Hello everyone and welcome to Towards Planet Positive and thank you for joining in. I hope everyone is doing well. Keeping safe, My name is Lee Taylor and I'm a Director on the TTHEGG Strategic Sales team and I am excited to host today's session. But before we begin, let's take a quick look at this virtual platform. At the bottom of your screen you will see a row of widget icons. These control the various windows which you can resize or move by clicking the arrows at the top right corner. So feel free to move them around to get the most out of your desktop. For a better experience during the panel discussion, you may want to maximize the video window to full screen. As always, Q&A would be towards the end of the session or once we close the panel discussion. We will address your questions, then please use the Q&A box below to submit your questions. Do know that you do not have to wait until the end of each presentation to submit your questions in the interest of time. We may not be able to address them all, but if that happens, no, we will definitely get back to you with an e-mail response. Also, please fill out the event survey. You can do so at any time during the event. Lastly, we all know that virtual comes with its own set of issues. Not always but it is not uncommon to experience an occasional glitch. If your screen buffers or freezes, simply refresh your browser page. In most cases this is going to resolve you know the most common technical issues. You can also use the chat box to post login or tech related problems and are on 24 support. Team will try their best to resolve it. Moving on to one of the key parts of our session today, the keynote, let me welcome on the stage to very distinguished speakers, Krishnan Ramanujan and Michael Samuelian. First, about Krishna, as President of TCS Enterprise Growth Group, Krishnan drives the vision, direction and go to market strategy for our enterprise customers. Along with his leadership team, he has successfully paved the way for complex global transformation initiatives. For some of the world's leading enterprises, he is also the chairperson of NASCAR, the premier trade body and Chamber of Commerce for the tech industry of India. Krishnan's organization is focused on driving growth and transformation for TCS clients by spearheading and leading their evolution from an IT centric to a customer centric model. Which streamlines and optimizes business functions. He brings over 25 years of rich business and technology consulting experience. Prior leadership roles include President, Service Lines, VP and Global Head of Consulting and Enterprise Solutions. CEO of TCS Financial Solutions. Executive Director for the State Bank of India group Core Banking Program. Head of TCS Global Ecommerce and Enterprise Application Integration Practice. And CTO for Tata Internet Services. Next up we have Michael Samuelian, founding director of the Cornell Tech Urban Tech Hub. His profile lists him as an urban planner, real estate developer, professor and, most recently, president and CEO of the Trust for Governors Island. From the revitalization of Lower Manhattan after 911 to the creation of a new neighborhood in Hudson Yards and the activation of Governors Island, he has helped plan, design and develop some of the most transformative projects in New York City. He holds a Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cooper Union. Michael is currently an Assistant Professor at Cooper Union, where he teaches professional practice in the School of Architecture. In 2018, Michael was the best Distinguished fellow at the Yale School of Architecture. He is also a frequent lecturer at Harvard Law School and New York University Shaq Institute. Michael is also a Fellow of the AIA and Chair of the New York State Board for Architecture. For your complete profiles on Krishnan and Michael and our panel speakers, do check out the registration page. Now without further ado, over to you, Krishna. Thank you, Lee. It is my pleasure to be here today. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Krishnan Ramanujam and I'm the President of the Enterprise Growth Group at TCS. In my role, I interact with a lot of business leaders from different industries, primarily on their growth and transformation agenda. And what I'm seeing across the board is that there seems to be a business imperative for addressing the climate crisis head on. For reducing waste and emissions down to 0. Sustainability is gaining prominence in transformation stories, be it to progress on climate commitments. Or to grow market share. Or both. The fact is that the corporate sustainability journey is evolving beyond metrics and reporting. And progressing to a point where one day we can realistically move towards outcomes. That are truly planet positive instead of just being net positive. Climate change is a reality we all live in, increasingly visible effects such as coastal erosion. Rise in sea level wildfires, droughts and heat waves. Are now increasingly becoming common. We read about them frequently in the papers and these are clearly impacting business and disproportionately impacting the travel industry in particular. Supply chain disruptions attributed to climate change are also growing in frequency and proving costly. And so are enforcements such as carbon pricing. To measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions. Especially Scope 3 emissions companies are setting science based targets disclosure bodies. Like SEC and the task force are nature related, financial disclosures are predicted to become mandatory in the near future. Even as many corporates are voluntarily using the frameworks to disclose climate risks as a means to underline their proactive commitment to the environment. Driven by customer sentiment and loyalty, which are increasingly leaning toward sustainable business. While TNFD, the Task Force on Nature Related Financial Disclosures, provides corporates with a complete picture of their environmental risks. It also presents new opportunities for value creation. For example, reliable and critical nature related data can enable informed decision making and provide better ideas towards becoming a circular enterprise. William Gibson, the most influential speculative fiction writer of our time, once famously said the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed. And it rings true for sustainability action. With any disruption, early adopters will continue to lead the way, while those late to catch on will struggle to stay relevant. In a global economy, whether we choose to lead or be LED will depend on our ability to make sustainability integral to our operations. Incorporating it in our approach to customers or partners will open new opportunities for growth. Having talked about sustainability not just being a good responsible thing to do, but in fact it is a good business opportunity, an opportunity for driving growth, let us look at a few of those examples. Firstly, people are willing to pay extra for sustainable experiences, whether it is for a carbon neutral flight. Stay or transport? They're engaging with sustainable businesses in newer ways than before. It's a trend not limited to certain countries or economies. But then the options, incentivization and rewards for sustainable customer choices are not yet commonplace. In airlines, for instance, while a segment of air travelers continues to prioritize price and booking decisions until such options are available, about 36% plan to fly less to reduce their climate impact, according to a survey by Mackenzie a couple of years ago. By building a brand promise on sustainability, companies can tailor their products, services and communications. Differentiate their brands, build awareness among each customer segment and better connect with them. In the hospitality segment, adding sustainability to hospitality brand assets can appeal to eco conscious guests and set brands apart from the competition. Growing electric vehicle adoption presents one such opportunity. To enhance the guest experience. Hotel parking lots have the potential to become the gas stations of the future, with charging infrastructure installation. Technologies like bidirectional charging, EV, virtual plant etc when used right. Can generate ancillary revenues and put hotel brands on the radar of high value EV drivers. Build sustainability into the design. For service industries, human centered design involves solving the core problem, not the symptoms. Thinking about all the people involved, understanding the whole system and how people interact with. And constantly prototyping potential solutions. The Sustainable Development Goals framework includes 7 targets which explicitly refer to persons with disabilities and six further targets on persons