Ramboll’s Cheryl Ginyard-Jones: Engineering a sustainable future with forward-thinking leadership

Decades ago, Cheryl Ginyard-Jones was working at oil giant BP when then-CEO John Browne famously admitted that oil and gas companies contribute to climate change. Browne switched the BP logo to a green and yellow flower symbol, and launched the company’s alternative energy business. 

Ginyard-Jones, now a managing director at Denmark-based architectural engineering company Ramboll, called the decision “remarkable.”

 “As a leader, you have to focus on where you’re going, versus where you are today,” Ginyard-Jones said at a recent Dean’s Speaker Series talk, part of the Center for Responsible Business‘ Peterson Speaker Series, in conversation with Margo Wilwerding, MBA/MCS 26, and Missy Martin, MBA 26. “A lot of us get stuck in: ‘We’re here, and how do you get out of it?’ So what I try to do as a leader is think about: ‘How do you move forward? How do we get from where we are today to where we want to go tomorrow?’”

Watch the video:

Berkeley Haas in recent years forged ties with Ramboll through Robert Strand, executive director of the Center for Responsible Business. Each year, Haas MBA students enrolled in Strand’s Sustainable Capitalism in the Nordics class, through Copenhagen Business School, visit Ramboll to study sustainable business models. Strand calls Ramboll, which has 18,000 employees across 35 different countries, “the quiet hero” of the class.

Ramboll focuses on sustainability—in buildings, transportation, environment, health, energy, water, and management consulting. Decarbonization, livable cities, resource management, and biodiversity are its strategic themes. Instead of offering shares externally, 97% of Ramboll is owned by its foundation and 3% is owned by the employees. The business model enables the company to remain mission- and people-driven, Ginyard-Jones said. 

“We have very strong environmental justice practices within Ramboll,” Ginyard-Jones said, noting that the company has continued work that it began with the U.S. during the Biden administration. “We partner with communities. We partner with our clients who are doing work in those municipalities and in those communities to actually develop and to understand what the communities need.”

With a career that has led her in many directions, Ginyard-Jones said she has always prioritized the opportunity to learn. A chemical engineer by trade, she launched her career as a process engineer in a textile plant. After deciding to earn an MBA, she shifted to the business side of engineering. Her diverse career experiences over the years included leading in the energy, oil, and gas space at BP and Verizon, and launching a consulting business for oil and gas companies that focused on blockchain. All of this experience converged when she moved to WorleyParsons, an engineering procurement construction company. 

At WorleyParson, she was approached by the president of the Americas to take over as head of growth for that division. That experience led her to Ramboll in 2023, where she leads the Americas business. 

“We’re a purpose-driven company, so I make a big impact based on what I know we need to do in this region to grow Ramboll’s value,” she said.

One important lesson she’s learned over the years is the importance of resilience to adapt to a changing world.

‘Your path is going to change,” she said. “The world changes. You transform as you actually have experiences. So thinking, ‘I’m going to be doing this in the next 20 years’—it’s not going to happen because the world changes, and you change.” 

Read the full transcript:

ROBERT STRAND: Hello, everyone. Is this thing on? Yes. Can you hear me? All right. Super. Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Robert Strand. I have the great privilege to be the executive director of the Center for Responsible Business here at Berkeley Haas and the executive director of the Nordic Center across UC Berkeley. 

On behalf of interim Dean Jenny Chatman, who’s been called away, we welcome you to today’s Dean’s Speaker Series and CRB Peterson Speaker Series. And I’m thrilled to introduce our guest, Cheryl Ginyard-Jones, on the far left, my far left, a leader in energy and sustainability. 

Cheryl is the managing director of the Americas Business for Ramboll. That means she’s the boss of the USA and beyond, Canada, and Mexico as well. And Cheryl’s first degree was in chemical engineering. She then went on to earn her MBA at Wharton. Apparently couldn’t get into Berkeley Haas, but Wharton is fine. Way to go. 

Cheryl has uniquely combined these skill sets, technical and business, throughout her career in strategy, operations, business development, and finance roles across many different industries. Cheryl came to Ramboll, which is a Denmark-based company, to lead the growth of their footprint in the Americas. 

I had the good fortune of being at Ramboll’s headquarters just a couple of weeks ago with several of our MBAs in ‘Sustainable Capitalism in the Nordics.’ Question mark, any of you here? All right. Thank you. All right. 

Could I just get a quick show of hands also? Just students, would you stand up so we can get a sense of who’s in the room? Students. All right. Cheryl, that’s our talent. Cheryl is going to hire you. We’re building a pipeline here. 

So as part of being a Denmark-based company, we may touch on culture, Danish culture, Nordic culture, and considerations in the conversations today. Ramboll is also this unique enterprise foundation owned company that’s pervasive across Denmark and the Nordic region, relatively unknown in the U.S. Maybe that will come up in conversation as well. 

The mission of Ramboll is to create sustainable societies where people and nature flourish. I want to read that again. That’s their corporate mission—to create sustainable societies where people and nature flourish. 

And their corporate strategy then on that is your partner for sustainable change. Ramboll is always—Cheryl, I know I’ve told you this before—the quiet hero of the ‘Sustainable Capitalism in the Nordics’ class. A company that you hadn’t heard of before, but once you do, you’re fascinated by it. 

