Proven Ways To Get CFOs To Invest In Sustainability With Misti Hagy
Convincing CFOs to invest in sustainability takes more than passion — it requires timing, strategy, and a compelling case for value. In this candid conversation, Misti Hagy, Chief Financial Officer of Fawn Industries, explains how she evaluates proposals, what makes a pitch credible, and why return on investment should be measured beyond dollars to include customer trust, employee impact, and long-term social responsibility. Drawing from her own rise from a Baltimore public-school student to the C-suite, she shares how she’s led major organizational change, balanced family with ambition, mentored women in manufacturing, and transformed “human resources” into true people operations. Listeners will learn what really sways a CFO to say yes to bold ideas, how to build credibility through consistency, and why patience, self-advocacy, and empathy are essential to driving meaningful change inside any organization.
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Proven Ways To Get CFOs To Invest In Sustainability With Misti Hagy
The CFO's Journey: From Baltimore Public Schools To The C-Suite
I am super excited for our guest in this episode. Misti, thank you so much for being here. We have talked a lot on this show about how to appeal to a CFO, because the person who holds the purse strings at a company a lot of times holds the decisions. I’m super excited to have Misti here, who is a financial executive with over twenty years of experience in leading and scaling financial operations. You’re passionate about people, operations, and building a collaborative, healthy team culture.
You serve as the CFO or Chief Financial Officer at Fawn Industries with the headquarters in the United States and operations in Mexico and China. Your core belief is that it is an honor to serve, and this is a key value that you apply in your professional, personal, and philanthropic life. I’m super excited to talk to you about all of that. I’ve talked a little bit about your bio, but can you tell us more about yourself, your career, and how you live with intention?
Thank you, first of all, for having me. This is such a great space to be able to have a dialogue and a conversation about things that I find very important personally and professionally. A little bit about my background is that I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. I grew up in a lower-middle-class family. None in my family went to college. I came from a place where I went to public school. I had a teacher challenge me in high school, and it changed my career path and my goals. I was the person who was changed by a teacher. I had someone invest in me.
I’ve had other people throughout my career who saw something different and have invested in who I was as a person, more even so than my skillset, because you either get accounting or you don’t. They’ve invested in who I was and how I saw business and how it should come together professionally. I was fortunate to have some key people who mentored me throughout my path.
I went to a public high school in Baltimore and took accounting in high school. I was fortunate that my teacher taught at Towson University. He let me, in my senior year, come to audit two of his Principles of Accounting classes. He made it very clear that we could achieve anything. Especially coming from where I grew up, most people didn’t have huge goals or dreams. He let it be known early that you can break the ceiling, you can have a different life and a different path, and you can create change for yourself, even when it didn’t seem like growing up that was possible.
I wasn’t a straight-A student, ever. I was a B and C student. I wasn’t the one who got the full-ride scholarships. I took out loans. I pushed through. I worked two jobs in college. It took me five years, but I got it done. I then started my career. I started out as a staff accountant doing public accounting. I got a job while I was in college. I stayed with the firm for two years after that, and then I decided that I wanted to get into corporate accounting. I found that I liked it a lot more than audit because I wanted to work with people. I didn’t want to be frictional to people. I wanted to work with people, so I started there.
By the time I was 30, I had my first controller job. From there, I worked my way up to senior accountant. I was always looking for the right fit. Accounting is a little different than some other industries. You almost have to change jobs to receive a promotion, and so I was, every 3 to 5 years. I was changing roles and changing companies. That was the way for me to try to get there and break that ceiling.
Women just naturally don't self-advocate.
At 30, I had my first controller job. I had three kids by then. I was still working and balancing personal life with it. Creating an environment where people can have a personal life and balance is very important to me. It took me another 12 to 13 years to break the ceiling and to get to a CFO level. It was a lot of hard work. There were a lot of times in those ten years when I was frustrated. I didn’t understand why someone else would get the promotion, or I didn’t always understand why I was working in some roles when I felt like I was doing more. Ultimately, it prepared me for when I was ready to break that ceiling because I’m a much better leader now. Even more than a leader, I’m a listener.
It took that time in those twenty years for me to get to a place where I could be an effective, compassionate leader who believes in people and who believes in helping other women navigate their way through the fact that you can have a family and a career. It doesn’t always look pretty, but eventually, you can get there, and then you can be the type of leader that people need.