in vulnerable situations, which include persons with disabilities. Approximately 15% of the world population is differently abled and have an influence on around 25% of the overall travel market. Failure to provide fair and seamless customer experience translates to billions of dollars in lost revenues. Which is disappointing given that the travel, transportation, hospitality sector has displayed remarkable creativity in shaping up so many of our daily experiences, yet leave a lot to be desired when it comes to inclusive and accessible experiences. Similarly, waste is also a design flaw. The staggering statistics on food wastage are an excellent example of the lack of human centered design. Globally, more than 1/3 of the food we grow on this planet is wasted while at the same time. The number of food insecure households continues to grow. Most hospitality brands waste upwards of 40% of their food produce, but at the same time. It is almost impossible for guests to understand how they are contributing to the problem. Educating and informing guests through initiatives that shine a spotlight on the pressing issue and modifying operations using data and analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning kind of technologies can directly and significantly impact the bottom line and strengthen the green credentials of enterprises. Now having talked about a few opportunities for growth, let's now move on to the action from a customer point of view. Consum. Are ready to pay more for sustainable experiences, as I mentioned before. But until businesses can see that translate into reality, doing the groundwork and building a credible, sustainable brand strategy that involves operational integrity and transparent communication with customers would be very key. In particular, there is a need to educate frontline staff. Those are the point of intersection where customers interface with a brand on sustainable action. To equip them with the right answers to customers sustainability questions around their services are very key. Sustainability innovations can yield both top line and bottom line ROI and transform the competitive landscape as companies redesign products, processes, technologies and business models. Today, when a guest checks into a hotel that claims a champion sustainability, they want to see innovative adoption measures that go beyond simply replacing plastic wastewater bottles with the glass ones. On another note, loyalty programs generate a lot of revenue for hotels as we all know. According to SWIFT research, members contribute between 30% and 60% of room revenue and tend to pay higher average daily room rates than non members. Revamped loyalty programs with sustainability integrated into them as a differentiating tool can eventually serve as a testing ground for approaches to circularity and an expanding ecosystem that can create mutual value for all participants. Similarly, from the point of view of workforce partners and your own organization, integrating sustainability into every employees job, not limiting into a particular team or group of individuals can make sustainability more palpable and relevant throughout an organization, thereby making everyone feel that sustainability is part of their responsibility and part of their job. Companies must invest in personally engaging all employees in corporate sustainability efforts. From top brass to assembly line workers, while it is increasingly being recognized as a strategic priority for several organizations, it is still their structure is unsuited to address sustainability as a material issue. Organizations should explore a modular organization design with several centers of excellence where sustainability topics can be assigned as goals for various business functions that hold the relevant competency to achieve them. Lean Central organization can be empowered to execute radical change and take decisions on conflicting interests and opportunities. Organizations should mature to double materiality assessments to get a better picture of both financial materiality and impact materiality and set science based targets. With increased digitization, IT information technology is likely to become a major source of carbon emissions. With combinatorial use of technology and cloud experience, there is a specialized field shaping up for green IT catering to the latest technology stacks, but it will also be central in enabling many sustainability actions on the ground. Be digital twins, helping in asset management and maintenance to drive emissions reduction, so operational efficiency gains. Or image analytics, IoT sensor and artificial intelligence machine learning technologies. To help reduce food waste in commercial kitchens. Or automated accessibility testing and remediation of commercial channels, ensuring seamless experience for differently abled customers. So let me summarize that organizations should invest in carbon data networks across value chains. Carbon trends, trust mechanisms for circular business models, and operational efficiency gains through real time monitoring and prediction, and accessible and inclusive customer interfaces. In conclusion, I would say that sustainability, quite like digital adoption in its initial phase, is triggering big shifts in value pools. In turn, this opens up opportunities and changing the face of competition as a consumer and also as someone in the business of serving the service industries. I'm keenly interested in its evolution and growing influence on the travel, transportation and hospitality sectors. Thank you so much for your time and attention. I now invite my fellow speaker to share his thoughts and vision for this decade of action. Thank you all once again. Hi, thank you Krishan and Lee for that kind introduction. My name and I'd like to thank TCF for inviting me to join you at this virtual Planet net with the Planet Net conference. And like to introduce myself, Michael Samuel and then Director of the Urban Technology Hub here at Cornell Tech. It's my pleasure to join you today and discuss what urban technology and city futures RV from the perspective of Cornell Tech. But before starting, I'd like to explain what an urban tech hub is. Joining you from New York City, where we are at new campus for digital technology launched about 10 years ago. Focused on entrepreneurship, innovation and really building an innovation culture, The Urban Tech Hub is 1 version of Cornell Tech where we look at leveraging the power of technology to make cities stronger, fairer, and more resilient. We exist at this intersection of government, academia, and industry and look at ourselves as a bridge between these domains. Any problem, any urban problem is really a problem of multiple domains and the Hub is really a bridge builder between the silos and helping to make people interact more closely to solve some of the pressing urban challenges that many of our cities face. Digital technology enabled solutions are key to that. And at Cornell Tech, we're focused on how digital technology can help make cities stronger, fairer and more resilient. We do that with three three strategies. One is research, education and engagement. On the research end, we originate applied research in digital technologies. We also run a new Master's program in digital technology and urban tech. And we also work on ecosystem engagement, which is why I'm so happy to be able to share with you some of what we're doing today and think about future partnerships together. But before that, pulling back for a moment, urban technology is a decent field of research wherein we look at new technology technologies that help make cities more connected, more livable, efficient and accessible. But to us it's really a system of systems approach to what cities and technologies relationship is. Thinking about urban systems, which is core to how we view cities, we see urban systems as really powering the attraction of what makes cities great and what continues to attract people to cities. To us, it's a series of both hard systems like transportation, water, infrastructure and waste, but also soft systems such as economics, education, culture and politics. How we define a city is really cultural. When we think about what actually makes a city is often density, some degree of permanence, having a high population and also having a certain heterogeneity in terms of the types of people that are attracted to a particular place. And the systems that empowering the cities, their network architecture that really helps make connections between different particular systems. And this is this aggregation that really makes cities the magnets they are culturally over the past. 100 years. We think of resilient structures as those that are built from the bottom up, not just