Inside BSR: Q&A with Cecilie Jørgensen

Authors

• Cecilie Jørgensen

  Former Manager, BSR

Inside BSR is our monthly series featuring BSR team members from around the world.

This month, we connected with Cecilie Jørgensen, a Manager based in Copenhagen.

Tell us a bit about your background. Where are you from, and where are you based? What does a day in your life look like?

I am Danish and grew up in a city in Jutland, the Peninsula connected to Germany.

Last year, my partner and I decided, like so many others, to move out of the city. We bought a small house in a city outside of Copenhagen, in which we spend a lot of time renovating and raising our puppy, Nutella. In fact, Nutella is the BSR Copenhagen office dog, and her main responsibility is to get as many cuddles as possible. She is stellar in this kind of project work!

I have been fortunate enough to have good working-from-home flex options, so after moving out of Copenhagen, I work regularly from home 2-3 times a week. A typical day often consists of quality time with Nutella and my partner or colleagues and friends. I also enjoy playing basketball and exercising.

How did you first get involved in sustainable business? How long have you been at BSR? What is your current role, and what does that entail?

My family and friends know me as a tireless feminist. So, it did not come as a surprise to them when I chose to study Diversity and Change Management at Copenhagen Business School. I joined BSR in 2018 as an intern, and I was immediately brought into multiple projects, most of them with a focus on social impact.

It has been almost four years since I started at BSR, and I recently got promoted to a Manager role in our Equity, Inclusion and Justice (EIJ) team. Most of my work is centered around EIJ and social impact, but I do occasionally support projects in other areas of expertise, such as human rights and supply chains. I am currently working on developing a “glocal” economic empowerment strategy for a large global company. This is a particularly interesting project due to the many challenges that can arise when a global company must take cultural and legal contexts of different operating countries and allow for flexibility. Although I am working with companies across the world, I’m also often engaging with our Nordic members on EIJ issues specific to the region, which I truly enjoy as it feels like you become an extended part of their teams!

I like to say that I have “many hats” at BSR. Besides the project work on EIJ with our members, I also have the “hat” of being the Associate and Copenhagen Representative in our People Council. The People Council is one of BSR’s governing bodies with representation across geographies and cohorts: it makes people decisions related to processes and priorities impacting our global team.

I was appointed in February 2021 and have continued to build an Associate community within BSR, where open and honest communication are encouraged. I spend a lot of time connecting with our amazing Associates across all our offices to hear from them firsthand what they enjoy about their work and how we as BSR can improve as an organization. Creating a culture of belonging by ensuring people’s voices are heard—whether at BSR or through projects with members—is what really drives me in my work.

What are some interesting projects that you get to work on as part of your role at BSR? What do you enjoy about them?

One of my first projects at BSR was to support the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition (GISC). Since then, I have been closely involved with BSR’s work on social impact in the supply chains, and most recently I have been part of the project team on Keeping Workers in the Loop. Other than that, I work on a variety of projects closely connected to this topic, and EIJ in general, but often with a focus on gender.

I really enjoy engaging with members who are just as passionate about these topics as we are. Trying to help them navigate these challenging issues and ensuring they have the right conditions for creating the change needed internally is one of the best parts of my work.

What are you looking forward to in 2022?

I am truly looking forward to meeting my colleagues from around the world at our BSR All-Staff Retreat! Although I’ve worked at BSR for nearly four years, I still have not met many of my colleagues in person, even though we may work together on a daily basis (and I think we all agree by now that Zoom fatigue is real).

Lastly, I am getting married to my partner in May as well—and Nutella is of course attending the wedding!