As COO, Charlie manages the day-to-day activities facilitating the Veerless team to deliver great outcomes for our clients. Charlie brings to our team expertise in software related engagements, ensuring Veerless clients have the strongest return on investment and smooth transitions into ESG-related software platforms. Charlie also supports Veerless research initiatives. Using human-centered design and design thinking principles, he works with Veerless clients to increase stakeholder engagement in client’s reporting creating mavens for your company.

Outside Veerless, Charlie is a partner for Going VC and spends his time working with startup accelerators and incubators to mentor and source funding for startups in the region. 

Charlie’s background includes work focused on strategy, product management, business transactions, and complex financial negotiations. His experience in corporate legal contract negotiations and legal technology includes time at Walgreens, Motorola Mobility, Morae Legal, and Elevate Services. 

Charlie received his MBA with honors from the University of Notre Dame in 2016. He also holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio and a Juris Doctor from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

When Charlie isn’t hanging out with his wife Marcy and their CK9O, Pearl, he’s spending an absurd amount of time searching for his golf balls in the woods due to a wicked slice.

What company do you see as your “North Star” in ESG/sustainability/responsibility? Why? What do they do that makes them unique, interesting, different, or particularly awesome in our field?

Salesforce.org is my NorthStar. By utilizing Salesforce’s reason d’etre, they created an independent nonprofit entity that subsidized the salesforce tool for nonprofits and philanthropic organizations, Salesforce.org. It offered the software for free or highly discounted pricing. In 2019, Salesforce acquired Salesforce.org for $300M to bring the entity in house.

ESG done correctly becomes a profit center for the company and not merely a cost. Salesforce shows this is not just possible, but it is the right thing to do. 

When you look at a company’s sustainability initiatives or reporting, what “red flags” do you see that company that might be greenwashing?

Lack of verifiable data is always a red flag. When a company touts its ESG programs without data to back it up, I immediately assume they are merely placating stakeholders, rather than making ESG part of their business and growth plans.

When you look at a company’s sustainability initiatives or reporting, what “green flags” do you see that signal a company is the “real deal” in sustainability?

My biggest green flag is when a company acknowledges to falling short of a goal. If a company meets every ESG goal, they have not set appropriate targets. ESG results are never complete. Make audacious goals and show progress.