John Collins, CFO of Vivobarefoot and board member of Friends of the Earth joined us on the Conscious Finance Podcast to tell us a bit about how he discovered purpose in his role as a finance leader.
John, the son of an accountant himself, grew up in Dublin. He completed a degree in accounting and finance at Dublin City University and from there went to Deloitte for 4 years where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant. An opportunity arose for a secondment to the Diageo business in Ireland which included iconic Irish brands such as Guinness and Baileys. John loved the culture and vibrancy at Diageo and this brief secondment turned into the next twelve years of his career.
John enjoyed a wide variety of roles and at Diageo and had the opportunity to see the world at the same time. His roles covered Compliance and Ethics, Commercial Finance, and M&A with stints in the UK, Asia, and East Africa. After 3 years in Tanzania, John returned to the UK to take on his first Finance Director role with Justerini & Brooks (J&B), one of the world’s oldest fine wine merchants and a subsidiary of Diageo. The J&B business was a standalone subsidiary of Diageo and as such, gave John a valuable breadth of experience across logistics, customer service, strategy, and Finance.
Having enjoyed the more general nature of the J&B FD role, John then took the plunge and moved to the Commercial side of Diageo, first as Field Sales Director for the UK and finally as Europe Commercial Director for Diageo’s Travel Retail division.
Following a restructure, John decided to take redundancy from Diageo and relocate with his wife Michelle from London to the Southwest to be closer to family and hopefully start a family themselves. Their path to parenthood, as it is for so many others, was challenging but a fateful appointment with a herbal practitioner in Bath named Sebastian Pole miraculously resulted in John and Michelle falling pregnant with their first child. Sebastian also happened to be the Founder of Pukka Herbs, one of the UK’s best-known organic herbal tea company who were looking for a new Finance Director. Pukka’s mission was for people around to world to realise the amazing benefits of having more herbs in their lives, something John experienced in a very profound way and in joining Pukka, John found himself serving a purpose he truly believed in for the first time.
Over the next 4 years, John went on a profound journey of professional exploration. He wanted Finance to play a central role in the advancing of Pukka’s mission which they achieved through a fundamental reframing of Pukka’s performance metrics. “Success” evolved beyond the traditional KPIs of top line revenue and bottom-line profit – they encompassed the measurement of carbon in the supply chain, the wellbeing of farmers supplying Pukka’s organic herbs, and the environmental footprint of Pukka’s packaging. Pukka also introduced John to the B-Corp movement and the aspiration of business being a force for good in the world. Shortly before John joined, Pukka was sold to Unilver on the condition that Pukka would continue to operate as an independently governed business. However, Unilever subsequently sold its entire Tea portfolio including Pukka to private equity with Pukka becoming a fully integrated brand. With this lack of independence, John sought out his next opportunity and found it with fellow B Corp, Vivobarefoot.
Vivo’s core purpose is connecting people back to nature. They do this by producing wide, flexible, and thin, minimalist footwear with a focus on natural, recyclable materials. Over 7 billion shoes are manufactured every year, the majority of which end up in landfill. Vivo is striving to disrupt this linear cycle, from the inside out. Vivobarefoot’s efforts to achieve this are detailed in their annual “Unfinished Business” report, a fully transparent impact report.
John is now on a course to help Vivo fulfil their mission. The way he sees it, many finance teams don’t fully appreciate the potential impact that they can have on their company’s agenda and there’s no one better placed in an organisation than the finance team to start provoking the right kind of questions and play a central role in answering them.
For any finance professional or finance leader wondering how to put purpose at the heart of what they do, B Corp certification is a great way to start. The B Corp questionnaire helps you to start answering the right questions, shining a light on every aspect of your organisation.. B Corp status challenges the stereotype of what a finance leader or a finance function should be and should involve. What’s more, purpose-led brands that have attained B Corp status have a competitive advantage in the marketplace as consumers make better choices, and it’s for this very reason that more and more businesses are striving for B Corp certification.
If you’d like to hear this conversation with John, alongside other finance leaders who are seeking to inspire change and explore ways to impact decision-making for the greater good then check out our ‘Conscious Finance Podcast’ on all platforms.