from the top down. But there's also this question of equilibrium and disequilibrium, how systems are balanced that as cities grow organically, there are some systems that grow some sometimes too fast in order to occupy too much space and then we need to compensate for it. So in many ways, the urban tech hub and what we do at Cornell Tech is a way of kind of balancing some of that disequilibrium. So the system components that when we think about it and how I'd like us to begin to think about some of the. Futures is that there was a series of networks, which is essentially the systems architecture and structure. How roads are connected, how cities are connected, nodes where those interactions can occur, which could be an intersection, it could be a transit station, the agents that you and I, how we occupy space in cities or cars or trucks or water or bits and the flow. So this is essentially the building blocks by which we start to understand what systems are and how we look at urban systems. In cities and the networks that make cities that occupy them are really about interconnections. It's connectivity is one of the building blocks of what makes cities great. It was makes them so magnetic and is what it's helping to power the growth of cities. And if you think about the idea of interactions, geography is one thing and I think we all know some of the limitations of geography and it is only one kind of very blunt tool for understanding. What interactions are occurring but interactions when you begin to map? Where flows occur, where density occurs. That gives you a very different picture of what makes cities important, and gives you a very different lens by which you can have an understanding of what urban environments are and why aggregation occurs in certain areas. So if you're thinking about the future and particularly the future of urban technology, we've recently initiated a new program that looks at the future of tech and cities and their interactions. For hundreds of years, there's been this symbiotic relationship between technology and cities, where technology is powering the creation of new cities, helping them grow and adapt. And now we're, as we enter the digital revolution, we see the role of urban technology even more salient in terms of shaping what the future of cities are going to be as they become more and more. Integrated with the role of technology, we recently published a report what we call a horizon scan looking at hundreds of data points to understand trends that were that were occurring in cities due to technological disruption. So when we think about what a horizon scan is, you can be think of it basically as a funnel between you know the possible and the probable. So what we've done is begin to do some signal processing to understand the chatter and begin to focus what some of the trends we see in terms of the future of cities. The goal of the study was to inform who is doing what and where are they doing it within cities. Secondly, to think about what's next, to inspire folks to think about either leaning into trends or compensating for them when they're not actually. Addressing many of the needs that we have and then finally to influence policy makers, technologists, folks in industry to think about what the future of City should be and how we can begin to channel the power of technology in a positive way. We processed over 250 signals, what we call the raw material of the future, which are articles, trends, blogs. New technologies, etc. To identify a number of trends. Signals could be everything from looking at something like free public Wi-Fi from 20 years ago. Failures of urban tech such as Google Glass, which some of us may remember, or even current trends like waste wastewater bio sensing, which was so important during COVID pandemic for understanding COVID and spotting it way before public health officials could. So some of the trends that we began to see were looking at the impact of a particular technology and then the timing of when it was going to be coming as many of us were in the technology world. We hear a lot about automated autonomous vehicles and automated delivery, which is likely but may not be what may be in the later phase rather than in the soon phase, I mean between soon and eventually. So we've identified, through the signal processing, 6 forecasts, which we would think are the big headlines 10 years from now. We've identified 6 areas where we believe that there's an aggregation of technology and policy design and commercialization. One is supercharged infrastructure, where we see aggregation around infrastructure. And you can certainly, if you follow trends in the US, if there was a large infrastructure bill and a lot of focus on how we can continue to build and renew some of the infrastructure here in the United States. There's also somewhat opposite to that is the idea of learning to live with nature through technology, where we think about life sciences as being one of the drivers of urban technology. And we've certainly seen that over COVID. The role of biotech in terms of thinking about not just public health, but then also now thinking about how cities can be healthier places rather than the places that are least healthy resiliency is of course on everyone's mind if you live in a city and most cities are coastal. So beginning to understand how we could build corridors of resiliency to kind of help communities deal with the effects of climate change. The thought of the future of AI, we point in dark plans to kind of understanding automation and kind of the algorithm rhythmic hub of data mining in cities and how we can begin to optimize there is to think about issues of digital ethics and enduring data privacy. Data privacy is also very tied to what we're calling the new screen deal. Thinking about how inclusive innovation should really be, looking at empowering the disadvantage and ensuring that we have a kind of more bottom up approach to understanding our data and empowering people with their own data. And then finally the role of industry and digital technology in terms of understanding optimization in the city itself. Some of the trends that we began to see, we're looking at both real estate and the built environment, wild and well. It's looking at the role of natural systems in urban environments. And then finally how we can begin to look at microbes in the workplace, thinking about vertical farming in cities with the integration of nature with cities. And then finally, how we look at the role of big business in cities and the role of industry in terms of shaping future cities that many of our cities that will occupy the next generation don't even exist yet. So we think about the role of how industry is going to be shaping that future for us. And infrastructure with a key part of connecting people, both digital infrastructure but also physical infrastructure in terms of kind of creating a world where we have automation, but understanding all of the kind of digital backbone that you'll need in order to allow automation to occur. So please visit futureofurbantech.org and you can go deeper into any of these trends, which I just basically began to skim on. So finally, what's next? Where should we put our efforts? Where should we put our influence sitting here in New York City? We have very particular urban trends that we're dealing with, certainly in the post COVID environment work from home. It's a huge disruptor to what cities and particularly commercial cities were traditionally based upon when we think about the future map of the world migration. Patterns are going to be so important. Charting what the future is and what future cities will be when we think about migration and largely many of these trends are only going to accelerate overtime where more and more people live in more limited areas and these areas also tend to be coastal dealing with the effects of climate change. As we think about the future, we need to think about where people will be living and what types of environments they're going to be living in and if we can leapfrog some more traditional kind of carbon based solutions to more digitally based solutions. So what does this all mean? We've talked about urban technology, we've always talked about urban systems and we've talked about the future. So what are trends and what our forecasts are that we've learned over COVID that cities aren't going anywhere? There is a brief moment in time when politicians called for decentralization and de densification. I think that with a brief and aberrant call, what we've only seen is that given new tools of digital technology and communication, city should have disappeared. We all should have been living in the countryside because we're better digitally connected than ever. We've