Catalyze October

CATALYZE. 

B Y I D E A G E N OCTOBER 2022 

PLUS 

17 Days of 

Ideagen Global 

Goals Summit 

Release Dates 

Sustainability 

Eliza Roberts 

Senior Program Manager, Water, Microsoft

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PLUS 

17 Days of 


Goals Summit 

Release Dates 


Grace Clack 

Director of Product Marketing, Microsoft

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PLUS 

17 Days of 


Goals Summit 

Release Dates 


Evangeline Marzek 

CTO of Sustainability, Microsoft

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B Y I D E A G E N October 2022 

17 Days of 

PLUS 


Goals Summit 

Release Dates 


Ashley Haynes-Gaspar 

COO of Industry and Business Aplications, Microsoft

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17 Days of 

PLUS 


Goals Summit 

Release Dates 


Dawn James 

Director, Global Industry Strategy, Energy & 

Sustainability at microsoft

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17 Days of 

PLUS 


Goals Summit 

Release Dates 


Terry Myerson 

CEO & Co-Founder, Truveta

CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 1 

PRIORITIZING SUSTAINABILITY 

ASHLEY HAYNES-GASPAR COO OF 

INDUSTRY & BUSINESS 

APPLICATIONS AT MICROSOFT 

Grace Clack: 

At Microsoft, we believe we have a responsibility to make a difference and 

are committed to the transformation required to meet our environmental 

goals while moving our business forward. Let's talk to Ashley to learn more. 

Ashley, Before we jp in to talk about sustainability being a growth driver, 

can you tell us about the focus on industry and sustainability at Microsoft? 

Ashley Haynes Gaspar: 

Thanks, Grace. It's so great to be here with you all today. Across Microsoft, 

we are focusing on industry. We are investing in people in engineering and 

customer engagements and partner networks with a deep focus on how 

we can help our customers lower carbon emissions, use less potable water, 

and create more sustainable supply chains. You know, it doesn't matter if 

you're a manufacturer or a retailer in sports and entertainment, travel and 

transport, financial services, or health care. We are doing this work across 

industries and the business case for sustainability is strong. A recent study 

by Deloitte found that strong climate action can deliver 43 trillion. That's 

trillion with a T, US dollars to the global economy by 2070. So the time is 

now.

PRIORITIZING 

SUSTAINABILITY 

GRACE CLACK: 

DIRECTOR OF 

PRODUCT 

MARKETING 

MICROSOFT 

Ashley Haynes Gaspar: 

Sure. From where I sit, not only is prioritizing sustainability the right thing for the 

environment and the planet, but organizations are feeling the pressure of change 

from every direction. There has been a shift from, I think, what we traditionally 

thought about as shareholder capitalism to this notion of stakeholder capitalism. 

You know, the decades preceding this was all about shareholder return. Most, if 

not all decisions were anchored on this as the key tenant. And I think we've seen a 

shift to stakeholder capitalism, a model where the shareholder still absolutely 

matters, but so do customers and employees. So does the community that the 

company operates in. And what I'd love to do is just kind of break that down really 

quickly, Grace. Investors are putting financial pressure on organizations that have 

not made carbon pledges. They are voting with their values. 73% say that efforts to 

improve the environment and society contribute to their investment decisions. I 

think that this is a shift from where we've been 

customers. 

Customers are voting with their values. With 77% of consumers motivated to 

purchase from companies committed to making the world a better place. It's why 

I love Bombas socks. It's why I pay more for them. When we think about regulators, 

regulators raise public reporting expectations and tighten controls and employees. 

Employees want to work for an organization that is making a difference in creating 

a sustainable future. In fact, the data says that 93% of employees believe 

companies have to lead with purpose. And I think this shift from stakeholder to 

shareholder is just really an existential priority for us. 

CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 2

REDUCE, REPLENISH, AND 

REPORT 

-HOW MICROSOFT IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN 

WATER USAGE 

ELIZA ROBERTS: SENIOR PROGRAM 

MANAGER, WATER AT MICROSOFT 

Eliza Roberts 

Microsoft is committed to harnessing the power of technology to help 

everyone everywhere build a more sustainable future. In 2020, we made a 

bold commitment and detailed plan to become carbon-negative by 2030 0, 

waste by 2030, water positive by 2030, protect more land than we use, and 

build a planetary computer. So I'm gonna start a little bit dire here, but I 

promise to end on a more positive note. Water challenges are going to 

become more extreme. We know that one of the first ways we'll feel the 

effects of climate change is through water. And it's important to remember 

before I dive in here, that when we're talking about water, we're not just 

talking about water scarcity or whether there's too little water. There are 

also places where there's too much water and other places where it's too 

dirty or polluted. So, too little, too much, too polluted, and that helps make 

the water challenges that we're grappling with much more complex and 

challenging on a day-to-day basis. Many of you have probably heard this 

stat, but the world is expected to face a 56% deficit in freshwater supply by 

2030. According to the World Resources Institute today, one in four people 

live in countries facing extreme water stress according to the UN, and that's 

expected to increase to one in two people, in 2030 and beyond. Today, there 

are about 2 billion people across the globe or 25% of the world's population 

who lack safely managed drinking water services. 



REPORT 

Eliza Roberts 

The costs that we need to improve global water infrastructure globally are 

staggering. There's a range of different numbers, but they're in the trillions 

and they're really expected to rise in time. And to put this in perspective, if 

you look at the US alone, each day, 6 billion gallons of water are lost to aging 

leaking pipes. That's roughly 14% of our daily consumption. So we know we 

have a challenge, we know it's increasing, we know we all depend on water 

to survive, and thus there's a really important role for all of us, particularly 

companies to play in protecting freshwater resources for future generations. 

That is why Microsoft co-founded the Water Resilience Coalition, which I'll 

refer to as the WRC, and that's a CEO-led initiative that's a part of the UN 

global compact with a goal to reduce water stress by 2050. So we joined the 

Water Resilience Coalition in 2005 and we're still an active member. And 

then as a part of that, we also set a commitment to be water positive by 

2030. So water positive is a new term. It still requires more clarity and 

guidance in this space, and we're helping to develop that. 

In the meantime, I want to share a bit about 

what water-positive means to Microsoft. So in 

Microsoft Water positive means, we will 

reduce our water use intensity across our 

operations. The water we use per megawatt 

of energy used for operations, we will 

replenish water in water stress regions where 

we work more than we consume. By 2030, we 

will provide 1.5 million people with access to 

clean water and sanitation services, and we'll 

drive innovation and digitization of water and 

engage in water policy for today. 



REPORT 

We're working to reduce the water intensity of our global operations. 

We're doing this through investment in efficiency, recycling and reuse, and 

investment in innovations at data centers and campuses across the globe. 

We are working to design buildings and data centers to be as efficient as 

possible. We're tracking the water we use to minimize leaks. We're reusing 

every drop of water as many times as we can before we discharge it to 

local municipalities. We're procuring reclaimed water from utilities where 

it's available. We're rainwater harvesting. On the innovation side, we're 

using air instead of water to cool data centers. And we're piloting 

increasing the temperature set point at evaporative cool data centers to 

ensure that we're using air to cool data centers instead of water for more 

days of the year. We're the first technology company to pilot liquid 

immersion cooling at data centers. We're piloting air-to-water generation 

and building rainwater harvesting structures on our buildings and data 

centers. 

Next, I want to dive into replenishment. So replenishment is something 

that a lot of people get confused about. So I'll start with our target and 

then explain a little bit about what it means. So we are committed to 

replenishing more water in high-stress regions that we consume globally. 

Replenishment ultimately means that we return a volume of water to the 

local catchment where it came from. So through this target, we're 

planning to return more water than we use across our global operations. In 

the high-stress basins where we operate, we've got roughly 40 priority 

locations across the globe that are particularly high stress where we plan 

to focus these replenishment investments. I'm not gonna share specific 

projects at this time. In the interest of time, if you're curious to learn more, 

I would encourage you to check out our sustainability report from last year 

and other information that we have online. 



REPORT 

Lastly, I'll share a little bit about our progress and the different types of 

replenishment projects that we invest in across the globe. So you can 

invest in projects like rainwater harvesting, do land conservation projects 

where you procure a swath of land, keep it from being developed, and 

then the rain that falls on that land is recharged into the system. There are 

infrastructure projects. There are watershed restoration projects. If you're 

curious to learn more about the different types of projects, you can check 

out the volumetric water benefit accounting guidance feed WRA that was 

put out by the World's Resources Institute. It provides different categories 

for the many different types of replenishment projects that companies can 

invest in. And information about how you quantify the volumetric benefits 

for each of those different types of replenishment projects. So our progress 

for replenishment thus far as of Y 21, we've replenished 45% of our Y21 

consumption. This percentage is just going to keep increasing as we get 

closer to 2030. 


