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October 30, 2024

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Naguib: 'Sustainability, supplier diversity, social impact — it’s a journey,”

By Diane Sears

Riding from the Willamette Valley across a mountain range to the coast of Oregon, Denise Naguib saw something she had never experienced before in the U.S. or her native Egypt. Acres of trees had been cut down and removed from the hills in a practice known as clear-cutting. It made an impression on the fourth grader. When her teacher assigned her class to write letters to the governor about anything they wanted, she knew she had to speak up.

To her surprise, she received a letter back. It meant she had been heard. Today, as global vice president of sustainability and supplier diversity for Marriott International Inc., Naguib looks back on that time in her life as one of several turning points. “I remember feeling empowered, like ‘Hey, we can do something about this.’” 

Since early childhood, Naguib had wanted to be a pediatrician. “I was infatuated with medicine,” she said. “I wanted to fix all the kids in the neighborhood. I used to gather everybody and issue them big bandages.” But in college at the University of Oregon, she was on a pre-med track, working in a neuroscience lab, when her roommates recommended that she take a class they found fascinating: a social studies course about the tropical ecosystems of Southeast Asia. 

“Little did I know this was going to be the pivot of my lifetime,” she said. “That class opened my eyes to some of the most devastating impacts that were happening around the world: a giant hole in the ozone, the tropical rainforests being decimated, pollution.” 

Naguib knew she needed to do something. “I had no idea what it was I was going to do, but I knew that these environmental disasters were not OK. Something inside of me instantly lit on fire,” she said

There was no sustainability degree available at the time, so she searched for courses that would help her understand ecology. She ended up getting a degree in geography but took classes focused on environmental impacts. 

During school breaks, Naguib worked at a summer camp on Catalina Island off the coast of California, teaching children how to snorkel in the ocean and appreciate the beauty of the kelp forest. After graduation, she took a full-time job there, working in partnership with French oceanographic explorer and environmentalist Jean-Michel Cousteau. A son of the famous French ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, he runs an organization called the Ocean Futures Society. 

Naguib and Cousteau implemented an environmental education program at The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman. “That was the connection to where I am now,” she said. Eventually she implemented that program one location at a time for The Ritz-Carlton and then moved to the corporate office to develop the first sustainability strategy for The Ritz-Carlton brand and Marriott International. 

“Sustainability, supplier diversity, social impact — it’s a journey,” Naguib said. “At Marriott, we have had this [statement] as part of our core values since 1927 when the company started serving our world. It’s a very important element of how we feel we can -- and should -- show up as a company to the world. But at the end of the day, it takes people to make the impact and the progress.”

Supplier Diversity

Today Naguib is responsible for leading the team at Marriott that develops strategy, programs and implementation for the company’s environmental sustainability and global supplier diversity efforts. 

“I partner with my counterpart on the social impact team to overarchingly lead our company’s ESG [environmental, social and governance] strategy called Serve 360, so every day looks very different,” she said. “Ultimately, we are working toward a big set of goals as a company.” Those goals include reducing carbon emissions and food waste, sourcing responsibly, and increasing the diversity of the supply chain. 

Marriott wants to connect with businesses owned by women, minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, veterans and people with disabilities. “My team’s job is to connect the dots between the business need and the suppliers that could potentially be a fit for that business,” Naguib said. 

When she took on the role, she knew little about supplier diversity. “One of the biggest things that surprised me was how companies did the math — articulating the progress by indicating the percentage of inclusion, but they had left things out of the denominator.” 

“We shifted to measuring progress based directly on spend, not a percentage. This is a way that we know we can measure cleanly and clearly,” she said. She compares it to carbon emissions data, which has “clean math” behind it and not a lot of ways to measure it. 

Companies that want to become suppliers for Marriott must realize what the hospitality company can and cannot control, Naguib said. Most of the hotels that carry the flag of one of Marriott’s brands are not owned by the corporation. The hotel giant encompasses a portfolio of more than 30 brands, including some of the most iconic in travel, like The Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Marriott Hotels and Resorts, Sheraton, and Courtyard by Marriott.

Since Marriott does not own or build the hotels, inquiries into construction work are not going to be relevant. Potential suppliers should instead seek contracts in food and beverage or guest room items that are consistent across brands — such as linens, textiles, amenities and bottled water. Marriott has identified responsible sourcing goals in 10 priority categories, and the criteria for each are listed on the company’s website. 

“We want to make sure that if we are thinking of sourcing a more sustainable seafood, we understand the implications that harvesting it has on both the environment of the sea as well as the fisherfolk,” Naguib said. “When we’re thinking ‘How do we buy a better egg?’, we need to be thinking, ‘How do we make sure we’re doing so from chickens that are managed effectively and have less environmental impact downstream on waste and water systems, for example, as well as the social impacts of managing this production?’”

Sustainability

Naguib’s team is also responsible for developing tools, resources, programs and communications for hotels under Marriott’s portfolio of brands to help them understand how they can tackle what she calls “big, hairy, complicated things.” For instance, she said, “We want to reduce food waste by 50%, that’s a goal. But if you just tell people, ‘Go reduce food waste,’ they might not know where to go, how to start.”

Marriott helps them by giving tips, tools and strategies for thinking differently about how much food they purchase, prepare and serve. “There’s always inevitably going to be waste,” Naguib said. “So, what can you do with that? What are some ways to repurpose food?”

That work is not done in a silo, she said. It is done in partnership with other disciplines across the business, including culinary, engineering, food & beverage and rooms teams.

“We help connect the dots for running more responsible hotels holistically,” Naguib said. “We try to use the power of our subject matter expertise as sustainability practitioners -- tied in with the hospitality professionals that we get to work with every day -- and deliver pathways for our hotels to make meaningful progress. And then on the back side, we do all the reporting. We support the annual Serve 360 report, and we produce the internal scorecards for measuring progress.”

Part of the Ecosystem

Naguib said it sometimes surprises her how many people do not understand the connections between sustainability, social and economic progress. She sees these priorities as a three-legged stool, and it’s important that all of them are in balance. “If you’re doing things that are good for the environment but are not economically sound, or doing things for people that aren’t environmentally sound, then the stool is going to break,” she said. “You’re going to fall over.”

Her passion for sustainability work, developed all the way back in her childhood and college years, shows in the way she leads teams and educates others in the Marriott family. “I just presented to our full intern group a couple of weeks ago,” she said, “and I said to them, ‘Listen, the planet’s going to be just fine without us. Sustainability is not about saving the planet. It’s about saving ourselves. Let’s be real about this: People are the ones who need this planet to survive effectively. We need clean water. We need air. We need food.’

“So, if we are not part of this ecosystem, the ecosystem is going to fix itself,” Naguib continued. “All the stuff that we did to impact it will self-correct in due time. The goal, for me, is I want to survive on this planet, and I want to thrive on this planet. For me, for the next generation, for my community, I think about, ‘What is our role and responsibility as a species, to make sure that our species can be successful?’”

Although people like Naguib help uphold the message, the responsibility of making an impact extends to everyone around the world, she said: “It takes all of us really leaning in — how we understand our role and, more importantly than ever, feeling empowered as individuals, as part of communities, to make an impact no matter what your job is. It’s not just about being a sustainability or diversity practitioner. Those are not the only places where you can drive change and make an impact. It is really on us, and everything we do and touch and make decisions on, to think about how we leverage those opportunities to make changes and be headed in the right direction.” 

To learn more about Marriott’s Sustainability and Social Impact Goals, visit serve360.marriott.com.