Lucy Harrington: from strategy to impact — delivering sustainability

Q What excites you most about being part of RPS’ growing Management Consulting capability in Canberra?

What excites me most about joining the team is the opportunity to bring global perspective home. My career has taken me across Australia, the United States, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands, most recently leading sustainability and social impact strategy within one of the world’s most scrutinised industries.

I have learned how to navigate complexity, regulation, and public perception in high-stakes environments. Returning to Canberra, I am eager to apply that international perspective to Federal Government challenges, particularly across sustainability, environmental regulation, and program delivery, offering fresh thinking grounded in real world experience.

Q Your career path is fairly unusual. What differentiates you from other consultants with more traditional career paths?

I thrive on challenge and ambiguity. I enjoy bringing order to chaos, structure to complexity, and turning difficult concepts into clear actions. My goal is always to leave a client, project, or organisation better than I found it.

My education combines a technical foundation in environmental science with formal training in journalism, enabling me to understand complex systems and communicate them clearly and persuasively.

My early career in consulting and business intelligence sharpened my business analysis capability, strengthened my strategic thinking, and built my ability to manage projects and programs while leading multidisciplinary teams. With that foundation established, I intentionally pivoted into a dedicated sustainability role to align my technical skills with my long-standing passion for environmental and social impact.

Most recently, I worked in ethics and sustainability for a tobacco company. The counter-intuitive nature of the role was precisely what made it compelling. I led initiatives spanning public health, environmental impact reduction, community engagement, and reputational governance. It was challenging and high-pressure, and strengthened my ability to bring diverse stakeholders on the sustainability journey to demonstrate how responsible business practices create value for the organisation, the environment, communities, supply chains, and consumers.

Q You’ve also volunteered in disaster response settings. What did you learn from leading emergency response teams that you now apply in your professional work?

As a frontline disaster response leader with the American Red Cross, I supervised emergency teams and supported community preparedness efforts before, during and after disasters. Witnessing the human impact of increasingly severe natural disasters reinforced my commitment to driving climate and environmental change at scale. It sharpened my focus on strengthening government programs and delivering large-scale sustainability initiatives that build long term environmental and community resilience.

Effective team coordination begins with adaptability and active listening. You cannot solve a problem until you truly understand it, and that requires listening to those directly affected. This principle underpins how I work with clients, ensuring solutions are grounded in real needs rather than assumptions.

Leading volunteers taught me how to foster genuine commitment and intrinsic motivation. High-performing teams are built on trust, shared purpose, and recognition of individual strengths. I prioritise creating environments where people support one another and have the opportunity to develop their capabilities.

Q You have embedded sustainability across complex organisations. What differentiates sustainability that succeeds from sustainability that stalls?

Good sustainability delivery is about future readiness. For all clients, it means being prepared and resourced for the operating environment of tomorrow, whether that is regulatory change, resource constraints, shifting consumer expectations, or climate risk.

You need to measure before you can manage. When leaders can track progress such as improved compliance, reduced waste, increased community confidence, or reduced energy costs, sustainability shifts from being an aspiration to a commercial advantage. Governance and reporting play a critical role in building credibility, strengthening reputation, and sustaining momentum.

Sustainability must also be led at every level. Executive sponsorship drives investment and accountability, but grassroots engagement drives behaviour change. Establishing employee understanding and buy-in helps to translate strategy into daily action, creating shared ownership of improvement and results.

Q Where do organisations typically get stuck when they’re trying to lift sustainability performance or meet emerging compliance requirements?

Organisations typically get stuck between short-term commercial pressure and long-term sustainable potential. Initiatives that generate immediate revenue are usually favoured over those that deliver resilience or cost savings over time. Sustainability projects frequently require upfront capital, whether for renewable energy infrastructure, process redesign, or systems uplift, and the long-term return on investment can be tricky to articulate without clear data and governance.

Another common challenge is underestimating complexity. Sustainable change rarely sits within one function. Reducing plastic packaging, for example, may require material science research, supply chain redesign, new machinery, employee retraining, and consumer education. Without cross functional coordination and strong executive sponsorship, initiatives stall.

Organisations that succeed treat sustainability as enterprise transformation, not a discrete project. They align incentives, invest early, communicate clearly, and embed compliance readiness into strategy rather than reacting when regulation forces change.

Q Finally, how do you build momentum for sustainability across an organisation?

Sustainability is fundamentally about the bigger picture. At an individual level, it can be easy to disengage because small actions, like switching off lights or recycling correctly, feel insignificant on their own. However, sustainability succeeds through collective momentum. Small initiatives demonstrate leadership, set expectations, and create a ripple effect that influences broader behaviour and culture. While individual actions matter, it is the consistency of long-term strategy and shared commitment that ultimately drives meaningful, lasting impact.

Want to build momentum on sustainability, reporting readiness, and change delivery?

Explore RPS’ Management Consulting capability to see how we help organisations turn complex priorities into practical action through governance, data, and people-led transformation.