actually seen the opposite occur over the last 30 years as digital technology. Has increased, so has our need for connection, and in fact agglomeration occurs even at greater speeds. So as we look at the future, we see only increased agglomeration of people. Systems and cities. What that means for us is that then and continued trend in globalization as transaction costs will continue to fall, will increase. And as we've seen over COVID, there's been a great downstock in terms of travel, but people's options in terms of how they travel, when they travel. And what they do while they travel is changing dramatically. Work from home is also not going away. So when we think about the future, when we know that people can work, live and play anywhere, if we need to think about the role of globalization and giving people options in terms of where they go. And what they do when they get there, but there's also this trend towards decentralization which is occurring at the same time as we think about people having options to work from anywhere, We see an opportunity to now actually spread out some of the hyper density that's occurring in some places, which leads to congestion. And think about spreading our main activities a little bit more finely through urban areas. So if we have any advice, it's to look at all of these trends in cities and urban systems and focus on the gaps. What we focus on here at the Urban Tech Hub is the fact that government, industry and academia need to work closely than ever. Than ever before. And that's due to the fact that we are more connected than ever before. And each of those domains don't necessarily focus on one another's challenges. But I think we need to be more empathetic when it comes to some of the challenges that our commercial partners are facing, that our academic research partners are facing and then certainly the government faces. So if we have any advice, it's closing, it's focused on the gaps and understand that our future is an urban future. I want to thank you for your time. This has been a fantastic opportunity to share some of the work that we're doing at the Urban Tech Hub and Cornell Tech. I want to thank again, Planet Net for inviting me and invite you to join us on our website at urban.tech.cornell.edu. Thank you. Thank you, Michael and Krishnan. We will now move into the second-half of today's session, the panel discussion. We have with us Al Kahabasi, President of Information Technology at UPS. ALPA is responsible for application development and integration of technology used across UPS airline, Worldport transportation, fleet and global delivery network planning systems. He is a member of the UPSIT Strategy and Planning Committee, which directs UPS technology investments ensuring alignment with business strategy. A member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, he also serves on the Computer Science and Engineering Industrial Advisory Board at the University of Louisville. Welcome to Towards Planet Positive Help. Thank you for joining us. Next, we have with us Winston D'souza, based out of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Winston currently heads two major departments at Sky Team, customer Loyalty and Sustainability. He comes with extensive experience in the aviation industry from concepts to blueprinting and designing of several customer facing services and applications across reservations, airport services and departure control and loyalty and cargo to the creation of the customer journey where in various customer touch points are used to service and enhance customer experience. In his current role, he is responsible for spearheading the products and services that encompass customer loyalty and sustainability that are utilized by all the airlines that make up the Sky Team Alliance. Welcome Winston, and we are excited to have you here. Moving on, we have with us and none other than Jason Birnbaum, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at United Airlines. He is responsible for creating and supporting all of United's digital technology, including their award-winning mobile app, the operational and commercial technologies and global infrastructure. Prior to this role, Jason was Senior Vice President of Digital Technology and previously served as the Vice President of Operations Technology, where he was responsible for the effective implementation and management of technology strategies and solutions to support United's global operations and commercial teams. And finally, the moderator for today's session is Varsha Makariya, Domain Head for Travel Transportation, Hospitality Americas at TCS. Varsha has over 22 years of IT services industry experience, nineteen of which have been with TCS where she has fulfilled multiple roles across car rental, hospitality and logistics domains. From providing delivery excellence as account manager to consulting engagements, pre sales and sales. Her experience, subject matter expertise and talent for connecting with people has helped TCS expand their hospitality footprint. And engage with Mark Helog. And now I would like to hand over to her to facilitate the panel discussion. Over to you, Marsha. Thank you, Lee. I've been looking forward to this for a while now. On our panel, as Lee pointed out, we have representatives from the airline and logistics sectors. Sectors that, as we all know, operate on the frontline communities across the world. And feature prominently whenever we talk about the environment in terms of the impact of their operations on our planet and why meaningful action is needed beyond carbon offsets and limiting the use of plastics. What are we going to do is try and understand from them what are their sustainability priorities. What are the trends and challenges they are seeing when it comes to meeting the sustainability goals and then we will focus on the action. What are they doing to manage sustainability in their part of the world and what sort of technology investments? Are they considering or already investing in? So let's start the panel. Right in my first question is for you, Al. Two years ago, the UN announced 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDG's, providing a 20-30 road map agenda for the world we all want and calling for accelerating sustainable solutions to our biggest challenges, from poverty and gender inequality to climate change and closing the finance gap. Since the Decade of Action is the theme of our webinar, I'm sure we all would like to understand what are the defining features of UPS's sustainability road map in the Decade of Action. UPS sustainability road map is guided by five key features. First one is integrity, second one is having a holistic vision of sustainability and third one is delivering impact, not just promises. And then fourth one is delinking our business growth from our CO2 growth. And the final one is exercising fiscal responsibility based on. Our 115 years of sound engineering principles that we have been employing at UPS. UPS is one of the largest, biggest companies and employers in the world and we believe we have a responsibility to be bold to accelerate solutions that close gaps in the wider context of sustainability. And it includes climate change all the way to social justice. On the environmental side, our goal is to be carbon neutral by 2050, with interim goals in 2025 and 2035. So what are those interim goals in 2025? Our goal is to be 40% alternative fuel used in our ground operations. A lot of our ground equipment, the feeders, package cars that we use are already in that in that sense. Using alternative fuel and we also want to achieve 25% renewable electricity powering our facilities all around the world. When it comes to 2035. We have very bold goals. We want to have 30% sustainable aviation fuel in our air network. And also achieve 50% reduction in CO2 per package that we delivered based on our 2020 baselines. And finally, we want to improve our electricity power and our facilities from 25% to 100% by 2035. These interim goals are critical in making progress towards our 2050 goal and on the social side, we're already delivering impact through our current goals and improving the well-being of many lives around the world and these goals are. Not only commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, but also engaging our employees. Through volunteers and charitable giving and using our UPS Foundation. 