This week Siemens announced that they were appointing Barbara Kux as both Chief Procurement Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer. This is not only a great news for gender equality (Mrs Kux will be the first woman on Siemens Board in 160 years, and the 1st woman on a DAX 30 board), but a real proof of the strategic alignment between Purchasing and Sustainability.

More and more companies realize that the future of Sustainabilty lies in Supply Chains Management (last year the Sustainability Director of Schneider, Gilles Vermot-Desroches, even explained in a conference, that he anticipated that in a couple of years, both functions would be merged, as companies would change their focus from internal to exernal value chains).

Mrs Kux appointment is a perfect example of this. She was holding exactly the same 2 jobs at Phillips, which during her tenure, became both a leader in Sustainable Procurement, and grew its “green business” into a 5.3bn€ activity. I had the chance to attend her presentation at the latest Insead Leadership Summit last summer : you can find the video and summary here.

We wish Barbara Kux the same success at Siemens!