Self-Advocacy In The Workplace: Women Breaking Barriers
It’s so true. I raised my hand a lot in my career for stretch assignments because that was the only way. I was performing well at my job. I was often told that I was performing better than anyone who had ever held that job, and yet I wasn’t deemed a high-potential officially through HR, even though all my customers that I was dealing with internally or externally were singing my praises. The only way to get that recognition was to do even more than my job through a stretch assignment or an extra project, or to take on becoming president of our business resource group for women. I had to do something else in order to get that recognition, so I feel you 100%.
It’s especially true for women. Women naturally don’t self-advocate. Early on, it was a difficult conversation, and then you get tired of it. You know that you can do the job. I was fortunate to have a close friend who is a life coach as well. She challenged me to always self-advocate. The way I like to work with people that I mentor is to be prepared. Document what you’re doing. Document what your role should do. Document where you see yourself in two years.
If you have a manager, a boss, or a company that doesn’t put you on a career path because they don’t have that planning, because a lot of smaller companies aren’t robust enough to have those HR human capital systems in place, it’s important to advocate for yourself. For me, I would have a conversation in reverse. I’d say, “This is my plan. This is where I want to be in 2 years, 5 years, or 7years.”
It's really important to advocate for yourself.
I also never shied away from the compensation conversation. As women, we never have that conversation. That’s why in the US, there’s still a gender disparity for compensation. It’s empowering for me to have conversations with other women and even people who don’t work for me or people who are friends of my children. It’s like, “I’m looking for a job.” I’m like, “Bring your resume. Let’s talk through your dialogue. Let me help you prep for that conversation.” I don’t think we’re ever taught how to have that conversation. I love that you had that conversation for yourself and self-advocated.
Leading Transformational Change: Navigating Resistance In The Plastics Industry
It wasn’t easy. I had a lot of mentors who helped me through it, to be clear, but thank you. That was great. I wanted to also share very quickly how we met. You and I are both going to speak at a conference in Savannah in a couple of months. Women Breaking the Mold is the title of the conference. It’s put on by the publication Plastics News. I bring this up because in your career, you’ve led a lot of transformational change, and you’re in the plastics industry, which you haven’t always been. Can you share how you’ve encouraged others to change when you may have faced resistance?
I joined Fawn. Two months after I joined Fawn, or maybe even less, I was getting my feet wet. I was taking the time to learn, but also starting to take my position as a leader. I was brought in to facilitate the retirement of a COO and a CFO at the same time, who had both been with the company for over 35 years each. It was a challenge.
I’m coming into an organization that was started in 1953. It’s very similar to most companies in plastics. They’ve been around for a very long time, they’re family-owned, and things have been the way they were for a long time. They had been working on a project for about eighteen months to implement a new ERP. My assessment was that we were not financially prepared for this expense, and we were also not operationally prepared for the implementation. While I am a huge promoter of organizational change, optimization, and change daily, I did not feel like we were ready for that change. You have to be stable to undergo that large a change. The system they were using had been around for years.
After starting for two months, I killed a project that had been in motion. They were ready to sign on the line. They’d been working on it for eighteen months. They had found their vendor. They’d already specced the project. They had people down at our plant in Mexico. It was hard because it soured people slightly towards me. Here’s this new CFO. They’ve been working on it with the existing team. I come in, and I’m like, “It’s not the time,” and it wasn’t.
Here we are, two years later. I’ve been with Fawn for two years. Looking back, it was the right decision because we’ve had two years to work on functionality, operational flow, quality, team building, the leadership team in collaboration, and understanding who we are, what we do, and what we do well. We’ve had a great two years.
I feel like, as a team and as a company, we’re in a much different place because of the foundation that was built before I started. I don’t want it to seem like it’s something I’ve done. I took the foundation that had been built, and I was gifted an incredible company to work for and with. It was taking that and then being able to build on it, find efficiencies, create new benchmarks and new metrics, and understand what we were looking at and what the data was.
There's a time and place for change.
I did not tell anyone except for my business partner, our COO, that I was considering picking the project back up. It was very hush-hush until I had new quotes, new processes, and some new dialogue with the company we were considering purchasing the software from. Once I was ready to sign on the line, I took the project back to the team.
I would love to say they were very excited, but they were not all excited because they felt like there was potential that I would stop it again. That was valid because I did that. I also respected their position when I took this project back to them. Now, they’re all excited. Everybody’s working hard to get this change in place. I’m proud of the team and where they are.
