New Frontiers

Before Delphine Millot became senior vice president of sustainability and advocacy at the Global Business Travel Association, she worked as a corporate consultant in Europe. Climate issues weren’t her area of expertise, but she noticed how they kept pushing their way to the center of her work.

“My job was to represent a wide range of industry sectors with politicians in Europe,” she said. “And very quickly, because the European Union took such a leadership role in sustainability and driving climate action, all of my work started to be about sustainability.”

Millot embraced it: In 2015, not long after moving from Brussels to the United States, she pursued a degree in sustainability. “I realized that through sustainability I could combine what I love most: corporate affairs, politics, public affairs,” she said. “I don’t see sustainability as a practice on the side—it’s something that is core to business, policy, everything.”

The sustainability position at GBTA was a new one when she took the job in early 2022. Since then, she’s championed two essential tasks around sustainability: Gather the relevant data, but also gather people. Only by connecting sometimes-disparate stakeholders can sustainability agendas move forward.