Cheryl is a leader who prides herself in fostering an environment where all feel empowered and being themselves in the workplace. Her leadership style and values are aligned with Ramboll and the Haas Defining Leadership Principles ‘Questioning the Status Quo’ and ‘Beyond Yourself.’ I’ll now turn it over to our wonderful MBA students, Margo Wilwerding on my right, and Missy Martin on my left. Please take it away. A warm round of applause all in advance here. Thank you. 

MISSY MARTIN: OK. Hello. Is it on? Cool. Thank you, Robert, for that great introduction. Thank you, to you all, for being here. We’re so excited to talk to Cheryl today. Before we dive in, though, we wanted to just give a little bit of background on who Margo and I are. 

Robert already alluded to the fact that we’re MBA students. So I’m a first-year MBA student. I’m also the fellow for the Center for Responsible Business. Before Haas, I was the chief sustainability officer for a technology startup. 

I am very passionate about sustainability, and so I’m so excited to talk about sustainability initiatives. I have worked in sustainability in multiple capacities, from technology and circular economy to food systems and environmental justice. So can’t wait to dive in. 

MARGO WILWERDING: Thanks, Missy. I’m Margo Wilwerding, a first-year student in the full-time MBA and Master of Climate Solutions. Before Haas, I was working in apparel sourcing, trying to make the apparel industry more sustainable from the inside out. And then, I pivoted into consulting, where I was working with food and ag and some life sciences companies on systems change and driving sustainability. 

I’m super excited to learn more about the amazing work you’re doing at Ramboll. And yeah, I’ll let us jump in. 

MARTIN: Perfect. Let’s get started. So we’re going to begin with your career path and your leadership over the years. Your path from chemical engineering within oil and gas to pursuing your MBA and now leading Ramboll Americas is super unique. So would you walk us through your journey and how you’ve made it to where you are today? 

CHERYL GINYARD-JONES: Sure, happy to. First of all, I want to say thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be here and speaking to you. Robert, thank you for being such a great partner, and Berkeley with Ramboll and our foundation. Robert brings students over every year to our headquarters, and we have a good conversation. So it’s really great to have you there and really bringing the Nordic style of business to the Americas, so I appreciate that. 

So I have a very strange career path. So I’ll have to tell it to you in three parts because it’s long, but it’s also strange. So I started, as Robert said, studying chemical engineering at University of Maryland. My first job out of school was in textile manufacturing. 

I was a process engineer in a textile plant. You probably don’t even remember that we had that industry here. So I’m dating myself. It’s a long time ago, but that’s what I did. I knew when I finished my degree that I wanted to go back to school. So I did that for two years and went back to Wharton, which is another great school. Next to Berkeley. 

So I studied there. Rejoined. Celanese was the company that I was with. And I had many different roles in marketing. Market management. My degree was actually in marketing in MBA school. Business research and engineering plastics. So I was still in a similar industry. 

Then after a few years, I decided I wanted to move to a company that really had a good brand. So I moved to Owens Corning, which is a fiberglass insulation company, and I did a lot of marketing work there. And actually, while I was at Owens Corning—this was in Ohio. I moved from Philadelphia to New Jersey to Ohio to work for Owens Corning. 

But while I was there, I went to a conference in New Orleans, and I happened to meet a man that I thought would be my future husband. And he actually was. So I was working—and he lived in Chicago. So I ended up moving to Chicago with the bet that I think it’s going to work out, but if not, I’m going to be in a cool city anyway. 

So when I moved to Chicago, I actually joined Amoco. And Amoco 18 months later became BP. So that’s how I got into the oil and gas space. I had several different roles at BP. I started in internal consulting. And I was on the downstream side, so refining chemicals and refining. 

So I started as an internal consultant. Then I ran a profit and loss business. I did international marketing. Sales. Was the commercial director for one of the refining business units there. So I ran all the financials for that. 

And the remarkable thing about BP was while I was there, the CEO was Lord John Browne, was the first CEO, one of the first to actually admit that climate change—that oil and gas companies impacted climate. And from there, he changed the symbol of the company to a Helios from what it was previously. And the Helios represents the sun. 

And he started the businesses and solar, wind, and biofuels. So really beginning to move into that space. So my last role with BP, we moved—and I did get married. I had a couple of kids by that time. We moved over to London because there was a project that I wanted to run there. And I really wanted to get some international business experience. 

And my intention was when we moved back—we wanted to move back to the East Coast, which is where I was from because we had family—to move into the solar business there. So after being in London for three years, we moved back to the D.C. area. But I was not able to pursue that opportunity because the business had by that time moved over to China. 

So that’s Part One. Part Two. So, I moved to D.C. I was looking for an opportunity. It was during the recession, so it was pretty tough trying to find a job, especially with my background. So I ended up working for Verizon. And people always say, ‘How did you get to Verizon? That makes no sense given your background.’

But at that time, Verizon was looking to develop deep solutions for energy companies, for oil and gas, for energy utilities in the digital space. So digital oilfield, working to provide communications to remote locations in a very quick way. So evolving internet of things. So really getting into that. 

So I worked with several folks to develop solutions for Verizon to enter into that space with oil and gas companies. So it was a good role just to understand how you look at the industry that I’ve been in a long time to how to service them. 

So I did that for a while, ended up leaving there and beginning to consult on my own with some other consultants that were from former oil and gas executives. And the area that I really focused on was blockchain. So that’s when blockchain started to come into play. We know the cryptocurrency piece, but the technology that underpinned it was really interesting for companies that were in supply chain. 

Sup interviewing and working for Worley and was really focused in their consulting business, doing business development for their downstream organization. But halfway through my tenure there, we had a new CEO come into play, and his focus was energy transition. He said, ‘We are going to pivot all of our business to really drive energy transition and digitization.’ 

