Carolin Barr
Founder - SusGain
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Carolin's introduction

Carolin is a passionate and driven entrepreneur and sustainability advocate. She is involved in many projects and initiatives that contribute to reducing our environmental impact.

In 2020, Carolin founded the social enterprise susGain.

susGain is a rewards-based engagement app that focuses on driving behavioural change within communities (corporates, schools, NGOs etc.) whilst measuring ESG reportable data on the impact created. By better connecting the environmentally and socially conscious stakeholders, susGain hopes to accelerate the change towards more sustainable communities.

Prior to susGain, Carolin worked as Account & Project Manager in an HR consulting and change management firm, where she was responsible for business development and end-to-end project management of training and consulting projects across APAC.

In July 2021, Carolin won the Finder's Expatpreneur Sustainability Award. susGain has also been recognized by Global Initiatives at the Sustainable Business Awards Singapore 2020/21.

What brought you to sustainability?

Being passionate about sustainability on a personal level for many years, I noticed that the sustainability movement in Singapore is still far from hitting the critical masses.

While we are all aware of climate change and have good intentions to do our part, our everyday choices and actions are unfortunately not reflecting this. There is a real intention-action gap in our community, noticeable in poor recycling rates and low consumer demand for sustainable products and services. This gap is particularly wide among Gen Z, even though they are often lauded as the most environmentally conscious generation.

Drawing from our corporate experience in Learning & Development and Finance, my co-founder and I came up with susGain in 2020 as a way to play our part in driving the change.

Which sustainable actions are you in charge of or have you implemented in your organisation?

susGain runs customized sustainability challenges for corporates (which can be conducted both from home and/or office) that promote and encourage sustainability among employees through behavioural change in a fun and rewarding way while providing you with ESG reportable data on the impact created.

Our work at susGain is focused on helping organisations cascade their strategic direction for sustainability down to their employees by educating them ways to act in their personal and professional capacities, with the goal to create long lasting culture change from inside out. See more details here

Which challenges did you meet and how did you overcome them?

Our main goal is to close the intention-action gap for those who wish to adopt more sustainable habits but don’t know where to start.

As a natural start, we’ve been attracting those people first, who already consider themselves as eco-conscious. However, it’s our aim to grow beyond these “early adaptors” and reach out to the general population using a carrot approach to create long-term behaviour change.

We found that by working with existing communities, such as corporates, schools or through events, we are able to better reach out to people who did not yet have many touch points with sustainability yet and thus can create a greater impact.

What are you most proud of?

Being in a position to help drive the change towards a more sustainable Singapore and all of the wonderful people and organisations I get to work with on this journey.

What would be your top 3 pieces of advice to the Matcha Initiative users?
  1. Seek for support, The Matcha Initiative is a great starting point.
  2. Sustainability is a marathon and not a sprint, start with small, actionable steps.
  3. Track and measure the impact of the actions taken, this will help you learn, strategize and build on them.
In which field could you help The Matcha Initiative users?
  • Kick Start Help
  • Best Practices sharing
  • Experience Sharing
  • Expertise Sharing
Please describe how you could help The Matcha Initiative users?

I could help with experience sharing, case studies, network...

Carolin's main sustainability skill

Employee engagement for sustainability

Carolin kindly accepts to answer your questions.

If you need additional insights, you can send her a message.