The Art Of Influence: Converting Skeptics To Champions Of Change
What are some of the tactics you use to help convert people from not excited to excited?
It’s through listening. I told the team as a whole, but I took the time after that conversation and observed people’s reactions. The ones that were not excited, I made a point to either go have an in-person conversation or a team call. I had a dialogue. I wanted to understand why they were feeling the way they were feeling because it’s valid. I can’t influence how someone feels about something, but I can have a dialogue about it, and we can come to a resolution and a conclusion on how to best move forward.
I had a dialogue because I wanted to understand where they were coming from. Some of it is that our team is smaller. I feel like we’re right-sized. That does present a challenge because it’s a lot of work to implement an ERP, but my guarantee to the team is that it will not become too much. If it ever does, then we can find resources to help. There are things that I can do to help make sure that we’re successful. What I won’t let us do is not be successful in a full ERP rollout. I had a conversation, and then after that conversation, the 1 or 2 people who had been a little bit frictional or there was some opposition, we came to a good place. It feels very different.
I’d also love to say that friction within a leadership team is critical. You have to have constructive conflict and constructive friction. I did an entire session in our offsite about constructive conflict and friction. If you are not having those tensions in your leadership team, then you are never going to move forward because someone is not speaking up, sharing their opinions, and being loud enough.
There’s the right way and the wrong way to do it, but that's why you have that many seats at the table. I expect sales and engineering to have conflict. That’s the way it works. That’s why you have both seats at the table. Otherwise, you would need both. It could be the same person. I applaud my team for having the wherewithal to have that conversation with me. While I’m the CFO, I’m still part of their team. I respect the fact that they wanted to have that conversation with me. Even if I went and initiated it, they were still very receptive to the dialogue.
I do want to clarify because we talk about EPR here a lot, which is not ERP. For those who may not know what an ERP system is, can you give a quick 30-second vocabulary?
Sure. It has many different names. It’s a full system that runs everything from our manufacturing to our purchasing, our billing, our sales quoting, and our CRM. It incorporates our full accounting system. It’s A to Z with everything you need to run your company. It’s the full package. It touches every team in every department. It’s the software.
Strategic Timing: When To Implement Major System Changes
It's technology and transactional. One other follow-up question on this is, how did you know it was the right time to make a shift back? What were some of the signs that helped you revisit this decision you’d made?
There were several facets. One was financially, I felt like we weren’t in a place where we could afford it. The second was that we had some system downtime with our current system, so it was a risk for us to move forward with that system. The third was that I felt like the team was in a place where we were stable. We’ve made huge leaps and bounds with our customers, our leadership team in collaboration, our quality for our customers, understanding our metrics like labor efficiency, and understanding our cost of materials. We have a full list of metrics and KPIs that we track every month. We’re in a different place. Those are easy topics for us now. When I see that we’re hitting every goal, I’m like, “How can we stretch those goals, but also, what else can we do?” We were ready as a team to take on a project this large.
Thank you. Before you were at Fawn Industries, you talked a little bit about your transition and shared your career path and everything. Can you talk a little bit about when you’re leading change or coming in new? You were changing roles over and over. You had fresh ideas. You were not willing to shy away from change. What are some other pieces of advice you can give if people are trying to move the needle at a company where they feel like there’s a lot of resistance to change or resistance to your fresh perspective, your different perspective, and that sort of thing?
It depends on two things. The first, for me, coming into Fawn, is that it depends on where you are in your lifecycle with the company. If you’re coming in fresh and new, it’s different. If you’ve been there for a long time, it’s also different. It’s also easier if you’re coming from the C-Suite. People want to listen, or they need to. I’ve encountered that everywhere I’ve ever been.
The most important thing, especially if you’re new to a company, is to take the time to learn and listen before you start word vomiting everything you want to do, how you’re going to change it, and how you’re going to make it better. People aren’t receptive to that because you’re not respecting the tenure that they’ve built where they are. You’re not respecting the processes. You’re not respecting what you don’t know.
For me, when I made that decision, and it was the right decision, I was still new. Two years later, they still use plastics acronyms that I don’t know. I’m like, “Are you speaking in plastics to me? Can you break it down?” I’ve learned so much. For me, there’s so much value in learning from the people you work with. I mean, from every role.