And by this time, you probably—if you’ve kind of followed the roles that I had, I did everything. There’s nothing consistent that I’ve done. But there was a role—the president of one of the divisions called me, the president of the Americas, and she said, ‘I’m looking for somebody that can actually drive our energy transition strategy and digital, and I came across your resume. You’re perfect. You’ve done everything that I need.’ 

I’m like, that’s when my career finally made sense to me. It’s like, I finally got to figure out where I was going to. So I did that for a couple of years, and we were very successful in actually pivoting our projects to energy transition. 

The CEO had made some statements saying that we’ve been very successful with this strategy. We’ve moved the needle quite a bit. And it was that time—I was feeling really good about the impact that I was making in that role. And it was at that time I got a call from an executive search firm saying, ‘Hey, I wanted to talk to you about Ramboll.’ 

And I’m like, ‘I’ve never heard of Ramboll. Who are you?’ I had no idea who it was. I’ve kind of Googled it to see who Ramboll was and I said, ‘Well, we’ll have a conversation. I am not interested in moving because I’m doing great work here.’ But the more that I talked to the search firm, talked to the executives there, I just knew it was the place for me. So I ended up moving to Ramboll. 

But I wanted to say—and the goal for me is—I’m running the Americas business, and their goal is that they wanted us to actually be the biggest division. They had the biggest growth opportunities and plan for the Americas, and they said they wanted me to grow that. And then even growing beyond being the biggest but being almost half the size of Europe. 

So there was a big growth plan and strategy for that. But I just wanted to go back to my career progress to tell you how it made sense and how it shaped the leadership views that I have. So when I first—going back to my first job as an engineer, I never really wanted to be an engineer. 

My objective was to be a doctor, but since I went through and got the engineering degree, the chemical engineering, I said, ‘I need to figure out what they do.’ So my first job was about: What does an engineer do? 

So I learned that it was also the first company that actually supported me because when I decided to leave to get my MBA, they said, ‘We’re going to financially support you, and there’s no obligation for you to come back. We just want you to know that we value you and where you’re going.’ So that was the one thing. 

Then I went to Owens Corning, and that really helped me understand what brand is and ‘how do you drive brand’ from a marketing standpoint. I went to BP, and BP was probably one of the best organizations that I’ve been for leadership development. They had such great programs that they invested in their people around leadership development. And I was the beneficiary of that. I went through several different programs. 

If you think about BP, they have so many different leaders that are running different companies now. And that’s one of the reasons why. So then, I went to Verizon and valued learning about how I could see the industry that I’d been in and how to service it. 

I did consulting. And that was resilience because that was hard. It was hard because it’s feast or famine in that role. So you learn resilience. But by the time I got to Worley, what I committed to myself especially after the consulting role was that I’ve learned a lot through my career, and I am not going to hold back sharing what I know and in sharing my opinion about things. 

Whether people ask me or not, I’m going to tell them if there’s a way that I think we can do something better, that’s what I’m going to do. And that’s what I did at Worley, and I think that’s why I was so successful because I learned that people liked the ideas that I had. They were good. And when we implemented them, we saw results. 

So that’s what I brought into the job that I’m in today, where there’s a need to make a big impact. And we’re a purpose-driven company. So I make a big impact based on what I know we need to do in this region to grow Ramboll’s value. So that’s it. Sorry. It’s a long story. That was amazing. 

MARTIN: Wow. Thank you for connecting all those dots. We were talking earlier about how so many Berkeley students—we have windy paths. That’s, I think, the magic of Berkeley, that so many of us have very unique backgrounds. 

So to see your journey and see how you connected the dots I think is very valuable for a lot of us who have already had some winding paths and are trying to figure out how to tell our story and sell ourselves and make an impact in the world. So, thank you. You already touched on this a little bit, and it’s your leadership and mindset as you went through your career, but I’m going to build off of it just a little bit. 

So we’re curious how your leadership style and your mindset have changed over the years, specifically as it relates to creating large scale change within companies, especially during periods of disruption. I’m thinking about COVID a few years ago. I’m thinking about the tariffs now. I think there’s many other events. So how has your leadership and mindset changed through those aspects? 

GINYARD-JONES: So I always focus on vision. So as a leader, you have to focus on where you’re going versus where you are today. And a lot of us get stuck in: ‘we’re here, and how do you get out of it?’ 

So what I try to do as a leader is think about: ‘How do you move forward? How do we get from where we are today to where we want to go tomorrow?’ And that’s what I focus our teams on, thinking bigger and thinking abou how do you get out of that box. 

So that’s what I’ve done over the years, and finding ways to actually enable that. I can tell you a bit of a story about bringing the Americas together and how I’ve focused that. So one of the things that I discovered when I did come to Ramboll was that the Americas was actually an organization built by acquisition. 

There were no Danes that came over and said, ‘OK, we’re starting, we’re seeing it, we’re going to run it.’ They wanted us to run it because they’re a country of 6 million people and we’re 340. They don’t know how to manage a country like that. 

So what I noticed was—we had four major acquisitions. I’d go to our different 64 offices across the Americas, and what I would notice is that we still hadn’t integrated as one company. We were thinking sort of—and Michael can probably share this, but we were thinking of, this is what we do in this office, and this is what we do in this office. 