25% of our charitable donations today are targeted towards. Underserved women, youth, and marginalized communities. We also have a target of 30% women in our full time management by 2025 and also have a 40% ethnically diverse population in our company management. We're already doing a lot of volunteer work across the globe. We want to have 30 million volunteer hours by 20-30, and we want to also plant 50 million trees across the globe by 2030. One recent. Example of our ambitious contributions is the recent investment we made as a member of sustainable aviation buyer alliance Saba. Helps make sustainable aviation fuel more available through education and policy to support for this technology innovation. So these are some of the bold goals that we have at UPS and we're determined to continue our leadership. In decarbonising the transportation sector and also delivering social impact in our communities. That's great. I think it's very great to hear. I personally love to read stories on LinkedIn when your employees post about the volunteer work and stuff. So and again, your interim goals that you've taken up to reach that decarbonization eventual target is really, I think, remarkable. So thank you for sharing all that with us. Coming to you Winston, Sky team has embarked on a similar initiative, Sustainable Flight Challenge. Can you tell us what it is all about? And I'm sure our audience would like to know what progress has been made. Thank. Thank you so much, Marshall. I could spend hours talking about the Flight Challenge, but I guess we don't have that much time. So I'll try to get it to a nutshell. Going back, the idea of the Flight Challenge actually originated from one of our member airlines which is KLM. They have a team or yes, they had a team. They have a team in within the organization called the Bowl Moves. And the whole goal of the Bold Moves team was to brainstorm on ideas, you know, that could have an impact on sustainability. Those ideas potentially hurt you a little in the process. The Bold Moves team actually came up with hundreds of ideas because the team actually composed of people from across the length and breadth of the organization, 60 ideas were shortlisted. Ten of these were presented to the board, and one made the cut. The one that made the cut is a sustainable flight challenge. Around the same time we as Sky Team as the Alliance, we were beginning to strengthen our focus around sustainability as well. We learned that during the pandemic and coming out of it. Sustainability was the key to aviation's license to fly. And so there was a very strong focus on sustainability within Sky Team as an alliance. And so it was a natural fit when Kaylin came to us as Sky Team and asked us if we would be interested in running the challenge because they of course wanted to be part of the challenge and they couldn't actually run it and be part of it. And so they wanted a neutral party to take care of it and manage the process. So that's how the Sky Team sustainable challenge came into being. It's a KLM idea that we ran and we executed in 2022. The challenge actually was inspired by the London to Melbourne aviation race of 1930s that actually transformed international flying and the intention being that this time you would be able to transform air travel by making it more sustainable. So that's where the Sustainable Flight Challenge really comes from. As part of the challenge we had sixteen of our member airlines operate 22 long and or medium all flights that were part of the existing network and then they made efforts to fly them as sustainable as possible. So the goal of the flight challenge was to foster change. It was to foster change by coming up with innovative solutions and meaningful changes. Changes however small you know add up and that was one of our firm beliefs. We believe that we can take action now and do something now and that will help progress sustainability in the industry. So that was really where we came from. But for us the challenge was not just a competition, it was a competition for sure it was airlines competing for prizes, but for us it was much, much more than this. At the absolute core of the flight challenge was the notion of open sharing of knowledge between all the islands that took part in the challenge. Of the airlines to come together and share all of the things that they've learned in the process of making these flights as sustainable as possible. And as we speak right now, we are in the midst of having all of the airlines share their ideas on a weekly basis. We have an innovation platform that we've put together where airlines are coming together and sharing all of the ideas, innovations that took place on all of these flights. And it's allowing us to leverage the power of collaboration, something we something that we as guiding proudly stand for. So in a nutshell, the Sky Team Sustainable Flight Challenge is the finding of synergy between what different member airlines are working on and helping to drive greater efficiency within the alliance and within the industry at large. So that's what the Sustainable Flight Challenge is. I think that's wonderful and I think it's a great lesson for all of us. As you mentioned towards the end that you know collaboration is key and I think collaboration is going to get us more answers faster. And then you know the smallest of changes that we continuously keep on doing is what's going to accelerate into something that's more larger and effective. So it's really great to you know, listen that you know as an alliance you're able to do all of that rightfully so and I think influencing also your airline partners. To learn from each other, so that's really wonderful. What do you, Jason, and continuing on the topic of sustainability initiatives and commitments, in 2020, United joined in the airlines industry's efforts and promised to become 100% green by 2050. A commitment to reach net 0 without using carbon offsets. Can you share with our audience on what progress has been made so far? No, thank you. I really appreciate it. So, yeah, and. We've certainly started a lot in terms of getting to that, to that objective. You know the first thing we're focused on is really renewing our entire fleet. We've got over 500 aircraft on order right now and these are all new more efficient aircraft. Actually they're about 10% more efficient than the sort of current fleet, which means that for every seat we're we're we're reducing the carbon emission almost 20%. Than our older aircraft. So first and foremost we've just got to be more efficient with our aircraft. The second big part of what we've started doing, and you mentioned it, we're not looking at carbon offsets. We're actually investing in carbon capture technology. And so we are partnering with companies that actually and we've just made a big investment in a company that is trying to figure out how to take the carbon out of the air and put it in the ground. And in that case and even look at some other companies that take that carbon in the ground and turn it into other types of fuels as well and so. How do we make sure that if we're going to put carbon in the air that we're able to take it out? Another big part of our strategy is with the sustainable aviation fuel staff and look we've got to create an industry here and so we're making investments. We just made a $30 million investment in a long term supply agreement with a company called Fulcrum Bioenergy for 90 million gallons of staff over the next, the next 10 years. Now they haven't started yet, but we want to make these investments now so that they have the resources to build the capacity and so that when we're ready and we need that fuel. They're able to provide it. Additionally, we're looking at other forms of transportation. We're looking at. We made an investment in a company called Archer Aviation, which does EV tolls, so the electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. These are your taxis that go up and down and we see those as a real compliment to our larger aircraft and we're really excited about how those could fit into the model. For short trips. Or even reducing the carbon that you would take from getting to the airport. This is an opportunity to make the whole travel journey much more efficient. And then lastly you know our eco size alliance program is where we are partnering and using our position in the industry but also in as in the really as a as a market leader in a lot of areas to encourage other companies to join us with this eco size alliance. And also we're working very closely with the government to help make sure that they have the regulations in place. That allow the companies that can create the staff fuel as well as this other technology. To flourish so it we can continue to take advantage of it. So lots and lots of activity that we've got going on in this space and we're very committed to the to the goal that we've made. Thank you so much for this insight and I think we really are looking forward to initiatives like EVTOL, I think I can't imagine it would be so easy probably to get an airport drop on an air taxi, so wonderful. Thank you very