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The New York stop of the EcoVadis World Tour 2025 brought together sustainability, procurement, and business leaders from across North America around a timely theme: cutting through the noise to gain greater supply chain clarity.
The event took place in November, but the insights are timely as teams set sustainability priorities for 2026 amid continued disruption and volatility. Building early momentum is particularly important for US companies. As keynote speaker Andrew Winston put it, “the world is moving on with or without the US,” and those operating across regions can’t afford to fall behind.
Most understand that reality in 2026, but stubborn challenges remain. Teams need more visibility into ESG risk across supplier networks, a better way to separate signal from noise, and a clearer path from commitment to action that delivers sustainability and financial impact. Across the keynote, customer panels, and EcoVadis solution outlook, speakers returned to the same foundations: trusted supplier ESG and emissions data, sharper prioritization, and supplier engagement that supports improvement over time.
Let’s dive into key findings from the sessions.
Clarity starts with better supplier data
EcoVadis’ Deanna Rigonan and Laurel Hansen opened the day by naming the pressures procurement teams are navigating, from external volatility to risks that surface first in the supply chain.
They then made the “noise to clarity” theme tangible with a look at what EcoVadis is seeing in US supplier data. More than 15,000 US companies were assessed between 2020 and 2025, including over 6,000 in 2025 alone. Just as important, 61% of those suppliers completed an assessment more than once, showing that participation is turning into repeat engagement. When suppliers stay on the journey, improvement accelerates.
As highlighted in the session, the biggest barrier for companies isn’t intent or investment – it’s data. For buyers managing hundreds or thousands of suppliers, that’s what EcoVadis’ “More than a Score” approach looks like in practice. It’s not just access to static ratings, but a consistent stream of high-quality supplier ESG insights that helps teams separate signal from noise, prioritize risk, and focus engagement where it will drive measurable improvement.
“Resilience is the currency in business – and true resilience is built in the supply chain.”
Deanna Rigonan, EcoVadis
Welcome to the Americas World Tour – watch the session.
Andrew Winston asks: “Is Sustainability Dead?”
Keynote speaker Andrew Winston addressed a common question sustainability leaders hear today: Is sustainability dead?
His answer was an emphatic “no.” He argued that most US companies aren’t retreating from sustainability, but are changing their approach to adapt to a challenging environment. Investment continues, but many organizations are “greenhushing” in the face of ESG backlash. Winston emphasized that as sustainability expectations continue to rise globally, US companies need to stay the course.
“We only see a backlash because we were winning.”
Andrew Winston
To cut through the noise, he provided three core reasons why companies should accelerate sustainability investment across their operations and supply chains:
- We need to because climate change, inequality, and biodiversity loss create real business risk.
- We have to because regulation and customer expectations are increasing transparency demands.
- We want to because sustainability continues to create value, even when it’s hard to measure precisely.
Winston also challenged those sitting and waiting for a perfect sustainability ROI story. He pointed to how companies are pouring money into AI, despite uncertain ROI, because they see the long-term strategic imperative. He argues that sustainability is just as important, with “net-positive” business representing the next value frontier.
Keynote (Andrew Winston) – watch the session.
The reinforcing loop between resilience and business value
In a panel moderated by EcoVadis’ Tina Chetty, leaders from Regeneron, Avantor, and Sustana returned to a core theme of the day. Resilience starts with visibility, and visibility depends on trusted supplier data. Stronger visibility and engagement don’t just reduce risk. They also make the business case clearer, creating a reinforcing loop where resilience builds value that fuels further investment.
Across industries, panelists described two pressures moving in parallel. The first is regulation, from deforestation due diligence to forced labor reporting and other region-specific requirements that demand deeper transparency. The second is the growing recognition that many of the most material risks sit beyond tier one. As Rachel Kaufman of Avantor put it, the real challenge is “what we don’t know” upstream.
The discussion also moved beyond compliance. Building resilient supply chains requires an internal business case, especially when ROI can’t be captured in a single number. Panelists pointed to clear demand signals, including sustainability requirements embedded in tenders, rising investor scrutiny, and shifting customer expectations. They emphasized that long-term value depends on collaborating with suppliers on innovation and continuous improvement.
“Assessing suppliers and doing due diligence is just a start.”
Aaron Ling, Sustana
Building a Resilient Supply Chain – watch the session.
Sustainability intelligence that’s “More Than a Score”
In the EcoVadis Solution Outlook session, Julia Salant and Marin Davidson shared how the platform is evolving to help organizations act with greater confidence across three priorities: regulatory due diligence, sustainable procurement, and Scope 3 decarbonization.
The emphasis throughout was scale. Managing thousands of suppliers requires a balance between broad visibility and deeper verification, supported by tools that reduce friction for both buyers and suppliers. Updates highlighted new program-level visibility to help teams prioritize engagement, AI-powered capabilities designed to reduce supplier fatigue, and automated corrective action planning to help suppliers accelerate improvement.
“Companies succeeding today are investing in regulatory due diligence, sustainable procurement, and addressing Scope 3. These three strategies are at the core of our product team’s work.”
Julia Salant, EcoVadis
The team also highlighted expanded capabilities for due diligence, including Worker Voice tools designed to surface real-time human rights and labor risks and enable direct engagement with workers. On the carbon side, the focus was credibility: emissions data is only useful when decision-makers trust it, which is why EcoVadis is investing in approaches that assess data reliability and help suppliers strengthen reporting quality over time.
EcoVadis Solution Outlook – watch the session.
The business case for sustainability: Customer stories with tangible outcomes
In the customer panel, leaders from JPMorgan Chase, Organon, and New York Life shared how sustainable procurement is creating measurable outcomes across finance, governance, and supplier performance.
At JPMorgan Chase, ESG data is increasingly embedded in risk assessments and product structuring, including sustainable supply chain finance where supplier pricing can be linked to EcoVadis performance. Organon described how it scaled a supplier sustainability program quickly by prioritizing strategic suppliers and positioning participation as a way to reduce duplicated requests. New York Life highlighted the value of cross-functional governance across procurement, legal, risk, and corporate responsibility, with plans to bring sustainability more formally into RFP scorecards.
One practical theme came through across all three stories. Supplier engagement is strongest when it feels human and progress-focused, especially when suppliers understand the goal is improvement, not perfection.
“The better the ESG performance, the better the pricing to get paid early.”
Kate Burstein, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The Business Case for Sustainability: Customer Stories – watch the session.
The path forward
In closing remarks, EcoVadis’ Chief Impact Officer Nicole Sherwin returned to the event’s central framing: the noise is real but clarity is achievable. Even if organizations adjust the language they use externally, the drivers remain consistent: customer expectations, investor questions, employee values, and board-level attention to resilience and risk.
Sherwin reinforced a broader view of value. Sustainability can create ROI through innovation, talent retention, operational continuity, and customer demand – even when those benefits don’t show up neatly in short-term financial models. For leaders looking for CFO-friendly proxies, she highlighted a practical approach: quantify the percentage weight sustainability carries in RFPs and tenders, then link it to contract value as a concrete signal of market demand.
The key takeaway from New York? Procurement leaders are building resilient systems that turn sustainability into measurable progress. Platforms like EcoVadis help make that possible by turning supplier assessments into decision-ready insights, targeted engagement, and continuous improvement across large supplier networks.
“We can change the words, but the work behind it remains the same.”
Nicole Sherwin, EcoVadis
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