I love being on the plant floor. I love understanding how our machines work, how we’re meeting our customers’ needs, and how we’re not meeting our customers’ needs. It comes from those dialogues. Sometimes, in the C-Suite, we forget to have those conversations. For me, even going out and visiting customers, which, as a CFO, is not traditional, I still do. Honestly, as a corporate CFO in the States with companies outside of the US, walking the plant floor is not necessarily something that’s always important to everyone. I think of myself as an operational CFO, so I love to be on the floor.
I only go down quarterly. I’m not saying I’m there all the time because it’s quite the trek and I do have a family, but I make it a point to go down. When I’m there, I go into their meetings and I listen. I want to understand their pain points. I’m there to support them. The most important thing you can do to get an organization to accept the changes that you want to make is to first listen, understand their pain points, and understand where they’re coming from. That’s because then, your thoughts around what should change will also be different.
I may have come in with, “We have to do X, Y, and Z because this is the way I’ve done it everywhere else, and it made a huge difference.” That may not be what that company needs. By listening first, learning, and understanding what the pain points are, I find that what I want to change will dramatically change. I still set goals every year. I set risks and goals. Whether it be personal, professional, or philanthropic, I’m a very big goal setter. I believe in living by goals. It’s important to make sure that I’m understanding what those needs are and not doing something I’ve done before because it worked somewhere else.
Investing In Human Capital: Developing People Over Processes
One of the things we talked about in our prep discussion was how important human capital is to you and this idea of developing human capital. Can you share advice with others who are looking to develop themselves or develop others?
Sure. That’s very important to me. I say human capital because I hate the term human resources. Resources are something that you use up. You expend them, and when you’re done with them, you toss them out. Capital is an investment. You’ll also hear me call it people operations instead of HR. I don’t like the term HR. It’s so old, and it denotes that we don’t value our employees.
For me, my team is the most valuable part of my company. If my team is satisfied in their roles, they’re developing, they’re achieving, they’re producing, and they’re happy, then my customers will always be taken care of. I never have to worry about it. It’s very important to me that my employees are taken care of first. I mean, employees from my maintenance workers at the plant to my people down the line. Fawn is over 50% female in the manufacturing space at the plant. It’s everywhere, from the line workers all the way up through our senior management team. I need to make sure that my team is taken care of first.
The team is the most valuable part of the company. If the team is satisfied in their role, then the customers will always be taken care of.
I have different conversations. Even with my daughter’s friends, people that I know from church, or people that I know from any other part of my life, I’m very quick if they’re looking for a job to say, “Shoot me a resume. Let’s have a conversation. How can I help you create the dialogue that’s going to get you where you want to be?” It’s important. That could be whether you’re looking to go find another job because you’re not going to advance where you are, or even if it’s an employee that I’ve had.
If I have an employee who comes and says, “I need to do more. I don’t think there’s a role,” I will help them because I fully believe in developing a person over a company. I’ll have that conversation and help that employee, even if they’re on my team and I don’t want them to go. My job is to develop them and invest in them. That, to me, is so important. I’ve had other people do that for me. I never get surprises because I’m always ready to have that conversation. With that being said, I also have an employee who has worked for me at three companies. I’m very proud of that.
If you’re in a job, it’s important to understand that not every company is going to have a development plan. Not every company is going to have, “These are the boxes you check to get to the next step. This is how you get to the next pay grade.” That’s a large company. When you’re talking about plastics, from my experience, unless you’re at a tier one or unless you’re at a very large company or a consolidated company, you’re not going to have that. We don’t have that huge human capital, like software, the plans, the reviews. We don’t have those things in place, and frankly, we don’t have the staff to follow up on that.
I’ve been in companies before where I didn’t have that as well. For me, what was very important was that I always map out where I want to go. If I’m coaching someone, I always have a conversation, like, “Where do you want to be in your career? What’s your goal?” That goal will change. I’ll talk about that at the end about how it has changed for me.
If you had said to me when I was 21, “What was your goal?” My goal would’ve been to have the office, to be a CFO, to have a team, to make a certain level of compensation, and to have it all. That was what it was for me. That was what success looked like to me. It is very different now, for sure, but for 21-year-old Misti coming out of college, that was what I thought success was. I have different values now. That was always my end goal, but no one ever said how you get there or how you get to that end goal.
Not everyone has to want to be a CFO or a C-Suite employee. You may want to be a senior manager. If you’re an engineer, you may want to be a director of engineering. If you’re in sales, you may want to be a business development manager. You may want to figure out how to navigate to another portion of the business. My question to someone is always, “How do you get there? How long are you okay with it taking?” If they say, “Three years,” I say, “If that’s your goal in 3 years, what do you have to do over the next 3 years to achieve that?” That becomes their next goal. Honestly, I ask them to map it out and set goals to achieve that.