much. And I think your whole initiative and momentum that you're building towards you know procurement of staff supplies, I think that also requires you know the right temperatures, the right, you know start and I'm sure you're making the right progress in that direction too. So thank you for this insights. Coming back to you ALP, we believe being sustainable is the default license to operate for any business going forward. And companies need to be sustainable by design to be able to do that effectively. My question is sustainability part of your organization score strategy? If yes, how do you see sustainability integrating with business departments and operations? Yes, sustainability and ESG are core to our business strategy, core to our strategy at UPS. In fact, we had a recent UPS Leadership Conference and at the conference, we reviewed our goals and deeply integrating sustainability targets with our business operations. And our CEO, Carroll Domain, called all of us to action. On being better and bolder and increasing ESG prominence in our operations. So part of Boulder is deeper integration of sustainability into our departments. I'll give you an example within our procurement department for example, we're incorporating sustainability into our supplier contracts to complement the award-winning supplier diversity program. We had this supplier diversity program for a while in our procurement department which is you know helping bring other. Businesses that might not have had the opportunity. To participate in the larger economy, another way we demonstrate leadership is through our Sustainability Council, which is composed of executives from all critical departments, which includes engineering, finance. Facilities, marketing, technology and so on. The group of executives meet regularly, hold each other accountable to execute on these commitments we're making internally and also externally. And then they identify risks, opportunities and we work together to improve our, you know, sustainability and integrating it all into our business operations. OK. That's wonderful. I think I heard, if I heard you correctly, you did mention that departments that carry the right competencies are given the right accountability because you know, we need to have action and execution coming faster for the goals and you did refer to your council. I think it's a great way to have that umbrella view to, you know, guide the organization in case of critical decisions. So I think. You do have the right kind of a setup to enable something like that. I'm glad to hear that. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Winston. Pilots, baggage handlers, dispatchers and other airline employees have considerable discretion in preparing and conducting safe flights, with direct implications on fuel consumption. Is Sky Team taking any steps towards influencing Patra Airlines to address their employees behaviors and mindset related to fuel? If yes, how? Sure. So if you take the queue back to the flight challenge, it was absolutely incredible to witness how the challenge brought together thousands of employees across every every level of our members business in a shared mission to drive the changes needed to make flying more sustainable. Yes, fuel burn is the perpetrator of the largest emissions generated by an airline and taking steps to minimize aircraft weight, for example, has a direct impact on fuel consumption and thereby on the emissions that follow. Every island that participated in the Sustainable Flight Challenge found ways to reduce the weight of the aircraft where possible and without jeopardizing safety and security. And many of these decisions were actually taken by pilots, dispatchers and other employees who were involved in the running of the operation. So this is being driven as much bottom up as it is top down. Other measures that we've seen employed across member airlines include the use of towing as close as possible to the runway. Of single engine taxing and then there is this whole world of flight path optimization that that's sort of taking on as airlines go into this space. So there's a change on many fronts from regulations to mindset that is needed and we can see that this is already brewing at many of our airlines. To ensure that we do this as we move forward, we as Sky Team as the Alliance have developed what we call the Sky Team sustainability standards. The standards really are specific actions targeting specific areas that we want our airlines to focus on and deliver on and we internally track on these and work with the airlines to meet that defined ambition level. So we have formed what we call the circular ecosystem and I think it's an app name wherein the flight challenge throws up new ideas which then feeds the standards. Which leads to implementation and scaling of ideas, which then goes back into the innovation incubator that is the flight challenge, and the process continues. So we are very much in the first year of doing this and we are hopeful that the process will become self-sustaining after a couple of iterations and in a couple of years. So yes, it's a mindset change, but it's already brewing and it's already on its way there. Great to hear that. So test, learn and adapt and do that more continually. And of course, I mean you have all your partner airlines participating. So I think there's enough in terms of proof points and you know feedback that you're gathering out of all of this, I'm assuming. Coming to you, Jason, the limited availability and the high cost of sustainable aviation fuel can be a deal breaker for rapid decarbonization. I understand that United is working on securing supply of a safe and is also invested in carbon capture technologies, exploring it as a future feedstock. With typically high asset life and rapid technology and ecosystem evolution, how does United prioritize decarbonization initiatives? Yeah. So that's a great question. So we actually formed, we call it our United Airlines venture or UAV and it's, it is a corporate venture capital fund with over $200 million that is enabling us to make investments in these areas. And so we put together a team of folks. Who are actually going out and looking at these different technologies, looking at these different companies, making these investments in these, whether they're startups or early stage, so that we can help the industry move forward. And as I said before, make sure that we have the supply when we need it. You this team is it's been around now for a couple of years and some of the investments that I mentioned in my early response, they were the they spearheaded these relationships and this team is also a huge advocator for. The staff industry and part of the new infrastructure bill that we just had passed has. Credits and incentives for staff producers that the UAV team was one of the one of many voices that advocated for these changes. So you know for us we use the this capital fund as a way to prioritize our investments and then they bring them back into the airline, back to United Airlines where then we can look at how we can incorporate this technology into. Into what we're doing every day. Sure. That's great. And I think building a fund is probably the right way to keep the focus going. I'm sure there are a lot of answers that are required to have a sustainable supply of SAP fuel. So I think that investment actually is going to hold you in good stead. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. You know what? This next question I would like to address to all of you. With eco consumerism on the rise, we believe next Gen. consumers will see products and services from brands which embrace more sustainable practices and offer sustainable experiences. How are you preparing to attract such customers and address their expectations? Let's start with you. So sustainability creates both risks and opportunities. The risks usually get all the attention, the floods, the fires and temperature rises, but there are also opportunities that are often under appreciated. We believe that UPS growth is what drives value creation. So recently we launched A sustainability products project. We're working cross functionally and across geographies. To build the world relevant sustainable shipping solutions. We believe UPS customers are likely to prioritize using sustainable services over less sustainable services when given that option, and we think sustainable offerings can be also profitable. We will run sprints, innovation sprints to see what's possible and what we can take to the future of UPS business. These sustainable experiences are not just for future, but they're here at UPS now already. I'll give an example. In our healthcare business unit, we offer a fully connected portfolio of sustainable packaging