Meeting Our Board of Directors & Advisors: Chelsea Perino

Chelsea Perino, Managing Director at GREEN Hospitality

1. Describe to us who Chelsea Perino is? 

My name is Chelsea Perino. I am the Managing Director of Global Marketing and Communications at the Executive Centre.

2. Why did you decide to be involved with GREEN Hospitality? How does your expertise fit in with becoming a board member at GREEN Hospitality? 

I think GREEN Hospitality is a wonderful cause, and carbon neutrality and sustainability, especially in the built environment, are issues that we talk about quite a lot at The Executive Centre. Extending that conversation, and bringing all the knowledge that I've acquired through my work with The Executive Centre and all of the organizations that I am a part of, is something that I can definitely contribute to GREEN Hospitality. It also explains why I was interested in being a part of the organisation. 

3. What are your aspirations for GREEN Hospitality and its important work in advancing sustainability? 

The hospitality industry, especially post-Covid, is seeing a resurgence. This means that there is an opportunity also to evaluate what kinds of sustainability practices organisations are implementing. The challenge is that resources are small, especially when it comes to sustainability teams; even at international organizations, people don't really understand where to start. Especially for organizations that are perhaps less progressed on that timeline, it can feel quite overwhelming. This is where the important role played by GREEN Hospitality comes in, to fill that void and act as a partner with a huge database of resources, knowledge, and experience. I really hope that GREEN Hospitality will help these businesses take the first step and realise their value, and continue to put more resources towards making a difference.

4. What is your take on effective leadership, especially when it comes to sustainability plans? 

One of the biggest challenges facing organisations is not only what to do from a sustainability perspective, but where to start to create tangible growth and impact to demonstrate to stakeholders. It can be overwhelming for an organisation to go from doing zero carbon reduction work to achieving carbon neutrality in 2040. 

GREEN Hospitality is making a big effort to aggregate different best practices and case studies, and use these resources to help inform businesses and say, look here, this is where you can start and here's how you can show the impact that you're having to your key stakeholders, so that it justifies more investment into sustainability. I think that leadership is really important in advancing sustainability actions, and it is where GREEN Hospitality can contribute.

5. How do you hope to contribute to GREEN Hospitality as its Managing Director?

What I hope to contribute is just to say, alright, what doors do we need to unlock here to start making a difference, where are we finding the biggest challenges, and who from my network can I introduce to GREEN Hospitality to hopefully open doors that we wouldn't have necessarily been able to do so on our own. The last piece is also about taking my marketing and communications background, and contributing ideas on how we can build awareness, reach new audiences, generate more leads, and help bring that communications angle to promote the work we do. The truth is, you can come up with really great ideas, but if nobody knows about them, they won't have the impact that we hope they would.