We get busy in life. It’s easy to be comfortable, go to work, and get your paycheck every other week. When you’re in school, you’re always learning and growing. When you have a family, you’re working, and you have a personal life, work becomes a thing you do. I said this to someone. I was traveling with my employees. I said, “Do you know what’s great? It’s great seeing where you are now. You’ve always had a great job and you’ve always been a great team member, but your job is becoming a career.”
It’s so exciting for me to watch the transition because different conversations develop, like, “This is what you’re doing today, but what do you want to be doing in two years? What does that look like for you?” It opens up a conversation. Not everyone has a manager who’s going to want to have that conversation with them. Have it in reverse. Go have the conversation with your manager and say, “This is where I want to be. Here’s how I can get there.” Be open and have the dialogue. 98% of the time, they’re going to be your cheerleader and help you get there.
It’s important to have a plan. That plan can fail. You may not get there. You could have roadblocks and barriers, but as long as you keep moving towards that. For me, it took me a lot longer to get to this seat than I thought it would, but I still stayed on the journey, stayed on the path, and kept working towards it. It’s been a great experience. That’s how I would help other people.
It’s really important to have a plan. That plan may fail, you may hit roadblocks and barriers, but as long as you keep moving toward it, you’ll get there.
Sustaining Momentum: Strategies To Avoid Burnout And Stay Motivated
That’s great advice. It’s true. I remember the first time I did a development plan. I was like, “I have no idea what you’re asking me to do. I don’t know. How do I get there? What are the steps?” I had a lot of various coaches and mentors help me unpack it. It made me think of two scenarios. One is, a lot of times, going through that exercise, if I didn’t find what I needed from my leader or my manager directly, I could find a mentor who could help me fill in the gaps. They can potentially help me round out what I bring to the manager to talk about and build on that. It sounds like you’re doing that for many people.
The other thing, which is going to lead to a question, is that I also had a mentor who said something to me. I was 25 and at Coca-Cola. I was like, “I can do this. Why can’t I be the next C-Suite leader?” She said to me, “Don’t lose steam.” I didn’t lose steam in that my work suffered in any way, but I lost steam in that I got frustrated, and I didn’t feel valued anymore.
I felt like I was always raising my hand for the extra work and never being recognized for it, so I went out and started this show, but also my own career and my own company. I use the show almost as a way to do my own homework, because if I want to know a topic that is important to my career, I can make an episode about it.
That’s great.
It’s fun. What advice do you have for people to not lose steam in what feels like sometimes a hamster wheel?
That’s a tough question. You have to figure out what your motivator is. As a manager, it is very important that we understand what motivates our employees. Is your motivator verbal recognition? Is your motivator promotion? Is your motivator financial? You have to be very real with yourself. If you’re not receiving that motivation and the motivator that prompts you to keep going, then you have to figure out another way to find that because that’s the only thing that will help you keep moving.
For me, sometimes, it was that I had to change roles. If I were to get stagnant, I would re-evaluate why I wasn’t moving, what my next steps and my goal were, and where I needed to go to make that. I’m a CFO. My motivator now is very different from what it would’ve been. It’s like, “How do I find fulfillment in my role?” Feeling fulfilled helps you keep going and keeps you motivated. A friend of mine was like, “Now that you met your goal and you have what you always thought you wanted, what next?” I said, “I have no idea.” I had to re-evaluate. I was like, “I’m there. It’s real now.”
For me, it comes down to helping other people get to the same place. I find more satisfaction in that because I don’t know that there’s a next professional goal for me. For me, it’s going to be about building a company where other people can have the environment that I wish I had early in my career, where other people can feel satisfied with their career, where other people can see their development, and where other people can grow.
I also believe in investing in things people believe in within the company. If I have an employee who loves their job, but they also love an outside organization where they volunteer, then we invest in that as a company as well. Figuring out what that motivator is for your team and how to make them feel like they’re valued is so important. As an individual, to not lose your steam, you have to figure out what makes you feel valued. Make sure that you are getting that input. That will help you keep moving on.
