“I, too, am a prisoner of hope.”
[While in Paris at the Sustain 2025 annual conference, Olesya Egorova had her portrait taken and shared her enthusiasm about the conference’s highlights.]
Finding Purpose Through a Mid-Career Pivot: Olesya Egorova’s Journey to Sustainable Purchasing
Olesya Egorova joined Verallia nearly three years ago, but her path there wasn’t a linear one. After more than a decade at Legrand Cable Management and halfway through her professional career, a chance decision at age 40 set her on an unexpected course.
Fluent in Russian, English, and French, Olesya decided to take a skills assessment – a process that ultimately led her back to the classroom. She enrolled in the International Business Development Management program at the SmartCAMPUS by CCI in France, with one key step remaining: finding the right host company for her work-study placement.
As luck would have it, Verallia was looking for a student to support the Purchasing Department in deploying and implementing a sustainable development strategy throughout the company’s value chain. The match was a natural fit. Olesya joined the team led by Cyrille Chouvet and, after completing her Master 2 degree in International Business, was offered a full-time role as Group Responsible Purchasing Coordinator.
“When I joined Verallia on work-study, I had no idea it would be a key moment in my career—that I would finally have the chance to do the job that is in line with my values, that drives me, that thrills me.”
During our conversation at Sustain 2025, Olesya spoke candidly about the challenges of global supplier engagement, the tools that help her team stay aligned, and what keeps her hopeful in the face of uncertainty.
Q: What does your role as Responsible Purchasing Coordinator at Verallia involve?
“I coordinate a network of dedicated CSR buyers across all Verallia entities worldwide,” Olesya explains. “That includes helping define the Group’s responsible purchasing strategy, developing internal procedures, and organizing training sessions for new CSR correspondents.”
With a massive global supplier network, it was crucial for Verallia to develop a structured methodology for responsible purchasing, which Olesya plays a key role in implementing.
“I make sure that this methodology is applied consistently across regions,” she says. “I provide support when challenges arise, lead new projects, and monitor their rollout using KPIs and reporting tools that I’ve developed specifically for this purpose.”
In addition to training and project oversight, Olesya helps coordinate internal communications on sustainability topics and facilitates regular check-ins with the global CSR network to align on goals and share insights.
Q: With such global coverage, what feedback do you have on the EcoVadis solutions adopted by your industrial group?
Risk mapping
“First, I think it's important to understand Verallia's scope. As the European leader in glass packaging for beverages and food products, the Group is present in 12 countries, and our 12,000 active suppliers are located in over 50 countries,” Olesya begins. “Faced with such global coverage – and in line with our internal approach – we use CSR risk mapping linked to purchasing to identify the highest-risk suppliers.”
Since 2024, Verallia has used EcoVadis' IQ Plus tool to support this process. “It’s enabled us to upload data for our full supplier base and map the Group's CSR risks,” she says. “This enables us to see things much more clearly and prioritize our actions.”
EcoVadis Ratings
Alongside risk mapping, Verallia also relies on supplier assessments through the EcoVadis Ratings platform. “We have a centralized methodology that applies to every entity within the Group,” Olesya explains. “Each entity invites its own suppliers according to a defined plan, then EcoVadis assesses those suppliers for CSR.”
Her role sits at the center of these efforts. “My function is to support these initiatives by staying in direct contact with all my correspondents, and to ‘infuse’ CSR into business relationships.”
But engagement doesn’t look the same everywhere. “From our dashboards, I’ve noticed that suppliers in Latin America are comparatively more difficult to get on board with an EcoVadis assessment,” she says. “In Europe, it’s usually simpler and quicker, as the platform is more familiar, though some countries, like Germany and the UK, are still more reticent than others.”
To help bridge these gaps, Verallia invests in localized supplier engagement. “Genuine awareness-raising and the creation of local events are decisive factors in getting suppliers involved. This is a key point in my feedback,” she adds.
“In Brazil, for example, it took a long time to convince suppliers to join our CSR campaign. But the effort paid off when Verallia Brazil organized a responsible purchasing event. For many suppliers, it was a wake-up call – it helped them understand how their role in today’s economic model can drive real environmental, social, and ethical change.”
Q: In these uncertain geopolitical, economic, and regulatory times, what advice would you give to a counterpart looking to engage his or her colleagues in responsible purchasing?
“To be able to commit a colleague to responsible purchasing, you have to be convinced yourself,” Olesya begins. “You have to know that what you're doing isn't just about complying with current regulations – it’s also, and above all, an essential step toward transforming today’s economy into one that’s aligned with nature through regeneration and circularity, and that puts people’s well-being first.”
She acknowledges that this isn't always easy or straightforward. “It's a perilous path, with sometimes little visibility,” she says. “And if we focus only on daily tasks without lifting our heads, we risk losing sight of where we’re actually going.”
Staying grounded in a larger purpose is critical, she explains. “To lighten the load and face the daily challenges, we need to lift our heads regularly, be visionary, and keep our raison d’être in mind at all times.”
Q: Finally, a few words about your experience at Sustain 2025?
“It was the speech given by Mary Robinson, the 7th President of Ireland, that left the greatest impression on me,” Olesya says. “Listening to a political figure of such stature – someone with strong convictions about the need to change our approach to governance in order to advance sustainability – was a powerful moment. Her words echoed my own values and convictions. I, too, am a ‘prisoner of hope.’”
Mary Robinson’s message resonated deeply with many in attendance, particularly her reference to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s philosophy of “hope in action”:
“Young people give me hope. I remember Archbishop Desmond Tutu, accused of being an optimist, at a round table. He said, ‘Oh dear, I'm a prisoner of hope.’ And what he meant was hope in action.
You know, the glass may not be full. There may only be a little bit in that glass. You work with it, you collaborate, you grow it. You learn by walking, you fight. You know that what you do, you do through action—staying true to your values and being steadfast in difficult times.
We're living in very difficult times, but I have great confidence in young people, because they’re more connected. They understand the meaning of our threatening world and the impact of action, whether or not they're very impatient with the lack of action.
That’s why the symbol I wear, the dandelion, is a symbol of nature—to help women leaders set an example and connect all of us who are on the ‘right side of the coin,’ so we can become a bottom-up pressure group.”
—Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, speaking at Sustain 2025
Olesya left the event with a renewed sense of purpose. “I'm convinced that we can make a real difference by staying true to our values, by connecting with each other, by staying determined, by talking about our convictions with generosity, and by believing in our younger generations. I came away from Sustain 2025 more motivated than ever.”
Thank you to Olesya Egorova for sharing her journey and perspective with us at Sustain 2025.
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About Verallia
Verallia is an independent French industrial group with nearly 11,000 employees and operations in 12 countries. The company operates 35 glassmaking plants, 6 decoration facilities, and 19 cullet (recycled glass) processing centers, producing approximately 16 billion bottles and jars annually. Its 10,000 customers range from small local producers to major international brands. Listed on the stock exchange since 2019, Verallia conducts its own annual CSR assessment and, in 2024, maintained a Platinum medal – the highest distinction in the EcoVadis recognition system.
https://www.verallia.com/en/csr/
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