A pioneering environmental engineer who transformed sustainability from a compliance checkbox into a corporate mission, Tejashree Joshi has spent over two decades turning seemingly impossible green targets into ground realities at Godrej. Starting her journey when environmental engineering was still an emerging field, she helped build one of Mumbai’s largest eco-friendly campuses. Today, she believes sustainability nurturing the roots of change through innovation, inclusion, and unwavering commitment.
Xynteo’s Jivleen Kaur sat down with Tejashree to talk about her journey, what she has learned, and how she sees the future of sustainability in the corporate world.
What does your personal journey towards sustainability look like?
Tejashree: When my journey began with environmental engineering, it was quite a new and evolving field, still in its nascent stage—it interested me because it was different.
As I went through graduation, I learned that the field involved several engineering concepts. It also provided an overview of other environmental aspects beyond technical design, which introduced me to the preliminary concepts of sustainability.
My journey aligned with India’s evolution in sustainability. As new concepts emerged, I could contribute because of my strong engineering foundation. Understanding sustainability concepts was easier due to my environmental engineering background. Still, every new concept required learning—understanding what it meant generally for industry and specifically for my work.
I was fortunate to experience paradigm shifts like green building development. I was part of the first green building project at Godrej in Hyderabad. While we were probably already implementing many aspects, they weren’t structured within a framework. This was a great learning experience in the construction space.
When we started this journey 12-13 years ago, handling such enormous data seemed daunting. But as things progressed, we kept learning and improving.
At Godrej, I was fortunate because the owners never looked at environment only for compliance—they were always ahead of their time in pioneering sustainable efforts. For example, we set up our first water recycling plant in 1987-88, just as the Environment Protection Act came into picture. While industries were just beginning to understand wastewater treatment, we were already recycling water for landscape and other applications.
I was also lucky to be part of framing Godrej’s sustainability framework, ‘Good and Green’. Having seen those initial steps, I understand what companies go through—the confusion, hesitancy, and vagueness. As we crafted the framework and set seemingly impossible targets, we gradually gained confidence in achieving and exceeding them. It required the right intent and senior management support. Today, the organisation can proudly showcase its sustainability journey.
What are the skills and experiences that you’ve valued the most on this journey and have equipped you best?
Tejashree: Since I had an engineering background, which provides a technical base, I could understand how to execute new concepts. When something comes up, the real question is: How do we execute it? What systems will help deliver these concepts? What’s needed for on-ground implementation? My technical skills helped me understand these practical requirements.
However, this field doesn’t necessarily need engineering because sustainability is vast. There are different aspects—policy formation, research, and technical engineering. All these complement each other. As you work on sustainability and build concepts, you start realising what interests you, and those skills can be developed. While engineering design skills come through technical curriculum, other skills like auditing can be acquired through practice. Communication skills can be built—anyone interested in sustainability can develop these skills, except perhaps the specific design aspects.
Having a technical background gives an advantage in understanding details and implementation. But in sustainability, communication is crucial. You need to communicate effectively with all stakeholders, from senior management to ground-level executioners. You must elaborate concepts clearly, and this ability builds when you have hands-on experience. Just reading about something remains superficial. My belief is you need to get your hands dirty.
Once you’ve actually done the work, you don’t need fancy language to communicate—your intent comes through when talking about something you’ve experienced. If I were to advise someone on building skills, I’d say: try doing it. Sustainability involves many trials and customisation, and that’s how you keep learning. There’s no loss in this—it’s always a gain.
What opportunities have been the most important to making progress in your sustainability journey?
Tejashree: I’ve been fortunate to follow the sustainability journey as our country progressed since the opening of the economy. Green buildings, which I mentioned earlier, was one of those great early opportunities in my career.
Beyond that, there are many aspects in reporting, evaluating environmental footprints of operations, and life cycle analysis. This is a very important tool today, playing a pivotal role in deciding actions and direction for improving sustainability. Technical skills in reporting, analysis, and data interpretation are crucial—you need to measure what you’re doing and build insights from collected data. This is important to both prove effectiveness and decide future directions.
Many tools are available today. The more you explore, the more you discover tools you’d like to learn. Frameworks are also very important in sustainability. Starting from basic ones like ISO 14000 as an environmental management system, to today’s different frameworks for reporting and auditing—all give insights into important areas for evaluation and analysis. This understanding helps create more robust activities and sustainability programs.