Beyond Profit: Convincing CFOs To Invest In Sustainability
That’s great. I said at the beginning of the episode that we talk a lot about how to appeal to the CFO, especially in the sustainability space. Sustainability is often a thorn in people’s sides. It seems like a cost. Sometimes, it is a cost. Sometimes, it’s not. A lot of the people who tune into the show are sustainability professionals. What advice do you have to someone who might be trying to convince a CFO, such as yourself, to invest in their project or initiative over something else that maybe is on the plan or you know is a profit driver?
It comes down to a conversation and a well-thought-out plan. You can pitch, but you have to pitch. I always want to see an ROI. When I say I want to see the return on the investment, the return does not always have to be financial. It could be customer value, like value to our customers. It could be value to our employees. It could be longevity and the ability to change the social face of the company I’m working for. There’s inherent value in that, too. It comes down to how you present it.
I’m not going to squash an idea because it costs. I’m not going to say I haven’t. I could, as the CFO, because it all comes down to whether we can afford it or we can’t. The return doesn’t have to be financial. It doesn’t have to be tangible. The return could be goodwill. The return could be employees who feel more valued. The return can come in a lot of different forms. That’s important. It may not be related to environmental, but if I have an employee who believes in a certain cause, then we want to stand behind them as a company. If I have a customer who has a benefit, we want to stand behind our customers and be involved with that as well.
The return on investment doesn't have to be financial or tangible. It could be goodwill, or employees who feel more valued. It can come in a lot of different forms.
At Fawn, we’re trying to be very socially responsible, whether it’s through green initiatives at the plant. We have a distillery, so we do a lot of sustainability things at the distillery level. That’s Sienna Spirits. We use reverse osmosis in our water. It’s filtered. We go farm-to-table. Everything is locally sourced. There are a lot of things we do environmentally there, whether it’s saving electricity or recycling.
The things that we can do that are still within our engineering specs, especially at Fawn, because that’s a challenge, we make sure that we do that, whether it’s through social responsibility or environmental responsibility. It is whatever the teams are bringing to me, because I’m not the brain. I’m not the one who’s going to come up with those ideas. I’m the one who’s going to listen to them.
The value doesn’t have to be tangible, but there has to be value. I’m going to listen and make a decision, but I’m also going to listen and hear people out. If you’re passionate about it, a lot of the time, I’m probably going to go with you on it, but I need to see that you’re not going to be excited and then tomorrow be like, “Somebody else can take it.”
That’s helpful to think about the different aspects of financial value in customer value and goodwill. As you mentioned with the distillery, there’s a consumer value to the decisions that you’re making about the distillery as well. I know we talked about this in some of the prep, but for everybody reading, because of the nature of Fawn Industries, there are some structural requirements to the plastics that you’re making that make it impossible, in some cases, to bring recycled material back in because of quality standards.
We talk a lot about trade-offs as well in this show. There are some areas where you can’t do certain things because in some countries, their recycled PET is illegal. You can’t process it. You can’t make it for whatever reason. In that country, you’re limited. There are these structural challenges that can happen that make it impossible to make a change.
Finding areas where it does drive value and things that are still controllable by your organization in different ways to invest in sustainability in a way that makes sense for your business is great to hear about as well. It crystallizes this concept of trade-offs and understanding the total value that an initiative can have.
It’s true. It’s very difficult because we’re an auto supplier. We cannot use any recycled resins. It would push us out of an engineering scope. That comes down to safety and what the auto manufacturers require. That’s not something we can do, but we are constantly re-evaluating. You are also limited, more probably, in Mexico than you would be if you had a US plant.
In the US, we have grants for green initiatives. You can get solar. There are grants for solar. There are grants to come in and put in lights that go off automatically. There are grants to better insulate your building. There are a lot of initiatives in the US that help companies move that along. It’s a little bit more difficult when you get outside of the United States. Some European countries, and I worked for one previously, are very forward-thinking with their green initiatives.
It’s a little bit more difficult in some countries. We do encounter that. It’s a little more difficult to make those decisions. We have some constraints that make it more difficult, but we’re still constantly re-evaluating because we need to be responsible. We need to take care of our planet. We need to take care of being forward-thinking. Some of our customers require it. They require us to report on our grain initiatives, what we’ve done, how we’re reducing our carbon footprint, how we’re recycling, how we are re-filtering water, and how we are reducing energy. There are a lot of things that we do report on. Not only are we required to do it, but we want to do it. That’s the more important part.
Embracing Continuous Improvement: A Philosophy For Growth
Final question. How do you embrace change?