But we weren’t really seeing the value of what we could be together. And I would go to different offices, and they’d tell me about the wonderful projects that they were doing. Everyone was doing something really impactful, just phenomenal, but nobody knew what anybody else was doing. 

So one of the things that I did was bring us together and say, ‘We’ve got to figure out: How do we move from these legacy views to how do we organize to be focused on impact?’ So that’s one of the things that I did with our leadership is really try to drive that philosophy and that mantra so that we can think about coming together to be leaders and drive in the direction that Ramboll wants us to go. So that’s part of it. 

MARTIN: This is actually a perfect segue into ramble and talking more about what you all do at Ramboll. So I’m going to pass it over to Margo. 

WILWERDING: Yeah. Thanks so much. I think it’s always important to have unity, especially during disruptions, and super powerful to hear about how you’ve done that at the company. So we know Ramboll does so much amazing work, Missy and I and you, but folks in the audience may not be super familiar with the work that you do, so could you just tell us a quick overview of some of the things that you work on? 

GINYARD-JONES: Sure. So let me just tell you a little bit about how Ramboll is organized. So again, we’re Danish-based. We are 18,000 people across the globe. We are organized in about 35 different countries around the world. So we’re multinational. 

So we’re in Denmark, all the Nordic countries where we’re positioned. We’re in the UK, we’re in Germany, we’re in the Americas. Samia and APAC are the big regions that we have. There’s seven different business areas that we focus our projects on, and those are buildings and transportation. There’s environment and health, there’s energy, there’s water, there’s management consulting. And then we have an architecture company called Henning Larsen. 

So those are the business areas that we focus on. We have 18,000, again, engineers, scientists, technologists, project managers that really drive projects. We implement projects. The areas that we focus on—so our philosophy or our strategy right now is to partner for sustainable change. So our backbone is sustainability. We do all kinds of sustainable projects and all those different business areas that I talked about and lots of different sectors with lots of different clients, public clients and private clients. 

Our strategic theme, that might give you an idea as to some of the work that we do, is—there’s four themes. One is decarbonization. Decarbonizing to net zero. So we work on green energy transition technologies, working with our clients around driving that decarbonization strategies for heavy industry. So our scientists really help our clients to understand their carbon footprint and reduce that. 

So the second we call livable cities. Livable societies and resilience. And so we really focus on the built environment and communities. So we want to make sure that we are creating neighborhoods and we’re creating smart cities and systems that are renewable, that are sustainable, that are positive environmentally. 

The third is resource management. So really circularity, reusing materials and reusing systems so that we’re not using more and more of our natural resources. 

And the last is around biodiversity and nature-positive. We do a lot of work around ecology and improving biodiverse systems, analyzing them, but also focusing on developing net-positive outcomes for communities. 

WILWERDING: Amazing. It sounds like there are opportunities for a lot of different students to get involved. So you talked a little bit about the global context that the company operates in. As you’re in charge of the Americas division, how are you positioning the Americas division to lead in sustainable solutions on a global scale, and what unique contributions do you see the region making to Ramboll’s worldwide mission? 

And then I have a second part of this question, but what do you think the most pivotal challenges are that you face within the energy transition and also maybe some of the other areas that you’re focusing on? 

GINYARD-JONES: Sure. Happy to talk about that. So I think in the Americas, one of the things that we have brought to Ramboll is size and growth. As I mentioned before, we are 10 years old. We’re over 25% of the company’s revenues now today. And we’re probably 10% or 11% of the people. So we’ve really driven a lot of great growth for the company. 

Our first acquisition was a company called Environ. They’re international. We’re a global environmental company. That is one of the things that we’ve actually brought and really driven forward for Ramboll globally. We’ve grown that business globally. And I think it’s probably the No. 1 revenue producer in Ramboll today. And buildings is probably No. 2. 

So I think we brought that. I think we brought a lot of—some of our industrial wastewater and industrial water process we brought as a capability to Ramboll. A lot of industrial processes. So those are things that we’ve really been able to contribute to Ramboll. And then your second question was? 

WILWERDING: Was what are the most pivotal challenges within the energy transition in the work that you’re doing? 

GINYARD-JONES: Yeah. So for us, the challenges now—and I think we all know that the direction of the new administration that is sort of away from energy transition and green. So those are some of the things that we are navigating as well in terms of the opportunities here. 

That’s not necessarily true for the rest of the world. But here, we’re looking at: What does that mean for us? We do believe that there’s—we know that offshore wind is one of those technologies that’s pretty much off the table. They’ve stopped the permitting. 

So one of our biggest areas of strength is offshore wind, but we may need to pause that here for now. And some of the environmental justice regulations that are being rolled back and environmental regulations in general. So those are things that may be some headwinds for us, but we definitely do see some opportunities to continue. 

I think even though there’s a lot of talk about fossil fuels, there’s still a lot of energy and opportunity for all of the above—for other renewable forms of energy because of the need that we have for energy. 

Because of data centers and the other things that we’re focused on, there’s a need for more energy sources. So the government may have a view, but I think there’s still lots of projects. There are a lot of companies that are really focused on driving energy transition and renewable projects and technologies. We’re definitely seeing more opportunities in onshore wind and solar. 

Last year, most of the base load capacity that was added to the Americas to the U.S. was solar out of anything else. So we see those things continuing. Those are driven by the states, and they’re driven by private actors. So we still see there being lots of opportunities in those areas. But we’re watching to see where we pivot. We still plan to be in this space, and there’s still lots of opportunities that we see. 

