Alison has 20 years of experience helping organizations develop and implement sustainability and communications strategies. She helps lead BuzzWord’s reporting strategy practice, including materiality analyses, audience analyses and competitor benchmarking. She also excels at helping clients navigate the increasingly complex landscape of reporting frameworks (including those of the Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures) and ESG raters and rankers. In addition to these focus areas, she has years of experience developing sustainability communications and managing projects.

Alison has a solid understanding of the key sustainability issues and public debates in many industries, including automotive, banking, food and beverage, hospitality and energy. She has helped numerous companies develop and implement sustainability reporting strategies, including Apache Corporation, Eli Lilly, Edison International, Ford Motor Company, Hess Corporation, Hyatt, JPMorgan Chase, Keurig Dr Pepper, Lockheed Martin, Smithfield Foods and Southwestern Energy.

Alison has a Ph.D. in conservation and consumer behavior from the University of Montana, an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan’s Ross Business School and a M.S. in resource management from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. She lives in Missoula, Montana.

Fun fact: Alison spent a lot of time around horses in her youth, working on a dude ranch and even teaching her horse to play soccer.

With more than a decade of corporate reporting experience, Carson loves nothing more than benchmarking competitor reports to find best practices; helping companies implement materiality analyses that can reveal reporting priorities; and ensuring conformance with reporting standards and frameworks (i.e., he makes the indexes). His experience developing and writing report content includes work for Citi, the Coca-Cola Company, Edison International, Smithfield Foods and Southwestern Energy.

In addition to his reporting work, Carson leads or supports extended producer responsibility programs in the Pacific Northwest that reduce the impacts of multiple products throughout their lifecycle, including electronics, paint and carpet. He also works as an auditor for several sustainability standards. Carson majored in biology at Pomona College and earned an M.E.M. at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Fun fact: After his freshman year of college, Carson had a summer job at Victoria’s Secret.

Heather has more than 12 years of experience in-house and externally in sustainability strategy, stakeholder engagement, reporting and project management in North America and Europe. Heather is equally adept at thinking strategically and digging into the finer details, and is known for building long-term client relationships. A recent addition to the BuzzWord team, Heather has worked at Deloitte, Tim Hortons, the Retail Council of Canada, SustainAbility and Canadian Business for Social Responsibility.

Heather holds a B.Com. with Distinction in Marketing from McGill University and an MBA with Honours in Sustainability from Schulich School of Business, York University. Heather lives in Toronto and enjoys spending time with her family, reading and writing. She also volunteers on the Board of Directors for the Mimico Residents Association.

Fun fact: Heather has a life goal of visiting every Frank Lloyd Wright building and Chinatown in the world.

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A stickler for clarity, good grammar and editorial consistency, Jennifer now serves primarily as BuzzWord’s resident copy editor and proofreader. For the past 15 years, she also developed sustainability report content for BuzzWord clients, encouraging transparency and honest disclosure and ensuring that each piece of collateral was clear, compelling and targeted to its intended audience. Jennifer’s BuzzWord clients have included Comcast NBCUniversal, Citi, Nike, Ford Motor Company, Kellogg Company, Nielsen, Bunge, Southwestern Energy, Hess Corporation, Apache Corporation, International Flavors and Fragrances, Waste Management, Darden Restaurants and Novelis.

Jennifer serves on the board of PowerDash, a solar energy monitoring company and certified B Corporation. Previously, she worked as a facilitator/mediator at the nonprofit Keystone Center in Washington, D.C., and edited three books on consensus building. She holds an M.S. in environmental policy from the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment and a B.A. in environmental science from Principia College. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Fun fact: Jennifer and her husband have traveled extensively around the U.S. in their Airstream, living and working out of it for up to six months at a time.

Jessica feels just as at home working on a tricky piece of prose as she does creating a schedule for a challenging deadline. A balance between precision and flexibility – with a healthy dose of persistence – helps her meet the individual needs of each project. Jessica has more than 20 years of professional communications experience in both large and small organizations and has spent more than a decade honing an expertise in sustainability-focused projects. With strong writing and editing skills and a detailed, thorough approach to project management, she is an effective collaborator for clients looking for transparent, compelling reporting about their corporate responsibility activities. She has worked with BuzzWord since 2013 to support major financial services clients and others such as Eli Lilly, Keurig Dr Pepper, Nike. Jessica holds an M.A. in English studies from Western Washington University.

Fun fact: As a Pacific Northwest native, Jessica finds overcast days the perfect time to indulge her reading habit. Lucky for her, she lives just outside Portland, Oregon, where you can find an independent bookstore that takes up an entire city block. Heaven.

Lauren has more than a decade of experience in the fields of journalism, communications and sustainable business. At BuzzWord, she has helped large organizations such as PwC and Kellogg Company communicate their corporate responsibility efforts with external audiences. Previously, she worked in communications and program management roles at Chevron Energy Solutions (now Opterra Energy), the renewable energy division of Chevron. After graduating from Brown University with a B.A. in history, Lauren wrote about Persian Gulf economies for a business intelligence publishing house and consultancy based in Istanbul, Turkey, and covered microfinance and social enterprise news for a magazine based in Mumbai, India. As a journalist, she mainly covers environmental issues, and her work has appeared in The Guardian, MIT Technology, Fast Company and other outlets.

