Joakim Reiter: Making a Global Impact through Business
‘Perspectives’ is a joint project of The Beautiful Truth and Leaders on Purpose. During the 6th annual Leaders on Purpose CEO Summit in September 2023, The Beautiful Truth conducted interviews with influential corporate leaders and thought leaders. The goal was to gain insight into their perspectives on purposeful business and answer the question: what actions should our businesses take in the current historical context?
Joakim Reiter is Vodafone’s Chief External and Corporate Affairs Officer. Before joining Vodafone, he was Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
“While we always had values, we needed to ensure we were mobilising the power of our 100,000 employees behind a shared vision.”
You moved from the UN to Vodafone. Why did you switch from the public sector to the private sector?
I decided to join Vodafone for a very simple reason: business is instrumental in achieving societal objectives. I want the company I work for to have enormous potential to improve people’s lives.
What are your biggest concerns for the planet?
Frankly, the Sustainable Development Goals are off track with six years left to go. Twelve per cent are on track, but the vast majority are falling behind. We therefore need a mass mobilisation of effort from the entire international community, including the business sector and civil society. We must look at ourselves in the mirror and ask: “What more can we do?” Because this is not good enough.
How did Vodafone go from a company with a purpose to a truly purpose-led organisation?
A few years ago at Vodafone, we took a step back and said: “Can we be more systematic in how we contribute and become a truly purpose-led company?” While we always had values, we needed to ensure we were mobilising the power of our 100,000 employees behind a shared vision. We could then translate that into a programme of activities to tackle some of the more intractable challenges faced by the many communities we serve.
“We have put a lot of emphasis on creating a better social contract irrespective of someone’s background so that everyone has the same chance of benefiting from the digital revolution.”
What are some of the societal challenges that Vodafone is helping to solve?
Mobile telephony plays an important role in financial inclusion – one example is ensuring that smallholder farmers, often led by women, can have higher yields and earn a better living.
The second pillar of what we do is to address the climate crisis. Companies like ours are usually not in the spotlight for contributing to tackling the climate crisis, but we play a meaningful role. For example, in Europe, we have moved entirely to renewable energy for all of our operations, and we’re working very hard to achieve the same in Africa by 2025. We are also leveraging our technology to help other sectors decarbonise.
Why do you believe it’s the role of business to engage in these challenges facing the planet?
The reality is that our customers, the people we service every day, expect us to partner with them in their life journey. For example: how can they use mobile telephony for healthcare and access to education? We need to be there for all facets of life, accessing different pain points to improve our customers’ lives. In doing so, we build a much closer relationship with our customers. They become part of our Vodafone community.
We have put a lot of emphasis on creating a better social contract irrespective of someone’s background so that everyone has the same chance of benefiting from the digital revolution. That, for me, is a legitimately good business that has an enormously beneficial impact on society and the individuals we serve.
