BROADCASTS.com

b'

Liliana joined Wendy\\u2019s in June 2014 and has served as Chief Corporate Affairs & Sustainability Officer since February 2021 to reflect her range of responsibilities across Communications, Quality Assurance, Customer Care, Public Affairs and Corporate Responsibility. She previously served as our Chief Communications Officer from June 2014 to February 2021.

Liliana sets the vision and strategy for all communications with franchisees and employees, public relations, government relations and corporate responsibility. Her work with the Quality Assurance function involves developing quality and safety procedures throughout our supply chain and restaurants to provide a safe and quality dining experience for all Wendy\\u2019s customers.

Liliana prides herself on building diverse teams and empowering them to find solutions \\u2013 a leadership style that has produced notable results. Her team recently restructured Wendy\\u2019s corporate responsibility efforts under one united banner, Good Done Right, and created our Supplier Code of Conduct. Under her direction, Wendy\\u2019s also launched The Square Deal, Wendy\\u2019s blog to provide a point of view on issues that are important to our Company and our customers.

Prior to Wendy\\u2019s, Liliana served as Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at Dean Foods in Dallas, TX. Her previous experience includes tenure as Public Affairs Manager with Mars, Incorporated in New Jersey, and as a public relations consultant for eight years in New York City.

Liliana Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Defining responsible sourcing and identifying criteria for responsibly sourcing food
• What consumers are looking for in the industry in regards to sustainability
• The process of starting GHG inventories, CDP reporting, and setting science-based targets
• Wendy\\u2019s \\u201cGood done right\\u201d goals for food, people and footprint\\xa0
• Tying sustainability performance to incentives
• Advice and recommendations for sustainability professionals

Liliana\\u2019s Final Five Questions Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

The advice that I would give is just to be a sponge for learning and for relationships and networking with others in the field. I would not have considered myself a sustainability professional even 10 years ago. There is so much to learn. There is so much to absorb. I don\'t think anyone can be an expert in all of it. I think really broadening your aperture so that you have the benefit of expertise from others that are in different aspects of your field is something that I really value. Probably the most important resource that I see in the field is people. Hopefully you can provide some value to them in terms of the expertise and the knowledge that you have, but also continuing to build those relationships and reach out and network to increase your effectiveness.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

The biggest is just the awareness and the general knowledge and interest in this area. That takes a lot of different forms and different parts of the industry, different stakeholders are coming at it with different points of view. But I think that there\'s never been a better time to really be demonstrating the value and the importance of sustainability work within the business community. I feel like the conversation I\'m not having anymore is around \\u201cwhy should we care about this?\\u201d Does this actually add to our business value? Is there a strong rationale for being focused on ESG or sustainability? Now the conversation is much more around, \\u201cwhere should we be putting our precious resources?\\u201d Where can our efforts be most successful and most effective?\\xa0

What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read?

I\'ll go to the classics. There\'s certainly lots of more contemporary examples, but I think Rachel Carson\'s Silent Spring. I was in college when I read it. That really started to open my eyes around not just the importance of a focus on the environment and on sustainability, but a factual, well researched, analysis of what was happening and what we as a society could do to make a more positive impact. I know that\'s a classic, but I think it\'s still relevant today.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

To repeat myself, people. I really do collect and curate a great network of people that come from all different backgrounds and perspectives and areas of expertise. The more that I can connect and engage with people that do things that are very different than what I do professionally, I just grow and learn from that. And then a plug for you Josh and your colleagues for podcasts like this one. I usually go for a run every day and I\'ve got a collection of podcasts and other things that, that that\'s the soundtrack to my daily runs because I feel like there\'s always something new coming out to help us just learn and get better.

Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the sustainability work being done at Wendy\'s?

We would love for you to hop over to wendys.com and click on the what we value segment of our website. You can find our corporate responsibility reports for 2022 and the years in the past, and then certainly a wealth of information about the company and our commitments overall.