In early February 2020, I went to the Big Island of Hawaii with Amanda Ellis, to interview Julie Wrigley. It was the 15th anniversary of Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) at Arizona State University (ASU). GIOS is the world's leading global sustainability laboratory.
As a name, Julie A. Wrigley is who you probably think she might be - a chewing gum Wrigley. But what you may not know as well is that Wrigley is a lifelong environmentalist who has an extraordinary ability to inculcate enormous change through collaboration. The genius of her talent and vision has seen countless sustainability solutions enter the world that would never have existed otherwise, through education and the business partnerships she has forged with people like Rob Walton from Walmart, one of her co-chairs at GIOS at ASU.
While personal wealth gives you the ability to create the scale of change that Julie Wrigley has achieved, you still have to be the kind of person who both recognises the need in the first place and frankly, then has the balls to carve out the right solution - especially when it turns out that you are years ahead of your time. If Wrigley's environmentalism was ahead of its time, even more so were the non negotiable terms of her solution. Wrigley is a collaborative investor and that frames her choice of partners as much as her participation. It is Wrigley's commitment to sustainability through her highly effective brand of collaborative investment - and the requirement for it to be attached to collaborative leadership - that has literally influenced hundreds of thousands of people, and millions more indirectly, to invent, innovate, disseminate and educate sustainability solutions around the world.
Fifteen years ago, when Wrigley was looking for a University or NGO to invest in and further the global sustainability agenda, she went first to her alma mater, Stanford University. While the university had both the capacity and the interest in broadening their sustainability education facilities, Wrigley believed that a new working model - a pan-university model - would be required if real advancements were to be made. She had a clear vision to inculcate sustainability broadly across education silos - to seek real world solutions to mounting real world problems. Traditional university promote exclusive acceptance. Stanford was not geared for the kind of change that would be required to achieve such a model so Wrigley had to continue her search.
In the end, it was through her sister Patti, that Wrigley was introduced to the new President of Arizona State University, Dr Michael Crow. And everything changed. Michael Crow immediately both understood and shared Wrigley's vision. Together they co-created the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability - an institute for multi disciplinary education and a research and business centre, open to everyone, and the most productive & synergistic sustainability centre in the world. Wrigley's foresight in wanting to create an institute and school at all, with a personal commitment of time and funds is extraordinary. The initial vision and partnership she forged with Michael Crow and with others like sustainability scientist and business man, Gary Dirks, is a model for academic and philanthropy at a time when we truly need collaborative and effective leadership for deep rooted climate action. Of the ASU model, Wrigley says,
“ARIZONA STATE IS WHAT A UNIVERSITY HAS TO LOOK LIKE TO SOLVE 21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS. UNDER THE OLD EDUCATIONAL MODEL, ONE PART OF THE UNIVERSITY HAD NO INCENTIVE TO WORK WITH ANOTHER PART. AT ASU, SUSTAINABILITY IS A VALUE SYSTEM CAMPUS-WIDE, NOT JUST A SINGLE FIELD OF STUDY. THE FACT IS THAT IN ORDER TO SUCCEED, YOU HAVE TO CREATE PARTNERSHIPS - INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY.”
As cliched as this sounds, there is absolute truth to the humility of inclusive leaders. And Wrigley is surely the pin up girl for inclusion and leadership. Her story will paint its own picture, but from when I first met her at AREDAY in 2018, her humility and sense of quiet purpose is a quality she shares with many other great leaders. She doesn't elevate herself at the expense of others, she listens instead of telling, she's interested and interesting and when she starts to speak of her childhood, it's clear how leadership is bred.
Wrigley’s early formative years were a story book blue print of her life that would follow – a classic replica of her environment. She grew up in the outdoors in Southern California, climbing on abalone filled rocks and looking out toward Catalina Island. As a child walking along the beaches 60 years ago, she ate abalone and noticed over time that they were disappearing. Catalina could always be seen from her home miles and miles away, however, she noticed that you could see it less and less clearly.
The air was somehow thickening - with what turned out to be smog and other particles in the air. The disappearance of the abalone was wondered about, but never really discussed. Catalina’s visual disappearance was never really talked about at all. It just happened.
Wrigley’s maternal grandfather had a Foundation and through this, she was taught from a very early age to give back. As a child, she had the extraordinary opportunity to make any philanthropy suggestions she wanted, but anything suggested had to be followed through, it had to be something she was personally connected to, she had to stay involved - and the investment had to be tracked. THE DRIVING PRINCIPLE OF GIVING IN THE BURNS HOUSEHOLD WAS THAT GIVING WAS NEVER ABOUT SIMPLY DONATING MONEY TO ANY CAUSE AND WALKING AWAY. YOU ALWAYS FOLLOWED YOUR INVESTMENTS.
For her final three years of high school, Julie lived on a 50,000 acre ranch in the mountains in Arizona. It was a private pre-college that prepped students for university and Wrigley’s goal from the age of 5, was Stanford. While it was effectively a boarding school, all students worked the ranch, cleaned, mucked stables and looked after horses, along with studying pre-university and college courses.
Wrigley achieved her dream and went on to Stanford where she studied Cultural Anthropology and Human Biology.
In her 3rd year, a young professor called Jane Goodall was one of Wrigley's lecturers. And there began the consolidation of her younger years and what would become her life’s work, centring around the environment, humans and the earth. Wrigley graduated from Stanford University with a degree in anthropology.
From Stanford, Wrigley went to law school and took all courses relating to the environment that she could find and she earned a juris doctorate, summa cum laude, from the University of Denver’s College of Law.After leaving Law School, she went to work for a law firm in Denver who had Oil & Gas clients. Their interests in the environment were not aligned to the same environment on Wrigley’s mind so she left. “I THOUGHT I WOULD GO INTO THE CORPORATE WORLD AND HELP CORPORATIONS UNDERSTAND THEIR RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT,” SHE SAYS. “BUT IN 1975, THERE WAS NO SUCH THING. CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT DEVELOPED YEARS LATER.”Not much later, she met William Wrigley, married, and moved to Chicago.
Wrigley's husband, WM Wrigley was the President and CEO of WM Wrigley Jr. Co. With the business, Wrigley travelled the world, extending her awareness of environmental issues in many places. In addition, Wrigley was fortunate to join a number of NGOs on behalf of WM Wrigley Jr. Co. Unfortunately in 1999, she was widowed. However it gave her an opportunity to more deeply engage in her work for the health of humans and this precious planet.
PART 2 - Coming Soon