for temperature sensitive deliveries. Innovations include connected loop reusables and numerous options of recycled and recyclable containers in that business sector. Another example of how we deliver sustainable experiences is through our carbon neutral shipping options. When you ship a package at UPS, the shipper can choose that option when they're creating the shipment. With this service, UPS can calculate the carbon impact of an individual customer's shipment and can offset these through certified carbon offsets. One of our customers, Rubicon Global. Uses UPS's carbon neutral shipping as part of their trick or trash program. As part of this program, Rubicon deploys boxes to communities, to schools, to businesses. To collect and recycle millions of candy wrappers that are disposed at every Halloween for example, and UPS provides the shipping option for them. And our carbon neutral shipping option complements the sustainability goals in that program provided by Rubika. I think that's a wonderful example. And I think in a sense as your customers are also appreciating and understanding the responsibilities they have, I think it all the more probably must be giving you a lot of impetus in trying to service them much more differently and much more with a lot of ideas on sustainability particularly so I think. Great an example. I think I love the fact of recycling candy wrappers. Really nice. Really. Thank you. Winston At Sky Team Are your partners witnessing an uptick in the demand for sustainable experiences? If yes, how is it being addressed? Customers are absolutely demanding, sustainable experiences and this is visible almost on a daily basis. Every time I fly I see this. I experience that customers would like to make sustainable choices if they are given the right options. So I think the demand is absolutely there. Again, if you take the queue back to the flight challenge, just to keep that thread going, one of the award categories that we had as part of the flight challenge was customer engagement as to how airlines as part of the challenge would engage customers on this sustainability journey. I must say I was blown away and all of us at the SkyDrive office, we were blown away not only from what we saw the airlines did to ensure continuous engagement, but also have customers responded to it and became part of the mission it was for that one flight, but they really, absolutely embodied the embodied, the mission that we were sort of on. The Sustainable Flight Challenge, in my mind, might just be the catalyst that has solidified the decision to put sustainability at the core of Sky Team and what it stands for. With the aim of making us the alliance of choice for sustainable flying as well as seamless travel. Many customers have their own personal and corporate sustainability goals and what we are doing is we are working to support these goals when they fly with Sky Team members. When it comes to sustainability, many of our members are already doing a lot and in some very niche and specialized areas. And we as Sky team want to foster that culture where airlines share those best practices, cooperate on new and upcoming ideas and so we can elevate the standard and ensure A consistent A consistent sustainable experience across the alliance for all of the customers that choose us to fly with. Yeah. And I think this industry being such that the scale of impact is so huge that. Even small, the small kind of changes that you bring into effect and if those are constantly communicated in terms of the actions with your travelers, I think it's just going to keep circling back in terms of more and more ideas for implementation. So I think customer experience and expecting sustainable experiences I think is something which is growing as a travel as travellers are demanding that and I think. With all that we have seen with the pandemic behind us, I think. It's just that it's going to become more and more prominent as an ask. Absolutely. I think I mean as Al mentioned earlier, there is, there's a lot of discussion around the risk of what sustainability brings in and I think because of that the changes are going to be small, but all of those small changes are going to have an impact sooner or later. Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing this insight with us. Jason, I would like to hear your thoughts on the topic. Let me restate the question. Customers are demanding sustainable experiences in their interactions with businesses. Is United taking cognizance of that, and are any steps being taken in that direction to offer sustainable experiences to passengers? No, absolutely. Well, first for us we we're going to, we're going to walk the walk or walk the talk in the sense that our first and foremost our biggest sustainability priority is carbon decarbonization. But we use our Eco Skies alliance and our Eco Skies banner to do a lot of things with sustainability. You will see us for instance, first of all, you'll see the videos for our customers on the plane. We will talk about that with our customers. But we look at our entire supply chain of delivering products and services and opportunities to be sustainable and more environmentally friendly. We look at menu and food options that may be like things like Impossible Foods that are a more sustainable alternative to some of the meat production. You'll see us with the recycling and other sustainability opportunities as you walk through the cabin, as well as you'll see us look at not just the flying, but all of our operations, whether it's electric. Ground equipment. Or different opportunities to save energy any and provide sustainable alternatives to across the board. So for us we are trying to make the whole experience whether you're on board and you see us talking about it, you see the flight attendants recycling, you see the food on your plate has sustainable choices along with the fuel along with when you look out the window you see electric vehicles. We want to create that whole experience and right now we're getting demand from our customers to be more transparent and so. We are also looking at ways to provide sort of real time tools and technology that will enable our customers to say, all right, how do I take the lowest carbon flight or how do I understand, how do I, you know, minimize my carbon footprint through my journey. And so we you will expect from us many, many more announcements throughout this journey and we have a lot of exciting things that we're working on to make sure our customers understand our commitment to sustainability. Sure. And I think. Doing that communication with your customers and keeping that communication going on the action as well as taking that feedback is very important. I also wanted to just check quickly, you know, I'm sure there was a lot of inclusivity related, you know services and offerings also that would be on the radar. So largely particularly addressing for passengers with disabilities and stuff like that. Yeah, look that's a huge focus for us and our commitment. You know when our, when Scott Kirby, our CEO took over, you know I think he brought and emphasized and really put the whole company on notice that there's he has two priorities, one is sustainability and one is diversity, equity inclusion across all aspects and All in all aspects of diversity. And conclusion, you know one of the things we are working on right now is how do we make travel more accessible certainly. From a technology perspective, something near and dear to my heart we have. Actually a committee and a group of employees who have and represent those disabilities. Organizations looking at all of our websites, looking at all of our technology, consulting us on the experience and making sure that however we're providing those tools and technologies, they are accessible and easy to use and available to whoever wants to take advantage of it. And then another big focus for us right now has been just the physical mobility. Through the airport, whether it's with the wheelchair or other assisted, other assisted ways of travel. And the reality is, you know, through this process we've identified lots of opportunities to make the process better, to make the process. More to make sure that the process and the travelers have absolutely know the experience has dignity and accessibility and that we are providing them with a with a really the experience they deserve and so lots of activity there. Around all of those things and I think we do a good job, but I think as an industry we as an industry we can be better and I think United is going is going to lead the way on this one. So glad to hear that. Thank. Thank you for those insights, Jason. That was an eye opening roundtable. A great discussion on the panel. Thank you for that. Now it's