribute to the meaningful value we offer to any private venture, and they are widely applicable.
Moreover, we can always learn and develop new skills to help us be hired and succeed in these roles. As such, the panel were uniform in their endorsement for various “upskilling” classes and programs we could pursue. Should we lack the specific skills a hiring manager is seeking out, it is paramount to demonstrate our ability to learn and apply new skills.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge that private sector companies do prefer to hire those with previous private sector experience. As a result, the panelists implored us to advertise our greatest asset: curiosity. So long as we are able to illustrate our knowledge and express our business acumen, companies will be more receptive to non-private sector job candidates.
According to Mayer, our previous international experiences are invaluable. We have all managed crises, overseen major development projects, and analyzed new global trends with limited resources. We cannot lose sight of our own capabilities.
If, however, you remain unsure about what skills you possess or can contribute, reach out to former colleagues! During her remarks, Davies admitted that she (and many of us, no doubt) will tend to learn more about herself and her strengths through others. We may view a certain capability as a “given” or unimportant. We may even question whether we possess a certain skill. Here, our former colleagues’ perspectives are priceless, and they may reveal more about ourselves than we currently know!
The panel closed their comments with words of encouragement: not only are we all well-positioned to thrive in these private sector roles, but the fields of sustainability and corporate responsibility are growing.
Whether you lend your skills to sustainability and corporate responsibility work as part of a consulting firm, industry association, or internal department, there is a clear demand for individuals with these core competencies across the private sector.
Although the speakers recognized that there are serious political sensitivity to this work, they also stressed that repackaging these objectives and initiatives in new language will be part of the job. Perhaps more crucial, while there may be conflict around the terms we use to describe these programs, many private companies maintain their commitments and interest in sustainability and human rights causes. There is, in fact, reason to be optimistic!
In the end, it is up to us to decide whether we are willing to leverage our skills and interests in the for-profit space. That said, we can forge meaning in our work wherever we go. Should we have the opportunity to contribute to sustainability, corporate responsibility, or human rights efforts in the private sector, the panelists encouraged us all to pursue it!
Other Previous Sessions
Please feel free to browse our other previous sessions to access summaries, video content, and more information about our other events!