Alison Whritenour started out on a traditional track in a traditional industry, training in marketing and management at the consumer goods packaging giant Colgate-Palmolive. She discovered a passion for brand marketing and thrived, although she found her career was detached from her life as a consumer. “I realized that I wasn’t really working on brands that I was buying for myself,” she remembers.
At around the same time, Whritenour was developing an interest in natural, nontoxic ingredients, and she noticed that the organics industry was building momentum. So, in 2012, she made a career shift, and by 2021 she had risen to become CEO of Seventh Generation, a producer of eco-friendly household and personal products that’s named for an Iroquois philosophy of care for future descendants. Founded in 1988, long before sustainability was a buzzword, the company is a standard-setter in the fields of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Beyond all the corporate-speak acronyms, however, Whritenour asserts that her path truly did begin with a personal evolution.
“You start by thinking about what foods you put into your body— ingredients, processing, sourcing,” she says. “Then you think about the types of products you’re using on your skin. Then you consider how these products are affecting your home, your environment, the air you’re breathing. I went through these stages of understanding, not so much as a business person, but as a human.”
On finding your people:
“The people I met at my first visit to Seventh Generation were a huge reason I have my role today. I really connected with folks who had the same belief system and values, who made it clear that we could work really hard toward a goal together, and that it could do more than just drive profitability. We could actually work toward a bigger purpose and have a broader impact. All those people who were so inspiring to me, they’re still at the company today. That was a huge motivator for me, to really feel that I’d found my people.”
On the climate crisis:
“This is an extraordinarily important moment. The climate is a ticking clock for all of us, as a species. For us as a company, it’s less about goal-setting and more about really operationalizing what we’re here to do. It’s about making sure that the goals we’ve set are connected to projects and work streams that make every day count; that every project moves us closer to accomplishing our sustainability goals. We’ve taken a lot of inspiration from nonprofits like Project Drawdown, who talk about every job being a climate job. That’s something that I really thought about in my leadership role: Every single one of us has a role to play. Whether you’re in supply chain or HR or marketing, your job is a climate job. It’s everyone’s responsibility to make this happen.”
On publicly sharing met and unmet sustainability goals:
“This comes from our DNA as a company. We’re over 35 years old now, and one of our founding principles was exactly this spirit of transparency and honesty. Telling people the good, the bad, and what it’s going to take to achieve these goals—that’s how we’ve always approached doing business, and established a trusting relationship with our consumers. We share what’s working and what’s not, in the hopes that other people can learn from what we’ve been able to accomplish or the barriers that we felt along the way.”
On passion:
“I think I work from a place of passion and commitment to what I do. This work is how I feel like I’m doing my part to create a better world for my kids, how I’m teaching them to think about world issues that are much bigger than the ones that they experience. And I think that’s what’s helped me be an authentic and acceptable leader—that everyone knows my intentions come from that place.”
On role models:
“It’s hard for me to pinpoint a specific person. What I will say has been really important to me is seeing other female leaders—especially those with children—do the work and be in big jobs and find a way to demonstrate that it’s possible. I’m someone who needs to see it to believe it. Having folks around who have been able to do that shows you that it can be done.”