WILWERDING: Thank you. It’s exciting to hear that there are still opportunities. I think we can get caught in a news spiral, and it’s great to see that there’s still optimism. So impact is definitely embedded in everything that you do. How does Ramboll ensure that its solutions benefit the communities that are most impacted by the adverse effects of climate change? 

GINYARD-JONES: That is the essence of who we are. We really focus on impact for people. We’re a people-driven company. And that actually rings true for the work that we do. We have very strong environmental justice practices within Ramboll, and they’ve done a lot of work and have benefited from the Justice 40 and some of the policies and funding from the Biden administration. 

We’re still doing that work because we still work with communities, and they’re still interested in understanding those impacts. So we partner with communities. We partner with our clients who are doing work in those municipalities and in those communities to actually develop and to understand what the communities need. We’ve got a great practice on understanding community benefits plans. We’ve got ways that we can summarize those and provide those insights to communities and clients. So it’s something that we continue to do. 

WILWERDING: That’s great. I’ll hand it off to Missy. 

MARTIN: So I’m so excited to talk about this. We want to shift to your business structure. And Margo and I are part of the Center for Responsible Business, and something that we talk about often is alternative business models. And Ramboll has a very special model—an enterprise foundation ownership model. Would you just walk through what that means to you and what is your experience like working at a company with this model? 

GINYARD-JONES: Sure. So yes, it is a very different construct that most American businesses are not familiar with. So an enterprise foundation means that 100% of our shares are owned by a foundation. 

So our founders—our two founders, when they decided to turn over the company, they decided to create a foundation specifically that they would put 100% of their shares into to run it. The head board is a foundation, and they determine our ethics, they determine what we focus on. 

And what our founders said is: ‘We want this company to be focused on positive outcomes for people and positive outcomes for society.’ So that is our legacy. Those are our roots. We do have a for-profit or a profit-generating arm. So that’s Ramboll Group, and that’s who I work for. That’s who Michael works for because the objective of our business is to drive solutions into the business but also to make profit. 

We want to make profit and make money because what happens is that money gets plowed back into the foundation so that we can actually do more work. So the value of our structures is that we have a long-term view of what our purpose is, and the foundation drives the ethics of what types of projects we can and can’t do. 

So we’ll turn work away if it’s not aligned with our business plan. It doesn’t matter how profitable it is. We will turn it away. We are very focused on, again, longevity and making sure that we’re doing the right thing and making a difference. 

So that means some of the things that we work on in biodiversity, we take a long term view. And we know that we’re not going to get things done in a year or in a short term, but we focus on the long term and continue that until fruition. And that’s what really drives us. 

But I would say the thing that makes the big difference in our company is the fact that we are mission-driven. And people that come to work for us are mission-driven. They are focused on making impact. And I see that with all of our engineers, all of our team. They like to make a difference, and they can actually see the benefit of the projects that they implement. That’s the biggest difference that I’ve seen in Ramboll versus any other company that I’ve worked for. 

MARTIN: Do you see the foundation owned model expanding within North America, and how do you think other companies can adapt components of this structure? 

GINYARD-JONES: Well, I wish they would. I think it’s a really good model because, again, it’s purpose-driven. But what it really takes though—I mean, we’re very capitalistic here. We’re focused on what’s going to drive our business, and we don’t necessarily stick to one mission or another. So we change based on what’s happening in the environment. 

But what it really takes is the CEO or the owners of the company have to be committed to a state, a mission. And a lot of the companies that are foundation owned are committed to a long-term mission, and they don’t want to change from that. 

So I think that’s the first thing that would need to happen is that the companies have to be committed to it and have the financial backing to do that. We’ve seen that. Patagonia is a company that’s really driving that. We’ve seen some of that, and we’re seeing some on a lower, maybe a less prominent scale. So I think that’s definitely a good thing. 

A lot of what we think about is, a lot of nonprofits have this—the have similar views in terms of just being mission-driven and focusing on certain types of things. So I think we just need to have that driven more to be successful. 

I also do think that—we are profitable. We do focus on short-term profits and short-term gains. And that’s also a very important component. We don’t give that up. So I think if companies can recognize the fact that they can actually be profitable and also be mission-driven, then there’s the benefit. 

But what it takes is a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of discipline in terms of what you’re going to do, how you’re going to execute. So I think those are some of the things that would help companies to maybe think about things in this direction. 

MARTIN: I hope that we start seeing this model more here in the future. 

GINYARD-JONES: I actually have just one more thing. I think the other thing that is important is that we don’t have external shareholders. Everything is internal. So we are 100%—well, I would say 97% owned by the foundation, 3% owned by people, by the employees. So it’s all very internal. And that’s, I think, one of the biggest differences between a public company and ours. 

MARTIN: Looking now more toward the future of technology, especially as it relates to sustainability, which technologies do you predict will be most disruptive to the energy, architecture, and transportation industries? 

GINYARD-JONES: OK. Well, I think this is an easy one. AI is going to change-—that is probably the biggest technology that will disrupt everything, every industry, in a lot of positive—I think in a lot of positive ways. 

So we definitely see that happening in the work that we do and the work that our clients do. We use AI now internally. We have a Ramboll tech group so that we’ve developed our own use of AI to help with writing proposals and doing some analysis on results and things like that. But we are also using them in our work. 

We’re developing tools that will help with doing some of the investigative work around climate risk. We’ve got a product called HazAtlas. And it actually helps to identify climate risk in a lot of the projects that we’re working on. So I think those things will be very helpful and disruptive. 