I live in perpetual change. Someone said this to me. I thought about it because I knew you were going to ask that question. It’s hard when you’re a person who loves change. I don’t necessarily have to embrace it, but I want to live in continuous improvement. That’s the space that I enjoy living in. It’s not always comfortable for everyone.
One of my employees at Fawn was like, “What do you do when you’re done making the changes? What do you do when you don’t have all these things to do?” I said, “I find new projects, like the ERP. There are some other things going on behind the scenes with Fawn right now.” It becomes growth. I don’t think it has changed for me. It’s continuous improvement. How can I do better? How can I be better? How can I give back more? How can I continue to create the company that I wish I had worked at when I was 21?
Key Takeaways: Listening, Self-Advocacy, And Value Beyond Profit
I love that. Creating the company that you wish you’d worked at when you were 21 is such a great North Star to think about. I want to recap a little bit of some of the great insights we talked about. You reiterated a couple of different times and a couple of different examples about the power of listening and the power of empathy. This is a skill that has to be developed by some people.
In fact, I remember being a teenager and doing what was called Outward Bound. You live in the woods for two weeks. They had a feedback session where everybody around the campsite would tell you something that you could work on. Every single person told me that I could talk less. Since then, I’ve actively worked on listening.
It can be hard for some people, like an extrovert who’s a Texan, an ox, and a Leo. I got a lot of those working against me. It’s such a great reminder. It’s the power of listening, observing, and then taking that extra step further and turning it into, “How can I empathize with their point of view and then bring that empathy to how I’m changing hearts and minds?” How powerful that can be. Those are great reminders.
Also, you talked about being a self-advocate and being prepared to do that. You were coming with your clear list, your plan, and your reasons for why you’ve been successful, and then showcasing that through that conversation and not being afraid to talk about compensation, which is very hard. I remember having a bit of a light bulb moment. I talked a lot about wanting to be valued professionally, but then drawing that connection from wanting to be valued to what that means financially. Saying, “I want you to show how I’m valued through my compensation,” can be very uncomfortable.
Also, you talked a lot about knowing when is the right time, knowing when is the right space, and understanding this idea of having plans and goals. Maybe you’ve met them and then had continuous improvement, but pushing for continuous improvement when you have the right other foundational elements. It’s like saying no when it makes sense, but also saying yes when it makes sense. Trying to navigate that professionally and personally is also a way to think about it.
If you’re a sustainability professional, there might be other contextual things across the business that you need to consider when bringing your proposition. It’s thinking through, “What is the context where my CFO might say yes to this initiative that can push for something that drives value for the organization and doesn’t distract too much from some other chaos that’s happening? When is the right time?”
To reiterate at the end, we talked about thinking about value broader than profitability. That is something that I’ve seen even in the IT technology space and presenting the case for change in new technology. It’s very hard sometimes to put down the man-hours replaced by automation and what the financial benefit can be.
It is also thinking through this concept of value and how we can redirect these funds to support the business in a different way. It could be goodwill with customers, employees, or even refocusing on the space where you can control things and do things because they’re not regulated in some other way. It’s thinking about the value you can bring to your organization through these initiatives.
You also talked about that point about passion and consistency. You’re not just passionate about the topic, but you can deliver on the things and build that trust when you’re bringing things. When you’re starting out with something, don’t go for the moon in your first request. Show and build that trust so that it becomes the right time in the organization. They see the incremental value over time, and they trust the person who’s bringing the initiative to invest in. Thank you for all these great nuggets and for all of this guidance. I enjoyed the conversation. Any last words?
I don’t think so. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate this. I hope someone takes something home from it. I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Women Breaking the Mold Conference and meeting you in person. Hopefully, we’ll grab a drink and catch up. I’d love to hear what you’re going to speak about as well.
I’m speaking about a lot of the things that I’ve talked about in my session. It’s about career development, compensation, and self-advocation. That’s what my breakout session is about at the conference. I’m looking forward to being in Savannah and getting to have an open dialogue in a breakout session with other women in our industry.
I can’t wait. I’ll see you there. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
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About Misti Hagy
Misti Hagy is a financial executive with over 20 years of experience in leading and scaling financial operations. Misti is passionate about People Operations and building a collaborative healthy team culture. Currently, Misti serves as the Chief Financial Officer of Fawn Industries with headquarters in the United States and Operations in Mexico and China. Misti’s core belief is that it is an “honor to serve,” and this is a key value that she applies in her professional, personal, and philanthropic life.