Social Impact Heroes Helping Our Planet: Why & How Yumi Clevenger-Lee of BlueTriton Brands Is Helping To Change Our World
…A collection of small acts can make a huge difference for both the environment and society at large. That is what I love about our campaign, Made For A Better Tomorrow. It encourages people to do a small act, to get that bottle in the bin — if everyone starts getting that bottle in the bin, whether that’s once or five times, we’re driving awareness of recycling and making progress in contributing to a circular economy that reduces plastic pollution. Imagine if 10 out of 10 PET bottles were recycled? This is how small acts can lead to big impact.
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Yumi Clevenger-Lee.
Yumi is Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of BlueTriton Brands. She oversees marketing strategy and business development of the company’s brands, including Pure Life® and the six regional spring water brands (Poland Spring®, Deer Park®, Zephyrhills®, Ice Mountain®, Ozarka® and Arrowhead®), as well as the work of the company in the areas of Media, Insights, Innovation and eBusiness. She is passionate about supporting healthy hydration for America and finding the intersection of initiatives that are good for growth and for the greater good. She serves on the Executive Team.
Yumi has experience spanning areas of new product innovation, reinventing brands through purpose, developing engaging campaigns, and creating new communication and business models. She is a seasoned and visionary marketer with a passion for consumers and building brands that matter.
Before joining the company, Yumi worked abroad for six years with Cereal Partners Worldwide (CPW), a joint venture between General Mills and Nestlé S.A. to manufacture and market cereal in more than 120 countries. Based in Switzerland, she was the head of innovation globally, and then assumed the role as head of marketing for Latin America based in Mexico. In this role, she was responsible for all marketing activities across 14 countries, including brand building, innovation, renovation, promotions, category advocacy, regulatory affairs, and margin expansion.
Prior to her work with CPW, Yumi spent nearly a decade in numerous marketing roles at General Mills, based in Minneapolis and Toronto, where she worked on a range of brands including Green Giant® Vegetables, Cheerios® and Walmart® & Sam’s Club® businesses.
Yumi holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and an MBA from Northwestern University the Kellogg School of Management. Yumi also sits on the national Board of Directors for the community improvement nonprofit Keep America Beautiful®.
Thank you so much for joining us Yumi. Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Since 2004, I’ve held a variety of different marketing positions from my time at General Mills where I worked on brands like Green Giant® Vegetables, Cheerios® and Walmart®, to working overseas for Cereal Partners Worldwide to manufacture and market cereal in more than 120 countries. At CPW, I was the head of innovation globally in Switzerland and then moved to Mexico City as the head of marketing for Latin America. In this role, my responsibilities included marketing activities across 14 countries, including brand building,
With a Japanese mother, I had a multicultural upbringing, doing things like Japanese Saturday school from early childhood throughout High School. I also continued Japanese and Spanish throughout my college years.
I grew up in a family business with entrepreneurial parents, and many of my first life memories are working at our family car wash and convenience store.
The combination of having an entrepreneurial dad and Japanese mom, who migrated to the U.S. before she could even speak English, has had such a positive impact on me. I learned the power of compassion, perseverance with an incredible work ethic, the richness of diversity, and ultimately, quiet courage to be an authentic leader.
I’ve been married to my husband for what will be 20 years this fall and together we have four children who are aged 6, 11, 13, and 15. As for so many, it’s certainly been a struggle as a working mom throughout the pandemic with remote school, but it’s also been wonderful having this time with my kids. Life is chaotic; life is full; life is beautiful.
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
Coming from a Japanese culture, I wanted to find a leader who I admired but who was different from me. What I appreciated from him was his confidence and authenticity to be himself. He was outspoken, could be tough on people and had a team that would follow him anywhere. He role modeled the power of candor and communication to build trust with people. This is a huge part of who I am as a leader today.
I try to be as transparent as possible and give people context without sugar coating it. It’s important to tell it like it is. I remember, I came to this mentor with my career map, and he looked at my plan and said, “Yumi, you need to get a new plan.” It made me realize that it’s never going to play out the way you think. Plans are good, but also require agility. Rather than map my every career move for the next decade, I instead have focused on what I can learn and what brings me joy in my job and I pour 90% of my energy into that… well the rest, it’s about doing it well enough to not mess it up. Remarkable results are born from passion.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Trial and Error. Life is a series of experiments. Being a CMO, wife, parent, are all ways in which we have to give ourselves the freedom to try, freedom to experiment, freedom to do our best in that moment. And if the results don’t play out the way I intended, well I try something different next time. This takes the pressure off the fear of failure, which otherwise would be debilitating. It’s important for me to remember that I won’t get it all right 100% of the time. But I can learn, lean into what works and understand what didn’t so that I can make a different choice next time. I often find that people are so incredibly forgiving and compassionate for others, but sometimes we forget to show ourselves that same kind of compassion.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began a leading role in your company?
I was attending the Sustainable Brands conference in Detroit in 2019 where we launched Poland Spring’s 100% rPET renovation. I was just on a panel on-stage, talking about the brand’s commitment to use 100% recycled plastic by 2022.
The speaker right after me, CEO of an anti-plastic NGO, stepped on stage to launch a powerful new anti-bottled water campaign, a direct attack. And while I was supposed to catch a flight during her talk, I worried about people misinterpreting that I was purposefully walking out on her presentation. Instead, I chose to miss my flight and I sought her out to have a courageous conversation afterwards.