As I mentioned, sustainability largely involves acquired skills. Whatever focus area you pursue, you need to keep exploring what’s available and upcoming. I was fortunate that my organisation facilitated many learning aspects. Learning and development is a strong focus at this company, and management was very inclined towards adopting new concepts and aligning the organisation with them. The company sponsored programmes and made learning opportunities available, followed by hands-on implementation within the organisation.
I’ve spent more than 20 years in this company, and many people ask why I haven’t changed jobs. The main reason is that I kept getting opportunities to learn. As mentioned, the learning curve has been quite steep, but my responsibilities have grown too. I’m happy that I could deliver value on those responsibilities and never felt any stagnancy because this has been an evolving area of expertise. I’ve been given opportunities to try many new things and see how we can keep adopting them in the company.
Once you’ve done something yourself, you have the authority to speak about it… Then convincing others isn’t difficult. You should know what you’re going to talk about.
What barriers have you faced and how have you overcome them?
Tejashree: Personally, I didn’t view anything as a big barrier. If you believe in yourself, your educational background, and your capability to understand and implement, real barriers are very momentary and small.
However, looking at the overall space—while now you see many women in sustainability, which has led to good gender equity—that wasn’t the case for environmental engineering some years ago. I was probably one of very few women in this field. Going to the ground to get projects executed, working with the workforce—all of this needed belief in yourself, and fortunately, the company supported me. I had great colleagues from civil engineering and other engineering trades who never made me feel like I was the odd person out.
But this also requires your own belief that you are equal to others who are there on the ground. That confidence gives you authority, and then people start believing in you as someone who can get things done. I’m of the view that barriers are in your mind—if you take that step and try to address them, many people support you. That’s been my personal experience, so there haven’t been many large barriers.
Once you’ve done something yourself, you have the authority to speak about it. That’s what I’ve been building. I’ve always thought that I need to be very sure about what I’m speaking and have those concepts very clear in my mind. Then convincing others isn’t difficult. You should know what you’re going to talk about.
While there’s more gender equity in the sector now, how has your experience been? And for those who may feel like a minority voice, what support or changes would help them feel more included?
Tejashree: Today you see a lot of women leading sustainability functions in many organisations, and I think that’s a big change over my career. The engineering field still isn’t as diverse as sustainability is now, but it works both ways. Often, women are hesitant to get into core engineering and be on the ground. There’s something in our minds that stops us, thinking it’s not our cup of tea.
But it’s not like that. In fact, believe me, it’s more enjoyable for me to be in the field executing a project than to be in office talking about something.
The most important thing to make people hear you, as I was saying, is to be thorough in what you’re going to talk about or do. Have your concepts very clear, and then you start making an impact—people start listening to you. Once they know that when I’m telling something, I know what I’m speaking about, automatically that respect reciprocates. That’s been my experience.
Whether it’s explicitly mentioned or sometimes it just comes through in the way people start looking at you and dealing with you—initially, there is some questioning about whether you’re going to be taken seriously. But that’s where it’s important to tell people, ‘I know what I’m talking about. I know my subject, so you need to do what I’m saying.’ That’s where your preparation and personal confidence come into picture. Later on, it becomes an easy journey.
You can make yourself heard when people know you’re a no-nonsense person who knows what they’re saying. Initially, that hesitancy is there, and it could be both ways—there are many things which happen from our side, and there are many preconceived notions from the other side. But yes, initially that resistance needs breaking, and then once you’re there, making yourself heard becomes easier. It’s a learning process, frankly. You keep doing it and start knowing those skills. So in engineering, yes, you are still probably a minority voice, but not in sustainability.
What has been your proudest achievement?
Tejashree: For me, achievement isn’t about winning awards for yourself or your organisation. It’s about achieving what you set out to do. When we crafted our sustainability goals in 2010, we set steep targets—improving water efficiency by 40%, making the organisation water positive and so on. Initially, I was at a loss how to achieve this across our large organisation with 14 different businesses manufacturing varied products. The real challenge was aligning all these businesses to the same goal and helping them deliver on the same commitment.
Talking to people, convincing them, while simultaneously looking at engineering solutions for each business and location seemed impossible, especially with growing businesses. But when you start looking at efficiency, learn the concepts and skills, you identify impact areas. I’m proud that I could steer the organisation on these result areas over the last decade and achieve almost all our initial targets.