Fun fact: Lauren’s less-marketable skills include subscribing to an unreasonable number of magazines and expertly packing a carry-on suitcase for long trips.

Leah is BuzzWord’s founder, president, chief cook and bottle washer. She can be found working in senior roles on BuzzWord client projects as well as tending the BuzzWord organization. Leah founded BuzzWord 20 years ago and nurtured it using an innovative model that focuses on providing value to clients, creating results in the real world and ensuring a satisfying experience for the BuzzWord team.

Leah brings to these roles more than 25 years of experience in the environmental, ESG and corporate responsibility fields. She has led strategy, disclosure and reporting projects for major U.S. and international companies, including Ford Motor Company, the Coca-Cola Company, Nike and Kellogg Company. Leah began work in the corporate sector at Waste Management, where she led development of the company’s pioneering public environmental reports. She has remained involved in cutting-edge developments in communications and transparency ever since. Leah also previously worked with Business for Social Responsibility and the World Wildlife Fund. She is a graduate of Barnard College and holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She is based in the Washington, DC, area.

Fun fact: Leah’s first entrepreneurial venture was producing punk rock and reggae shows.

Lorraine has consulted for leading change agents since 2004, informing strategy, transparency and stakeholder dialogue toward a regenerative economy. She has collaborated with the team at BuzzWord since 2010. Her clients have included more than 60 large companies across regions and sectors, including engagements in French and Portuguese.

Lorraine has worked as Associate Director with John Elkington at Volans since 2016 and has held senior positions at SustainAbility and Canadian Business for Social Responsibility. She is a member of the Expert Council of the Future Fit Business Benchmark. Prior to her focus on regenerative economics she worked at WWF Canada in fundraising, at Compuspec (New Zealand) in customer care and Manulife Financial (Canada) in business analysis. She graduated with an Honours B.A. from Mount Allison University and now lives in Montreal, Canada.

Fun fact: For her college thesis, Lorraine wrote an allegorical novella, in German, about modern culture, the Christ Resurrection and a lip-syncing scandal.

Nora Isaacs is a seasoned writer, editor, journalist and author who brings a wealth of editorial experience to the BuzzWord team.

Nora partners closely with teams to envision, and then bring to life, compelling corporate sustainability reports. By asking the right questions, seeing the big picture, thinking visually and articulating complex concepts in an accessible way, she helps tell the stories that matter to an organization. Her BuzzWord clients have included Edison International, Nike, Booking.com and JPMorgan Chase. Over her career, she has worked as a communications specialist, editorial director, developmental editor and strategist for organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield of California, the University of California, Berkeley, and others. Nora is also an experienced book editor and author, and her journalism has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Nora received her master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Fun fact: Nora lives in Berkeley, California, with her family of four humans plus two dogs, two cats and a California kingsnake.

Robin loves to tell the sustainability stories of BuzzWord’s clients, translating their successes – as well as their challenges – into engaging narratives. Her 25+ years of professional writing and editing experience in corporate communications and journalism has made her a key player on the BuzzWord team for well over a decade. With her roots in daily journalism, Robin has been a primary writer and/or project manager for the sustainability reports of a broad spectrum of major multinational companies, including Comcast NBCUniversal, Smithfield Foods, PwC, Ford Motor Company, Kellogg Company, Keurig Dr Pepper and Eli Lilly.

In addition to her work with BuzzWord, Robin is an experienced public relations professional skilled in internal and external messaging. Her reporting career included six years with the Boston bureau of The Associated Press, where she covered everything from major breaking news stories and business features to educational analyses and human interest pieces. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Amherst College, magna cum laude, and a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Fun fact: In recent years, Robin has developed an addiction to CrossFit, an obsession with dahlias and a thirst for natural wines.

Valerie has nearly 25 years of experience advising on corporate responsibility strategy, reporting and communications. A strategic thinker and hands-on doer, Valerie combines the ability to see the big picture and frame issues with a ferocious attention to detail and a client service ethos. A skilled writer who can convey complex ideas in clear and compelling prose, Valerie has authored dozens of corporate responsibility and sustainability reports and other materials for clients, including Blue Shield of California, Comcast NBCUniversal, Darden Restaurants, Ford Motor Company, JPMorgan Chase, Novelis, S&P Global, SeaWorld and others.

Valerie has been a part of the BuzzWord team since 2006. Previously, she worked in-house as Chevron’s Corporate Responsibility Coordinator and in consulting and research roles at Business for Social Responsibility. Valerie has a master’s in international public policy from University College London and a bachelor’s from Boston College. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and three kids.  

Fun fact: When she was young, Valerie was the only girl on her football team and dreamed of being the first woman to play in the NFL.