Sustainable Leadership

3Born versus Made

Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.

—Jane Goodall, British primatologist/anthropologist

STROLLING WITH HER husband through a crowded bazaar in Essaouira, Morocco, Ilham Kadri was entranced by the colorful silks and spices when two little girls ran past her, practically knocking her off her feet. They were wearing threadbare school uniforms dingy with dust from the streets, their sandals so worn that they might as well have been barefoot. Ilham turned to her husband. “Do you see those two?” she asked him. “That was me when I was little.”

Growing up in a humble house on the outskirts of Casablanca, Morocco, in the 1970s, Ilham took nothing for granted. Electricity was intermittent and her home had not been plumbed for potable water throughout much of her early childhood. Daily long, hot showers or baths were unheard of, and whatever came out of a nearby community pump was carefully conserved for cooking and washing up.

“Whenever I see fresh-running water, even now, it's a miracle,” Ilham told me.

In fact, all available resources—clothing, cooking utensils, school supplies—were used and reused in that household, where recycling became the natural response to scarcity.

“We lived in a very frugal environment and the conservation of food and water meant a lot at that time,” Ilham, CEO of the $12.9 billion Belgian specialty chemicals multinational Solvay, told me. “We were a loving and happy family, ...