Another significant achievement involves waste management at our large Mumbai campus—one of the biggest and greenest campuses. But being green isn’t just about having trees; it’s about the basics sustaining this. We realised our huge campus, with industrial sectors, IT companies, residential colonies, schools, community centres, and hospitals, was generating massive waste going to Mumbai’s overflowing landfills. After inventorying, we found the campus generated around 10 tonnes of waste daily.
We had to start from scratch, building partner capabilities and identifying processes. The biggest challenge was finding people to work in waste management. We brought in scavengers from dumping grounds, extending industrial benefits like insurance and provident fund. Many didn’t even have identification or bank accounts—some didn’t know their birth dates. We worked on empowering them, helping them adjust to eight-hour industrial shifts. Slowly, they realised the benefits of steady income, safety, and better working conditions.
Today, I’m proud that the entire campus doesn’t send even a gram of waste to dumping grounds. We even found solutions for non-recyclable waste through cement plant co-processing, making the campus truly zero-waste to landfill. It’s not about showing people, but knowing yourself that you’re truthfully doing what you meant to do.
Additionally, we’re conserving one of the largest privately- owned mangrove forests in Mumbai, demonstrating how industry and nature can coexist symbiotically. We’ve focused on protecting rather than intervening—nature knows how to help itself. Our mangroves, with trees as tall as 40-50 feet, show how responsible upstream activities allow forests to thrive. We’ve also worked on responsible green spaces, focusing on biodiversity, interconnected green spaces, and sustaining local flora and fauna.
How do you see the future of the CSO role/sustainability teams in the board room?
Tejashree: I think CSO roles are important, largely due to reporting requirements. We need to credit entities like SEBI who are mandating industry compliance. That’s a reality—compliance requirements are often trigger points that push organisations to do something.
Reporting plays a big role today in bringing importance to the CSO position because when you’re declaring something, you need to be doing it and have assurance that you’ve done it. Otherwise, investors, customers, and stakeholders may not believe you because there’s also a lot of greenwashing in the industry. To put responsibility and accountability in place, the CSO position is becoming more important.
This is happening because the board is talking about it, asking questions, and expecting companies to set relevant targets and deliver. It’s crucial because you need to look at this space as rigorously as your business performance. Today, you can’t keep pace with stakeholder expectations without having confidence that what you’re stating is actually being delivered.
I just hope it doesn’t remain limited to reporting importance alone. It should be based on needs assessment and where you can have some control over what you’re doing. We’ve definitely progressed from where we started, but many gaps are getting filled because of policy compulsions.
The importance will keep growing as more evolution happens and more transparency is expected. But my only concern is that it shouldn’t just be limited to compliance.
Are there any women role models that have inspired you?
Tejashree: To be very frank with you, not in this space. There have been very few people I could look up to, forget about women. We were just beginning the whole journey, really, and trying to learn everything on our own. There was nobody to even guide us on how to do it.
As far as trying out new things is concerned, I look up to many women CEOs—they dared to do it, they could achieve that, so why not me? It’s that kind of thing. Not any one person that I can name, but many instances of such leaders who actually keep inspiring me.
But I would say my real hero is my father. He never held us back and kept inspiring and encouraging us. I’ve learned so much from him and looked up to him—he has been my role model in everything that I pursued.
Do you have any advice for women starting out in careers in energy transition/ decarbonisation or sustainability in general?
Tejashree: Now is the best time to get into sustainability. I don’t think I am great enough to advise anybody, but what I’ve learned in my career is to not hesitate in pursuing what you actually want to. The barriers are in your mind. Today, there’s such an enabling environment—most people don’t view you as a “woman” because women are in all fields, they’ve broken that myth and already demonstrated they can do things. That’s already done. So, whatever you like to do, whatever you believe in doing, just go there and do it. Like I said, if there are barriers in your mind, just overcome them and the sky is the limit. Just do it, and things will fall in place.
There’s no shortcut to hard work. Your best teacher is your own experience because it stays with you. That’s tested knowledge which nobody else can give you—you have to learn it yourself. In every situation, you actually go back to your own past and try to see those alignments, what you’ve done, what was right and wrong, and how to avoid those wrongs. That’s how you keep evolving in decision-making as a leader because people are looking up to you for decisions.
You need to be forthright that yes, you make mistakes—every human makes mistakes. But realising what they were and learning from them is very important. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes—in fact, they teach you a lot. Believe in yourself and keep taking those decisions where required. Be responsible for whatever decision you take.
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