Ideagen® 

Global Goals Summit 

October 27, 2022 

Hosted at the United Nations 

Streaming World Wide Release 

November 17, 2022 - 

IdeagenGlobal.com 

Presented Globally by

To learn more

Microsoft Partnerships 

Leading To 


DAWN JAMES: DIRECTOR, GLOBAL INDUSTRY 

STRATEGY- ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY AT 

MICROSOFT 

Dawn James: 

So at Microsoft, we've really focused our strategy on the core issues that we think 

are critical to a more sustainable future. And this is where we really believe that 

technology can play a pivotal role. We focus our efforts on carbon, water, waste, 

and ecosystems, or really anywhere. where we see that digital technology can help 

to monitor and help the biota. So at Microsoft, we're really focused on investing our 

time and resources into building the world's leading platform for technology 

solutions and environmental challenges. The way that we do that is we really, look 

at infusing sustainability into all of our products and services, being not only that 

preferred platform but also being able to transparently share our learnings and 

pass that sustainability gains onto our customers. We look at how we can truly be 

that trusted partner for our customer's sustainability journey and share all of the 

things that we've learned in our long history of supporting sustainability initiatives. 

We advocate for climate-related policy and issues to support not only new policy 

initiatives but also to accelerate the growth of sustainability-related action. We 

also look to truly infuse sustainability into all of our operations across our business, 

and our value lines. And we look to not only science but also the international 

goals that we need to adhere to. And we do this in a transparent way by holding 

ourselves accountable for our goals. And at the heart of everything that we do is 

our employees. So we truly believe that even if sustainability isn't in your title, 

sustainability is everybody's job and everybody has a role to play. 



3 Key Components That Will Make 

Your Organization More 

Sustainable 

EVANGELINE MARZEC: 

CTO, SUSTAINABILITY AT MICROSOFT 

Evangeline Marzec: 

In your own organization today, there are likely opportunities to proactively make 

changes in these areas to hit your sustainability targets. These things are under your 

direct control. First, by their very nature, buildings are a big contributor to our 

environmental footprint, and it's the first place that many organizations turn to in 

order to understand and reduce impact through optimization and efficiency 

solutions. In North America, residential and commercial buildings consume an 

estimated 40% of total US energy generation. The World Green Business Council 

estimates that every building on the planet must be net zero carbon by 2050 in 

order to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C . Yet less than 1% of the global 

building stock meets the standard at Microsoft. Our data centers in total generate 

210 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per user equivalent to driving about a 

kilometer. But to reach net zero, we're working with our partners like Johnson 

Controls, to design embodied carbon out of our buildings and manage their energy 

efficiency in new ways. 

Second, examine the footprint of your products. It's probably bigger than you think. 

The take, make waste approach to consuming, using and disposing of materials and 

products simply isn't sustainable. We need to shift to a circular economy, which 

promotes the elimination of waste and the continued safe use of natural resources. 

For example, one of our teams investigated one of the best selling technology 

products of all time the Microsoft Mouse, and was able to redesign it to use 20% 

reclaimed ocean plastic.

3 KEY COMPONENTS THAT WILL 

MAKE YOUR ORGANIZATION 

MORE SUSTAINABLE 

E V A N G E L I N E M A R Z E C 

More organizations are embracing transparency on the footprint of their 

products today, while others are introducing new products designed to be 

circular or low carbon. Admittedly, today, it's still hard to get credit for these 

changes, give the current standards, and it's still harder to calculate the 

product level emissions across complex value chains. 

Third, look at the activities of your people and how they're contributing to 

your carbon footprint. New video conferencing and collaborative work 

solutions have begun to lower the footprint from travel and new approaches, 

including low carbon fuels, exist such as the sustainable jet fuel used in 

partnership between Microsoft and Alaska Airlines. We know this data is still 

hard to obtain, even internal , if we know this data is still hard to obtain even 

internally, and it's hard to measure the impact of adoption. 

We often take a sampling approach, for example, by hosting one Microsoft 

event for more than 2000 attendees, virtually as compared to in person. 