Coming from the energy industry and energy side of things, there’s other technologies that are interesting that I think will be disruptive. I talked earlier about the fact that there’s a big need for energy, for electricity from a generation standpoint, transmission and distribution standpoint. And this is because of the rise of data centers and a lot of the electrification initiatives. 

So they’re starting to look at things like nuclear. So nuclear is coming back into play with small modular reactors. They’re looking to restart Three Mile Island and other major reactors. But there’s also some technology development in fusion, which could create—nothing that’s short term, but could create opportunities for clean technology as well. So there’s lots of things happening in that space, as well as in lots of those other areas as well. 

WILWERDING: Thank you, Cheryl. This has been so insightful, informative and inspiring. One of our favorite questions to leave the audience with—we’re living in an intense economic, political, and environmental times, but also an era of accelerated innovation, growth, and scientific development, like some of the things that you just mentioned. What keeps you up at night, and what helps keep you going, and what are you most excited about? 

GINYARD-JONES: That’s a good question. So what keeps me up at night? This first quarter of the year, a lot of that’s been keeping me up. I’m sure it’s keeping everybody up. There’s so much going on. And there’s this funny story. 

So I was at the grocery store a few weeks ago, and I saw a woman that I’d known. Our kids were in band together. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. So I put my groceries in my car, went to her car, and she was chomping on this loaf of French bread. 

She was just eating it. And I came up, and she looked like she was a little guilty. She said it just came out of the oven. I just wanted to get the taste of it. I just wanted to have it. And I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I have two candy bars in my purse. They’ll be gone by the time I get home.’ 

So everybody’s stressed out about different things that are happening today. And I think the whole uncertainty just makes us nervous. But what I know in my gut is that we will go through it. It’s just like COVID. It feels like the start of COVID. You don’t know what’s happening. These things are happening and they’re negative and they’re bad and everybody has to go home. When are we going to get out of it? 

So you go through that, but then you get out of it. So I know that that’s going to happen. I think that the environment that we’re in, we just have to see how things settle out. It’s hard to make decisions because we just don’t know. 

So that’s where I am. And I just am mindful of our organization because I know that people are nervous about that but also the personal impact. So it’s the business impact but also the personal. So just really mindful of that and working to help the organization through. 

What I’m most excited about is you, and it’s you, the students, the young people here because one of the things that—and we talked about this back in the green room—one of the things that I do know and I see from you is that you’re very focused on impact and the impact that you have in the world. 

And some of the things that we’ve gone through over the past five to 10 years are shaping your value system and what you want to do. And I just see a lot of desire and an ingenuity to really drive that. So I have a lot of faith in you. And just one more story about that. 

One of the things that we do is we go to two big job fairs because we’re trying to attract a lot of folks to the organization. And we went to this job fair and we were competing—it was huge fair. We were competing with the Amazons and the Googles of the world, who had these humongous booths and lots of lights and fun things, and we had this little nondescript booth. 

We tried to dress it up as much as we could, but the one thing we did have that everybody wanted were these tote bags. We had these tote bags. People were coming to our booth to get the tote bags. And what we said was, ‘I know you don’t know who we are, but if you want a tote bag, you have to listen to what we do.’

So we would bring them in and talk to them about the work that we did and the impact that we had, and students would come back two and three times to talk to us. So that’s how I know that that’s what’s important to you. And that’s what I’m hopeful about, that we can actually come up with those ideas and the ingenuity to really drive past some of the big challenges that we have today. 

STRAND: Now we’re going to open it up to some questions here. We’re going to start with a question. Punit, if you’d be so kind and if you’d tell us who you are. 

AUDIENCE: Hi, folks. So I’m a EWMBA student here at Haas and trying to figure things out just like many of you. And that kind of brings me to my question for you, Cheryl. When we start as either a full-time MBA student, myself, a part-time MBA, and then we also have executive MBAs in the crowd, many of us are still trying to figure out what we want to do next. 

The one advantage of being at Berkeley Haas is the world is your oyster. I mean, you can do whatever you want. There are experts from all kinds of areas here. How do we decide? Can you help tell us: How do we find that passion or the next thing we want to do? Thank you. 

GINYARD-JONES: Well, if you follow my story, you just do everything. You just do whatever’s there. What I would say is think about what your passion is. What are you passionate about, and what problems do you want to solve in the world? 

I think if we begin to think about that—I know when I was going through my career path, I didn’t really think about it. I thought about, ‘I just want to get a job.’ But if you think about the problems that you want to solve in the world, I think that will lead you to where your path could be. 

But your path is going to change. The world changes. You transform as you actually have experiences. So thinking about, ‘I’m going to be doing this in the next 20 years’—it’s not going to happen because the world changes, and you change. 

So I would just say start with where you think where your passion is and what problems you want to solve, and then look for those opportunities that are actually going to get you to that first step. But don’t worry if it’s not the right thing. Just pivot to something else. 

And again, you don’t actually know why you have a reason to do something. It may not work out, but then you learn something if you actually make the wrong step. I think you just keep those things in mind and think about what is that first step that you want to learn or that that’s going to help drive your passion. 

STRAND: Thanks, Cheryl. I hear in your words there being a Danish-based company. Of course, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who said, ‘We can only make sense of our life in retrospect, but we have to live it going forward.’ And I think there’s a lot of interesting wisdom just to be comfortable in knowing that you can’t know but to have a good direction. We have a good question here, please, if you’d be so kind. 

