09.22.2026 Bahar Gidwani
In 2021, CSRHub CEO Cynthia Figge sat on a CPOstrategy Podcast panel with three other CEOs to talk about a decade of digital transformation in procurement. Five years on, the arguments have not aged. They have become the default view. Here are the passages that hold up best, each with its clip.
1. ESG is financial
Cynthia Figge
CEO and Cofounder, CSRHub
The line that has aged best. Sustainability data used to be a standalone dataset that finance teams did not know how to use:
“Companies haven’t quite understood how do we now bring in what used to be called non-financial, and what I think everyone now understands is clearly ESG is financial. But how do we actually integrate that?”
Watch this moment in the full conversation: 28:42
2. Dark data
Most of a supply chain is small companies that publish very little about how they perform. Cynthia called it dark data, and named the two ways to see into it:
“One of the challenges, at least from a sustainability point of view, is what we’ve called dark data: that many smaller suppliers actually do not reveal very much about how they’re performing. There’s two ways to get at that. One is self-disclosure or self-reported data. The other is to collect third-party, outside data.”
Watch this moment in the full conversation: 14:21
That second route is what CSRHub is built on. It is also why, at 29:38, she names climate change and Scope 3 as the pressure that will force better supply-chain data. We looked at how much that data varies by source in Scope 1, 2 and 3 Carbon Measurements Show Big Variations Among Data Sources.
3. Screening before the bad event
ESG data used to be backward-looking: something bad happens, then the news ripples through the supply chain. The change the panel described is companies wanting environment, social and governance performance up front, so they can screen for risk before the event, not after it.
Watch this moment in the full conversation: 21:17
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4. Board diversity as a supplier metric
In 2021 it was surprising that a customer would scrutinise a supplier’s board diversity as a key performance indicator, and that suppliers would be asked to conform to the UN Global Compact and the SDGs. Today it is a standard questionnaire item.
Watch this moment in the full conversation: 35:16
5. Another CEO, same conclusion
Lance Younger
CEO and Founder, ProcureTech
Asked for his own closing priority, Lance Younger did not pick a technology:
“Right now I’m kind of all in behind Cynthia, and anything and everything that’s related to sustainability in the broadest sense of the word. Many organisations will find their own level with regards to what’s the best data for them, but I think we need to over-index.”
Watch this moment in the full conversation: 41:18
The full conversation
The panel: Cynthia Figge (CEO and Cofounder, CSRHub), Ilya Levtov (Co-founder and CEO, Craft), Dr. Aleksandr Yampolskiy (Co-founder and CEO, SecurityScorecard) and Lance Younger (CEO and Founder, ProcureTech), hosted by Andrew Woods of B2E Media for The CPOstrategy Podcast (42 minutes, opens in a new tab). Our original write-up from 2021 is here.
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About CSRHub
CSRHub provides access to the world’s largest corporate social responsibility and sustainability database, powered by expert consensus sustainability ratings, information, and tools. Clients use CSRHub’s decisive data platform for global benchmarking, supply and value chain risk assessment and compliance readiness solutions. Founded in 2007, CSRHub covers 62,000 public and private companies, and provides ESG performance scores on 42,000 companies from 134 industries in 158 countries. Our Big Data platform uses algorithms to aggregate, normalize and weight ESG metrics from 1,000 sources to produce a strong consensus signal on corporate sustainability performance.
Cynthia Figge is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement who co-founded EKOS International in 1996, one of the first consultancies integrating sustainability and corporate strategy. Cynthia is CEO and Cofounder of CSRHub. Cynthia has worked with major organizations including BNSF, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Dow Jones, and REI to help craft sustainability strategy integrated with business. She was an Officer of LIN Broadcasting/McCaw Cellular leading new services development, and started a new “Greenfield” mill with Weyerhaeuser. She serves as Advisor to media and technology companies, and served as President of the Board of Sustainable Seattle. Cynthia has an MBA from Harvard Business School. Cynthia is based in the Seattle area.
