Working Environment
Owen Alum Gigi Abbadie Finds Perfect Match Between Passion and Profession
When Gigi Guttman Abbadie (MBA '93), Director of Professional Hair Care at Aveda in Minneapolis, enlisted to coordinate the company’s Earth Day celebration, she brought to the project a lot of enthusiasm and little inkling of what she was getting involved with.
“I was excited about taking on the program and running with it because I had a hard-core interest in the environment,” she says. “But I had very little knowledge of environmental issues.”
PHOTO: Spearheading a petition drive to save endangered species is just one of the many ways that Owen alum Gigi Abbadie (left) helps make a difference.
Now, seven years later, Gigi can give speeches about recyclable content in packaging, legislative changes that threaten the Endangered Species Act and offsetting CO2 emissions. What’s more — and more important — Aveda’s Earth Month effort has grown to involve more than one million people around the world in environmental stewardship, a cause that has become part and parcel of the company’s mission.
Thanks to the commitment of its founder, Horst Rechelbacher, Aveda had always celebrated Earth Day. But the celebrations had been sketchy and inconsistent. On top of that, Esteé Lauder, which became Aveda’s corporate parent in 1997, “really pushed and supported our environmental commitment and wanted us to take it further,” Gigi recalls.
The plan, she says, was to involve consumers in the cause through more than 2,000 “concept salons” that use and sell Aveda products exclusively. Each April — the company has broadened the Earth Day celebration to an entire month — salons get involved in raising awareness and money for environmental causes. They’re free to tailor the effort according to their own strengths and creativity. Some, Gigi says, contribute a portion of all sales that month, or work during a “Day of Beauty” when they’re not normally open and contribute all sales from that day. Others have partnered with local environmental groups to hold silent auctions, online auctions and fashion shows.
Each year, the proceeds benefit various environmentally related nonprofit groups, such as the Greenhouse Network, Clean Air-Cool Planet, Global Greengrants Fund, Chicago Wilderness, Potomac Conservancy, Gulf Coast Restoration Network and more. At first, Gigi says, many were skeptical that the effort could meet its target of $250,000. Instead, it raised over $300,000 — an amount that has grown sixfold to more than $1.5 million last year. Aveda’s Earth Month has also spread to 11 countries outside North America, including Japan, the UK and Iceland.
Earth Month isn’t just about raising money. Aveda also collects personal eco-pledges or signatures on petitions related to an environmental theme for each year. In years past, the themes have revolved around saving ancient forests, global warming and protecting endangered species. One year, Gigi says with apparent pride, 10% of all the signatures in the U.S. on a petition about protecting old-growth forests came from the Aveda network. A similar petition drive in Canada, she says, resulted in legislation to protect the Great Bear Rain Forest in British Columbia.
For Aveda, environmental activism was, no pun intended, a natural fit. “Like so many of our medicines, all of our company’s products come from plants,” she says. “We want to help people realize that we all have a stake in our environment.”
Though it’s difficult to quantify the return that Aveda has received on its investment, Gigi believes that environmentalism has paid dividends in the form of stronger brand loyalty. “A lot of times people feel better about pampering themselves when they know they’re doing good,” she says.
At the same time, she emphasizes that corporate social responsibility in this case is its own reward: “We’re not environmental for the sake of marketing.”
Instead, the company’s involvement in environmental issues is ingrained into the culture at Aveda. It is the foundation of its mission and is reiterated in the company’s core values. That, says Gigi, means Aveda is continuing to look for ways to “minimize our environmental footprint.”
For example, the company’s packaging sets the benchmark for recycled content in their industry (up to 80% PCR HDPE bottles and up to 100% PCR PET bottles)— and people at Aveda are teaching their counterparts at Esteé Lauder how to transform their own packaging. They’ve developed the first permanent hair color product that’s 97% naturally derived. In addition, Aveda has reached what some might call the holy grail of corporate environmental friendliness: they made a purchase of wind energy for all electricity used for manufacturing in their facility.
On top of her usual day-to-day responsibilities, Gigi speaks about a dozen times each year on the environment to audiences in the Minneapolis area and around the country. “People can’t believe that Aveda cared so much to send me and want to teach other people,” she says.
It’s hard to imagine a better fit between a person, a company and a cause. Though Gigi says she has always cared about the environment, her career didn’t align with her passions. She owned a retail business in Philadelphia before coming to Owen.
Upon completing her MBA, she wanted to move to New York, so she accepted a position with an investment firm. “I realized it was so-o not for me,” she says. So she left that field and gradually found her way to Aveda. “I could never go to another company that doesn’t have a social or environmental mission,” she says now.
She does have one regret. When she was at Owen, she ran Gigi’s Not-So-Famous Café (in the space now occupied by the 8:10 Café). Looking back, she says, “I’m absolutely mortified that I used styrofoam cups with the coffee.”
But, she laughs, “at least I offered 25 cent refills if you brought your own mug. I had a lot to learn!”
