Bain & Company announced today that it has named François Faelli as its first-ever global managing partner of ESG. Faelli, the former head of the firm's global Consumer Products practice, will oversee Bain & Company's collective ambition of creating a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive world.
This announcement builds on Bain & Company's decades of industry leadership tackling the world's most pressing challenges, including the sweeping impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and structural inequities.
"Over the past two decades, François has guided many of the leading consumer product companies on the planet through the tectonic shifts happening in their industries, including the growing urgency for corporations to address climate change and social inequities," said Manny Maceda, worldwide managing partner of Bain & Company. "In his new role, François will put his strategic expertise to work, helping our clients navigate the remarkable challenges and opportunities along their sustainability transformations."
In 2021, Bain & Company launched FurtherSM to apply Bain's talent, energy and expertise to create transformative impact across three levels—as a partner to its clients, as a champion for global communities and as a firm. Today, more than 2,500 Bain team members are actively involved in this work. François will work closely with these teams to help Bain's clients as they face increasing and often existential demands around sustainability, social impact, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). His leadership will bolster the firm's existing ESG infrastructure:
A decade ago, Bain formalized its Sustainability & Corporate Responsibility practice to support the firm's corporate clients on their journeys. The practice has grown significantly since. In the past two years alone, it has served more than 500 client projects that tackled sustainability and corporate responsibility, carbon emissions and the energy transition.
In 2020, Bain launched a global DEI practice to directly support its clients' goals of increasing diverse representation, achieving more equitable outcomes and creating a more inclusive environment. The practice shares its learnings across corporate America, recently publishing research on the importance of inclusion in the workplace as well as a deep-dive on the tactics that most effectively further outcomes for diverse talent, including improved rates of recruitment and hiring, increased levels of representation in an organization, and increased rates of retention and internal promotion.
Bain is on track to achieve its commitment to invest $1.1 billion in pro bono consulting over ten years to help leading social pioneers scale and amplify their impact. Since setting this commitment in 2015, the firm has invested nearly $500 million in pro bono support of more than 260 nonprofit organizations. In recent years, Bain has used this investment as a springboard to mobilize the kind of innovative, multistakeholder partnerships needed to deliver systemic change. In 2020, Bain worked to help form OneTen—a coalition of more than forty CEOs and executives across industries committed to hiring, training and promoting one million Black Americans over the next 10 years into family-sustaining jobs with opportunities for advancement—achieving 17,000 hires in its inaugural year.
Bain & Company has long been a sustainability frontrunner in its industry, achieving carbon neutral status for the past ten years in a row. What sets Bain apart from others is that it is deep into its sustainability journey, having already eliminated 78% of its scope 1 and 2 emissions over the past decade by converting to 100% renewable electricity, improving the energy efficiency of its offices and finding ways to reduce waste from its operations. In 2021, Bain pledged to even further reduce its scope 1 and 2 emissions—from activities such as heating and powering its offices—by 30% over the next five years, and it plans to reduce its scope 3 emissions from business travel by 35% per employee over the same time period. These goals reflect Bain's steadfast alignment with the Science-Based Targets Initiative's 'Business Ambition for 1.5°C,' and its commitment to achieve net zero climate impact by 2030.
François holds a Master's in Business and Economics from the Solvay Business School in Brussels, where he has been a professor of strategy since 2013.