time to move on to the QAI can see that some very pointed and interesting questions have come in. I would like to remind my audience that in the interest of time, we can only take a few. Those that we cannot address today, we will do so over e-mail. So rest assured, if not today, we will get back to everyone. Thank you. I think. This has come for you, Al. Scope 3 emissions are significant contributors to most organizations Carbon footprint. Tackling these would require extensive collaboration and data exchange across value chain players. Is UPS ready for this? And what is Yukis's approach to value chain decarbonization? At UPS over half of our. Emissions are scope 3. Because we are a large organization that. Procure, procure and use transportation services from various providers. In fact, outside US, we have a significant portion of transportation service providers, which we call them OSPS for short outside service providers. Because we have this large population outside of US, we're very focused on providing support to our OSPS in their own transition to lower carbon transportation models and creating this collaboration and data exchange between US and OS PS. We've launched something called OSB Digital Hub. That provides an increased knowledge for OSP's on sustainable operating practices based on you know UPS is 115 years of engineering expertise and also we allow them to use UPS large scale purchasing power to procure technologies that help you know lower the cost of. Doing sustainable businesses and creating an exchange of the information so that we can report the greenhouse gas emissions collectively together. And produce these innovative solutions for them. In addition to the Osps when it comes to the exchange and across value chain players, we also disclose our complete greenhouse gas inventory. We provide that through our sustainability report as well as making it. To public organizations such as CDP, available to review. We're also working with other external partners to obtain data feeds where possible so that we can properly calculate the greenhouse gas inventory. For example, between US and American Express, which is our. Employee business travel provider. We work closely with them to exchange this data so that we can comply with the upcoming SEC climate disclosure type of activities. So we're working with them to automate the process to enhance. And exchange the data and be transparent in all those activities we're doing. So all of these actions for data and transparency will help us be more precise. And also intentional to bring the best and most feasible carbon reduction solutions. Yeah, I'm sure. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next one is not addressed I think to anyone in particular, but as Jason addressed a similar topic from United standpoint already, I think I'll give it to you Winston, the question goes. In the 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway, sustainable aviation fuel would have to account for 20% of the jet fuel by 2013. What steps are airlines, and in this case your airline partners, taking to address availability, scalability and cost challenges associated with SAF? Thank you. Thank you for that question. It is a universal truth that in the short term, SAA's will probably have the greatest impact in reducing aviation's carbon footprint. This is evident by the commitments that airlines are making all over to ensure that to ensure and secure the supply of Saff into the future. We heard Al say the same thing earlier today when he spoke about how UPS plans to meet its goals. Having said that, SAA's is extremely difficult to get access to and demand hugely, hugely outstripped supply. This is compounded by the fact that we as an industry are competing with other energy intensive industries for the same raw materials. In fact, as an anecdote, the amount of SAP that is produced each year would not even come close to powering Sky teams daily departures for you in one day. So that's the that's the discrepancy between demand and supply. If we look at the challenge at the Sustainable Flight Challenge, only five out of TSFC is 22 flights managed to uplift any SAF and this was not from lack of trying. The staff supply issue is mirrored and it needs to be solved at multiple different levels, from sourcing and production to the infrastructure and supply chain, and also largely to the legislation regulations needed to ensure availability at scale. We are studying, recognize this, our member alliance recognize this. And so we as an alliance have signed up to your mission statement of the World Economic Forum's Clean Skies for Tomorrow, which aims to you which aims to increase the use of staff technologies. And reach 10% of global jet aviation fuel supply by 20-30. Many of our member airlines have also signed up and have much more ambitious targets that they've set for themselves internally. And in order to meet all of these ambitions, we are working with our member airlines to use the spread of influence that we have and that we can to discuss the issue with the entire staff stakeholder value chain from regulators to the legislators to the producers to the supply chain to see how can we reach that ambition level that we've potentially set ourselves. And not just reach their ambition level, but go. So it's a work in progress. It's going to take a lot of time and effort together, but we are all on that pathway to try and reach that objective. Yeah. And I'm sure, again, I think we need to watch out on the space and there's a lot of collective action that's required. If we really need to address that question on scale and cost and all the associated challenges. So thank you. Thank you, Winston. Jason, I think this question is for you. What measures is United Airlines taking to maintain that constant communication on your sustainability actions with your passengers and your partners? We do a lot of communication and a lot of outreach. I think when you if there's one thing you heard throughout all my answers is that we are going to meet the problem where the problem is and where the opportunities are. And so whether it's doing events like this where we get to talk about what we're doing and the fact that I'm representing it here, in fact here you have someone from the technology department talking about sustainability. Sort of gives you an indication as to the purveyance across the organization. You know we do a lot with our customers. We have a lot, a lot of marketing and a lot of reference to our materials and a lot of visible ways they can see it. We publish our information and our data on a very regular basis. We have an amazing. Team A sustainability team that helps us integrate. All this data and information and brings it back into the operation, but also takes that information from whether it's cargo or our or any of our customer organizations. Or the ramp and make sure that whatever that's happening is brought forward. So if there's problems they're seeing or if there's opportunities, they're bringing it forward. So we're really working on trying to build a really strong feedback loop in all directions on all the activities that we're doing 'cause it. There's a lot going on and it's important that we do keep everybody aligned with what's happening because it's something to be really proud of and I think the fact that we really. Taking a lead in our industry as well and taking a lead across many functions. Is just another aspect of United Airlines. Then I'm certainly proud to be part of. So I like, I love the question and I think you're going to continue to hear from us a lot about how we're leading the industry in sustainable fuels and carbon capture and alternative vehicles and in all the other other aspects of sustainability that are going to be critical for us to meet our goal. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. I believe you're running out of time. We will take a pause here. This has indeed been an interesting session. Thank you all for joining us To Krishnan Ramanujam and Michael Samuel. Special thanks for supporting our vision on this endeavor and participating with such energy and enthusiasm. Thanks to our audience for your interest in this topic and your resolve to see meaningful change and definitive action towards the net positive planet. And last but not the least, our distinguished panel Jason, ALP and Winston for taking the time to inform and enlighten us on what some of the biggest names in travel and transport industries are doing today about sustainability. What is their approach? What are their future plans and most importantly, what is the action on the ground so far? We meet again, which you all could say, a good rest of the week and best wishes for the upcoming holiday season. Thank you and God bless.