AUDIENCE: Hi, Cheryl, this is Anthony. Second-year MBA at Berkeley. I had the honor to visit Ramboll last month in Copenhagen. So very nice to see you here on campus. I have a question regarding the stakeholders. 

So do you believe Ramboll’s shareholder structure being 97% owned by the foundation and 3% by the employee helps the company stay true to its mission without being driven by the growth at all costs and the profit maximization model that most U.S. companies are built around, and do you think the U.S. companies, for example, the Big Tech companies here, should consider adopting a similar model? Why or why not? Thank you. 

GINYARD-JONES: Thank you. Great question. And I’m glad you visited our headquarters. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? So I think our structure would be 97% employee company owned and 3%, I think it drives the right behaviors in terms of what we want to do. 

Again, we are profitable, and we make sure that we have good business practices to be profitable and to make money. That’s important to us, especially in the short term, because the more money we make, the more we’re going to be able to plow back into the work that we do and grow. 

So it is really, really important. We have the same goals as any other company does. I do think that—as I said, I think companies that are for profit, I think they would benefit from having that philosophy. 

So I can’t say whether it’s better for them or not. For-profit companies do a lot of great things. Data center companies do good things to actually bring us into—to drive us forward. I would say that I’m not going to judge one way or the other whether that’s better or not. I definitely see the value of our model. And again, especially being more purpose-driven as a benefit. 

STRAND: Great. Question over here, please. If you’d be so kind as to say who you are. 

AUDIENCE: Yeah. Hi, Cheryl. Thank you for coming. My name is Andrew. I’m a Haas alum. I did the ‘Sustainable Capitalism in the Nordics?’ class last year. I was in [INAUDIBLE] 2024. 

But I guess my question is—and it’s in line with what you were talking about around the energy transition still going, moving away from things like offshore, still looking at batteries, solar, et cetera. To you, what is the difference between resiliency and sustainability? And then would you say that the market understands and comprehends that as well? 

CHERYL GINYARD-JONES: So resilience to me is that you keep going no matter what happens, right? You have a path, and you continue to move forward to be resilient. You don’t stop. And so that, to me, is what resilience is. 

Sustainable is the focus of creating something that will continue positively. So sustainable is making sure that our environment is sustainable. So it is the path that we’re continually thinking about: How do you make this better? 

But you have to be resilient in order to stay on that path because there’s so many things that actually will knock you off of that path. So resilience is making sure that we stay purposeful and driving forward. And that’s, I think, what we do at Ramboll. 

AUDIENCE: Thank you. 

STRAND: Question back here. If you’d be so kind to say who you are. 

AUDIENCE: Hi. I’m John. Third-year evening and weekend MBA. Also a part of this year’s ‘Sustainable Capitalism and the Nordics?’ and visited Ramboll. So my question also has to do with foundation ownership. 

I’m very curious for concrete examples that you might provide for how the structure of the company has enabled you to make certain decisions, either personally or that you’ve seen elsewhere within the company where profit was not the end goal where you were able to make a different decision because the foundation ownership structure enabled you to go a different path because it was more important or it tied differently into the purpose and values of the company. 

GINYARD-JONES: Yeah. I can give you some examples. So one of the things that we as acquired companies have had to grapple with is the fact that there’s certain work that we could not do anymore as part of Ramboll. So some of the work that we’ve done with tobacco companies, we’re not doing that anymore. We’re cycling that down. 

Some of the work that we’re doing with driving the fossil fuels, they’re things that we don’t do anymore. So it does have us think about the things that we will and will not do. And sometimes we debate about that, in terms of what makes the most sense. 

But the ethics of the company will determine what we will and won’t do. So we take those on. There is a loss in revenue, but we figure out other ways to actually to pivot to make that up. And we’ve not had any challenges in doing that. There’s lots of areas that we can drive. 

STRAND: All right. Head right over here. 

AUDIENCE: Hi. I’m Robin Clewley, and I’m part of the MBA program. About to go to Denmark in like two weeks, so I’m really excited. My question is—I know you’re in charge of the Americas, but what in your mind is the most surprising emerging economy that’s really breaking barriers as it relates to renewables and sustainability? 

GINYARD-JONES: That’s a good question. I don’t know. There’s not one in particular that I would say is doing that. I see that happening in a lot of companies in terms of the ones that we’re working with. We work with a lot of small companies that actually have great technologies that are really breaking into new areas and working on some major projects that will make a difference. But I don’t have any that I’ll say that come to mind. But I think there’s a lot of technology that’s being developed that we’re really following and supporting. 

STRAND: And we’re back here. 

AUDIENCE: Hi, Cheryl. I’m Persis Sberlo with the Center for Responsible Business. Thank you for being here. We often hear a lot, everything that the U.S. can learn from the Nordics in terms of how they do business and the values they bring to their work. 

In your position, which offers you the ability to see both sides, what have you seen that the U.S. has offered the Nordics in the way of doing business responsibly, ethically, whatever? What have you seen that has bolstered how they do business based on what we’ve taught them? 

GINYARD-JONES: So one of the things that I think we have taught them—they have taught us a lot. I think the thing that the Nordics focus on and what Denmark focuses on is: How do we all win together? It’s about a win-win, and how do we win together? 

I think one of the things that we have taught them is that we do things differently in the Americas, and that actually, there’s more than one way to get the positive solution and that there’s strategies that we diversify to make sure that we’re getting some of the wins that we want. 

One of the things about Denmark is that they are not—they are very—I’m thinking of the right word, but they’re not one to toot their own horn. They do great things, but they’re not going to stand up and say, ‘I do great things.’

