Remembering Sam Johnson
A letter to global thought leaders from Jane Hutterly, SC Johnson Executive Vice President – Worldwide Corporate and Environmental Affairs.
Dear Friend:
Recently, we at SC Johnson had the pleasure of attending a wonderful evening hosted by the World Resources Institute. This 25th anniversary celebration was truly special as it brought together corporate and philanthropic leaders committed to making a difference in the world, while recognizing courageous leaders in the field of sustainability.
Among those honored was SC Johnson’s late Chairman Emeritus Samuel C. Johnson, who was heralded as “an environmental and business visionary.” Sam was in good company as the evening’s other honorees included Jeffrey Immelt, GE Chairman and CEO, and Elizabeth McCormack, a former chair of The MacArthur Foundation and an advisor when the Foundation launched WRI in 1982 with a $15 million grant.
WRI’s President Jonathan Lash delivered very heartfelt and personal words about Sam.
We were so warmed and delighted by Jonathan’s remarks about Sam and our company that we wanted to share his speech in its entirety with you via this mailing.
We thank Jonathan and his colleagues at WRI for an evening we will long remember and extend our appreciation for being able to share his kind words below.
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Honorees and honorers. Friends of Sam. Distinguished guests. Family of WRI. Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is both a pleasure and a very great privilege to share this evening with you. I am so very proud to be able to represent WRI here tonight, and to add my welcome and thanks on behalf of WRI’s remarkable staff, its strong and generous Board, and the many many people – former staff and directors, partners, donors, friends.
I look out and see so many individuals who played key roles in building this unique organization. Gus, Jessica, I hope you are basking in the glow of this evening. Professor Gellman, I hope that we are living up to the vision that moved you to nurture this idea 25 years ago.
I thank each of you who shares our sense of the urgency of the issues that we deal with, and the importance of building partnerships around practical solutions.
It is a very special and personal pleasure for me to welcome Sam Johnson’s wife of fifty years, Gene, and his son Fisk. I am grateful to you for giving us the opportunity to celebrate a man whose values I deeply admired, whose occasionally gruff questions I welcomed, whose wisdom I sought when it really mattered, and whose friendship I treasured. If anyone symbolized the “courage to lead” it was Sam.
The last time I saw Sam, a few months before he died, he could not wait to tell me the latest about his very public battle with Wisconsin Energy. “Why” he asked, looking at me fiercely “would they build new coal plants when they don’t have to. It just doesn’t make sense.”
For Sam, that may have been the strongest thing he could say: “It just doesn’t make sense.”
Behind him, on the big flat screen monitor of his computer was a video feed from the new energy plant SC Johnson has just built to convert landfill gas to heat and electricity, saving money, reducing pollution, and avoiding more than 50,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.
That did make sense to him. He smiled every time he looked at the picture.
Sam was a lifelong environmentalist, but he became an environmental hero in 1975 when he voluntarily and unilaterally phased out the use of CFCs as a propellant in spray cans. SC Johnson was the largest producer of aerosol cans in the world, but when Sam saw the research by Rowland and Molina (for which they later won a Nobel Prize) that indicated that CFCs were depleting the Earth’s ozone layer he decided the company had to change its technology.
Ultimately, the company developed substitutes that both environmentalists and consumers thought were far better. That was the reward for leadership, but Sam didn’t know that, when far ahead of anyone else he announced the phase out. He just did what made sense to him.
A businessman who grew his company forty fold (Jeff, how would that be for an Ecomagination target?) Sam took pride in the view that
“A sustainable enterprise is dependent of a sustainable environment. Management decisions that fail to reflect this put a company at grave, future risk. We need to educate and enlist more business leaders to follow us, and to realize that shareholder value is enhanced through responsible sustainable development decision making”
Because of Sam’s leadership, and SC Johnson’s strong commitment to sustainability, President Clinton appointed him to the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, which I chaired along with Dave Buzzelli of Dow Chemical. Fred Krupp, of Environmental Defense, and my old friend and former boss John Adams of NRDC, and Tim Wirth who was then Undersecretary of State, who are here tonight, were all members of the PCSD.
There were 10 CEOs of big companies, environmental, tribal, and labor leaders…Fred, John, Tim, do you remember Sam sitting there as we argued on an on about everything from climate change to regulatory reform, he was looking more and more cantankerous, and finally said “You know, this isn’t all that complicated. We just need to get our incentives where our objectives are.”
We’re still trying to implement that wise advice.
Sam Chaired the Board of the Nature Conservancy, was a very generous supporter of TNC’s work, and was extremely proud of hiring Steve McCormick – who is also here tonight – to run TNC. Luckily, the TNC Board has term limits, and when Sam had to leave TNC he joined WRI’s Board. Their loss, our great gain.
Thank God for term limits.
Sam was a big fan of WRI’s work with the private sector and with business schools. He was a devoted and generous supporter of the Johnson School at Cornell, and one night, at a dinner with a group of WRI staff and our corporate partners he came up with the idea of endowing the first Chair in Global Sustainable Enterprise. A chair now occupied by Stuart Hart.
While Sam was a big supporter of WRI’s work, he was sometimes frustrated by our style. He told me “I’m not an expert like all these smart young people who work for you, but I am a salesman, and you’ve got to sell this place. The problems are huge” he told me “you need to do more to be visible.”
Well, Sam, if you’re listening, I hope you’re pleased with this dinner. I’m so glad I had the chance to know you, and I thank you for leaving the world a better place because of being here.
Fisk has continued the family tradition of using sustainability as a core element of the company’s successful growth strategy. He received the Ron Brown Award from Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez for SC Johnson’s patented Greenlist™ process, which rates product components on their environmental impact as a tool for continuously reducing the environmental footprint of each of their products.
Not only is Fisk passionate about what goes into the company’s products, but he is passionate about how they get made. Since 2000, SC Johnson has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 42% sand continues to innovate by installing two cogeneration turbines that power the company’s largest global manufacturing facility with waste methane gas from a public landfill.
Courageous leaders make brave decisions in order to propel a company on a forward path. Fisk continues that tradition of leadership at SC Johnson; where innovation and progressive environmental responsibility is apparent and abundant. And so tonight, Fisk, I’m very pleased you are joining us to accept this honor on behalf of Sam and the Johnson Family.