We've estimated that we lowered the carbon emissions associated with that 

event by nearly 5,000 metric tons. That's equivalent to the amount of carbon 

absorbed over 10 years by planting nearly 150 acres of forest. The road ahead 

contains enormous complexities and challenges. We can best walk it 

together with practicality, ingenuity, and a growth mindset open to learning, 

and sharing. Thank you for joining me on this journey. 



A BACKGROUND IN 

ORGANZING THE 

COUNTRIES HEALTHCARE 

DATA 

BJ Moore 

CIO and EVP of Real Estate Strategy and Operations at Providence 

Terry Meyerson: 

CEO & Co-Founder at Truveta 

BJ Moore: 

At Providence, we've got a massive amount of data and electronic health record 

information from the pandemic. Unfortunately, it was spread across multiple 

sources of data housing. So joining up with Truvada was a benefit because not 

only were we able to consolidate all of our health data, but you've brought 

additional data sources that have enriched our data, right? You've added 

“Truveta insights” to bring in data sets that we weren't bringing in that have 

really supplemented our own knowledge of medical health systems. So it's more 

than just taking our electronic health record data and consolidating it, it's 

enriching it. 

Terry Myerson 

Yeah, it is really interesting to see how health data is distributed and understand 

its outcomes. I think one of the more clear outcomes we often look at in health 

systems candidly is did the individual die? And for that, you need what's in the 

industry known as the fact of death, which can come from the Social Security 

Administration, credit bureaus, and numerous other organizations.


A BACKGROUND IN ORGANZING THE COUNTRIES 

HEALTHCARE DATA CONTINUED... 

So, much of what drives health outcomes is socioeconomic status. We know this 

through what's called claims data, or the medical bills that insurers pay. 

Providence has this incredible data set for all the treatments they provide. 

However, they don't have data from other healthcare providers. For example, I 

sometimes get care at Virginia Mason or a local community provider, which 

happens to be a Truveta member as part of our Common Spirit affiliation. Now 

with Providence being a Truveta member; Providence researchers can see the 

care at Virginia Mason or any other healthcare provider that's also a Common 

Spirit member. This gives providence researchers access to the data we talked 

about earlier like the fact of death, or claims data without wasting time on 

lengthy data research or wading through masses of cloudy data. 

BJ Moore: 

And the progress your team has made Terry in two years is just fantastic. You 

think about any other tech company that starts two years ago in the middle of 

the pandemic and the progress you've made is really just scratching the surface 

of Truveta’s total potential value.

I D E A G E N ' S P O W E R 1 0 L I S T 

10 global leaders who are Changing the World in 2022 

Mark Fitzgerald 

KPMG 

Barb Quaintance 

AARP 

Steve Israel 

Michael Best 

Strategies 

Dr. Sidhant Gupta 

Microsoft 

Tomas Thyblad 

Nasdaq 

Microsoft 

Ashley Haynes-Gaspar 

Peggy Pelonis 

ACS Athens 

Jake Herway 

Gallup 

BJ Moore 

Providence 

Nick Larigakis 

American Hellenic 

Institute 


Editor's Note 

Dear Ideagen Global Friends and Colleagues, 

As we prepare for the September 8th release of the Ideagen Global 

Impact Summit and 17 Days of Sustainability in October, Ideagen 

Global continues to maximize our efforts with a relentless commitment 

to convene the world's greatest minds from the world's leading 

companies, NGOs, and the public sector to address the world's most 

vexing issues. In 2022, Ideagen TV content will again reach over 100 

Million People across the planet with our ubiquitous content 

distribution, including inspiring interviews and custom programming to 

create awareness and Global Partnerships to Achieve the Goals. 

2022 is already an #EPIC year with high-impact hybrid/live events 

across the planet, including Athens, Greece, New York, and many other 

global destinations! Join the movement at IdeagenGlobal.com for all of 

the latest updates. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE SIFAKIS 

GEORGE SIFAKIS 

Editor-in-Chief & CEO 

Ideagen 


COOPER HENDERSON 

Lead Publication Editor 

DANIEL KERNS 

Co-Editor and Chief of Staff 

WILL MARTIN 

Co-Editor and Senior Fellow 

Pictured Top to Bottom 

Microsoft's Tilemachos Moraitis 

ACS Athens's Peggy Pelonis 

Amb. Angelos Pangratis (ret.) 

Top Left: Ideagen's Global Impact Summit

Catalyze October

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