Since then, we have kept in contact and exchanged many ideas. I often seek her advice on one of the recycling campaigns I’ve been leading. I guess you could call it a radical collaboration that works. While on the surface, many would expect us to be adversaries, ultimately, we have more similarities than differences. We both want to address plastic pollution. Through partnership, we are helping each other toward that goal.
You are currently leading a social impact initiative within an organization that is making a difference for our planet. Can you tell us a bit about what you and your organization are trying to change in our world today?
Using the power and reach of our brands, we want to address two major issues that have been highlighted during the pandemic: access to clean, safe drinking water and low recycling rates in the U.S. Through our new campaign Made For A Better Tomorrow and the ‘One-for-One Promise’, for every person who pledges to recycle their bottle, we will donate a bottle of water to communities in need. With this, we are not only highlighting our bottles made from recycled plastic, but we are also providing motivation for consumers to recycle their bottles through our ‘One-for-One Promise.’ We have identified local organizations, ranging from The Navajo Nation Baca-Prewitt Chapter to the Greater Boston Food Bank, that are helping us get water to communities that either lack safe, clean drinking water, or are in need of support following the impact of the pandemic.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I first joined Nestlé Waters, now BlueTriton Brands, because I was motivated to help make people’s lives better, and I knew that if I did my job well, Americans would be healthier. In this role, I can offer beverage choices that are great for personal health and the health of families. As a mom of four, this is a passion point.
What started as being motivated by health, quickly turned into a very real and deep sense of responsibility to also do good to the planet.
A catalyzing moment for me in my personal journey to make a difference in our world today was my first Sustainable Brands conference as Chief Marketing Officer. The discussion was about climate change, the environment, and, ultimately, plastic pollution. That was a big moment for me as I realized I’m now in this privileged position as CMO that comes with a heavy responsibility — not only to help Americans with healthy hydration, but also to leverage my position to influence decisions about materials and sustainability practices.
While I think big companies like BlueTriton Brands can be viewed negatively due to scale, the positive side of our size and the power of our brands is that when we make a change, we can impact an entire supply chain and influence consumer behavior in a way that can meaningfully help the health of our planet.
What are some of the things or steps you took to get your project started?
Poland Spring and its five regional spring water sister brands have been taking action to support local communities, help conserve nature, and reduce waste for many years. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we wanted to invite people to join us — not only to have a meaningful impact on our planet, but also to help our neighbors and communities. And given precautions and safety measures in place since the start of the pandemic, we knew that it was important to make participation easy and safe. With that, we created the idea of our ‘One-for-One Promise.’ While we are working to transform existing bottles into new ones, we encourage consumers to take the new online pledge to recycle. By doing so, consumers help us give that bottle another life, as well as provide a bottle of clean, safe drinking water to someone who really needs it.
What are some actions community, society, or politicians can take to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
We absolutely recognize that we all have a role to play in recycling — from companies and governments to NGOs and consumers. Together, we can address critical issues related to infrastructure, collection, and development of end-markets for recycled materials.
Part of our responsibility as a producer of packaged goods is not only to talk about creating an end market for recycled plastic, but also to demonstrate our commitment by using it in our products. Today, only three out of ten plastic bottles are recycled in the U.S., and there isn’t enough food-grade recycled plastic for us to meet our long-term materials goals. In order for manufacturers like us to use more rPET, the supply of rPET needs to increase — that is partly solved when people recycle their PET bottles after drinking their beverage. We want to inspire consumers with this campaign and help remind them how important it is to get empty bottles into the recycling bin. The more consumers recycle, the more recycled plastic we can use in our bottles, and the more we can keep plastic from entering our environment as waste.
How would you articulate how a business can become more profitable by being more sustainable and more environmentally conscious? Can you share a story or example?
Profit comes from meeting consumer needs and expectations. People are looking for brands that show up with a sense of responsibility and care for neighbors and the planet beyond their own profits. Fundamentally, I believe that sustainability is a brand-competitive advantage. Businesses must think of themselves as a force for growth and a force for good.
In today’s consumer landscape, you can’t decouple either. You can’t just be a force for good because that is the definition of a philanthropy, nor can you only be a force for growth — because consumers and retail partners expect and demand more. This is a great moment for conscious brands to flourish as we deliver on the trifecta of what people want, what our brands can deliver, and what the planet needs now.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
I would say to my oldest daughter who just turned 15: little acts matter, and little acts add up to big acts. As I reflect on my daughter, she is often stressed about all the pressures to excel in school and sports, build lasting friendships, and feels an incredible sense of personal accountability to save the planet. It is overwhelming and can also be paralyzing.
A collection of small acts can make a huge difference for both the environment and society at large. That is what I love about our campaign, Made For A Better Tomorrow. It encourages people to do a small act, to get that bottle in the bin — if everyone starts getting that bottle in the bin, whether that’s once or five times, we’re driving awareness of recycling and making progress in contributing to a circular economy that reduces plastic pollution. Imagine if 10 out of 10 PET bottles were recycled? This is how small acts can lead to big impact.
Social Impact Heroes Helping Our Planet: Why & How Yumi Clevenger-Lee of BlueTriton Brands Is… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.