We in America stand up and say, ‘We do great things.’ So one of the things that we’ve impressed upon them is that we actually have to be a bit more boastful about who we are and what we do and the impact that we have. 

And that’s what we’re trying to do here, is to make sure that we’re sharing the successes that we have because we want more and we want more people to join us to have those successes. So I would say that’s probably one of the bigger things that we’re teaching them, is that that’s how we win in this environment. 

STRAND: And Cheryl, that’s such a great example there. And sometimes they talk: The characterization of the U.S. talk the talk, and the Nordics walk the walk. What we really need is to walk the walk, to actually put bold ambitions explicitly out there, your targets. Because when everything is implicit, when you’re just walking, where are you going to? And so having these bold targets, I think, is a beautiful marriage between the U.S. and the Nordic sides of things. 

GINYARD-JONES: Absolutely. Just one more thing. So Ramboll in Denmark is a well-known quantity. They’re a well-known brand. Everyone knows who Ramboll is, but they don’t know who we are here. We have to have a different strategy to actually share that. We have more brand and more—we have to be a little bit more boisterous because nobody knows who we are, and we have so many more people. So that’s I think another one of the reasons why it’s important for them to recognize that. 

AUDIENCE: Hi, Cheryl. Thank you, so much. That was a fabulous talk. My name is Stefania. I’m a second-year undergraduate studying environmental economics and policy, and I’m also half Swedish, so I’m very interested in how the Nordics can drive sustainable change. 

And so my question was I often hear the Nordic model has been characterized as the stakeholder model compared to the U.S. shareholder model. So I was wondering, how does Ramboll actively engage with its stakeholders? 

GINYARD-JONES: How does Ramboll engage with its stakeholders? 

AUDIENCE: Mm-hmm. 

GINYARD-JONES: So Ramboll stakeholders are No. 1, our people. So we engage a lot with our people. Actually, we had a general AGM—annual general meeting—last week where they shared the results with the internal Ramboll population. So that’s one way. 

On the Ramboll board, the foundation board, there are four people that are elected from the body, from the Ramboll body to serve on the board. So that’s another way that we get the people’s voice into how we’re running the company. So there’s a lot of insight there. 

But we also see our clients as our stakeholders. So we engage a lot with our clients too and our customers. We’re very focused on being client-centric and hearing from them and responding to them. So that’s just in our DNA. Thank you, for the question. And I’m going to be in Stockholm next week, so I’m excited about that. 

STRAND: And Cheryl, if I could pose a question here on behalf, because we do have many students, of course, and as you emphasize, Ramboll is committed to growing the Americas and growing beyond revenues in Denmark, et cetera. 

Could you give us a sense for the kinds of talent that you’re looking for in Ramboll Americas? The different kinds of functions that you’re hiring for, where your growth is. And keep in mind, we got a lot of great talent here. Just planting the seed. But could you give us a sense? 

GINYARD-JONES: Oh, we’re definitely looking to hire talent. And in terms of our growth strategy, first of all, we are growing geographically. We are in certain spots here on the East Coast. We’re looking to hire more on the West Coast and in other parts of the country. 

So we’re really looking at driving business in different parts of the world. We’re looking to grow up in Canada and in Latin America. So we’re looking at all the Americas as our growth opportunity. And we are looking to grow in those market areas that I talked about. So environment and health. We definitely want strong people that have some expertise in environment and health. And energy and water.  We don’t actually have buildings and transport here as to date. That may change at some point in the future. But really those that can actually help solve problems. We’re looking for problem solvers and those that can really help to solve our clients’ problems and drive innovation. 

STRAND: And on the consulting, one of the persons we met with, Anne Mette Christiansen over in Copenhagen as part of Ramboll management consulting. Is management consulting going to be growing at all in the Americas? 

GINYARD-JONES: That is the plan. So management consulting is a small group for us now, but definitely growing and adds a lot of value. So management consulting is an area that we’re looking to grow. We’re looking to grow at all those different areas for sure. 

STRAND: Super. We have just a little over a minute left. And actually I’d like to come back. Margo, Missy, are there any final parting comments, questions that you’d like to share in our last minute or so? 

WILWERDING: I think I just want to extend a huge thank you. Thank you for flying out here to California. Thank you for sharing your story, your insights, your wisdom, your time with us. It’s really meaningful for us, especially because so many students are really into social impact. And it’s not a very stable time right now, especially for that area. So to hear your perspective and also all the hope you have is energizing for me. So, thank you. 

GINYARD-JONES: Thank you. Thank you. 

MARTIN: Yeah. I echo what Missy said. It’s been really great to hear and learn from you and we are so grateful. Thank you. 

GINYARD-JONES: Thank you. Appreciate being here. 

STRAND: And I just have a final comment just very quickly. For students, you’re welcome to stick here. We have the room for another hour. And John and another student—and I forgot who it is who’s to be leading. Thank you. Are going to be leading a conversation with Cheryl here on informal roundtable. We’ll kick that off in 10 minutes just to give a couple of seconds for us all to refresh and get out of here. 

And also, could I give this to you and for you to give to Cheryl, and can you hold that up for a nice picture that could be taken with Cheryl? Cheryl, it is such a pleasure and a privilege to have you back here at Berkeley. You know that you have good friends and allies here at the University of California, Berkeley. Would you all please join me? A thank you to Cheryl Jones from Ramboll. Thank you. 

GINYARD-JONES: Thank you, very much.