Insights from an SVP Sustainability: A Controlling Mindset and AI for Efficient Sustainability

Sustainability Hero: Svea from Heraeus

Svea Scherleithner has been working as an advisor for Sunhat since January 2025 and enriches the team with her extensive experience in the field of sustainability. She was the head of the Sustainability Team at Heraeus Precious Metals, a business unit of the Heraeus Group. The company is one of the world's leading companies in the trading and processing of precious metals. In her role, she is responsible for global sustainability activities and drives the sustainable transformation.

Svea Scherleithner has a degree in business administration from the University of Mannheim. Before joining the sustainability department, she held various positions in finance, production planning and human resources at Heraeus Precious Metals and in the automotive industry.

Svea and Sunhat

What made you decide to take on an advisor role at Sunhat?

I was particularly enthusiastic about the two topics of sustainability and digitalization at Sunhat. I find it exciting to think together about how we can become even better in this area. Especially in sustainability management, which is still developing rapidly in companies, the big question is: how can we free up more time for the really value-adding, substantive work? It's not just about filling out questionnaires, processing ratings or creating reports, but about driving real change. I've worked in large corporations for many years, so it's a nice change for me to now also be part of a smaller, very passionate team and experience the dynamism and enthusiasm of a start-up.

Data Focused Work

You originally come from the controlling sector — how does this background help you today?

An exciting question. In fact, there are many parallels here. In the financial sector, there is a strong focus on data, processes and speed, and there are a large number of tools that offer efficient solutions for this. This approach is of course also extremely important in the area of sustainability. What is new here is the strong focus on qualitative data and texts, which makes it more difficult to standardize and automate processes.

My tip: It helps to analyze data-driven where there is potential for optimization and what you should really focus on. In sustainability management in particular, it is important to examine exactly which tools we can use to save time or improve processes in order to create more space for the really important, substantive issues.

Driving Real Change

What do you see as the biggest challenges for companies in the area of sustainability, and how can AI support them?

Sustainability teams are often very small and are faced with a mountain of administrative tasks — from ratings and answering customer questionnaires to preparing the annual sustainability report. This takes time away from the really value-creating topics that make a difference in the company. This is where AI can help to automate processes and free up time for administrative tasks.

This gives sustainability experts the freedom to support the core business. In sales, for example, when it comes to finding sustainable strategies and solutions for our customers and communicating them credibly. Or in the operational areas when it comes to saving energy costs and making processes more sustainable. Ultimately, this also strengthens the role of the sustainability teams, because they are no longer “just” perceived as being responsible for the sustainability report, but are driving real change.