Sorouch Kheradmand
Global Head of Sustainability at Schneider Electric
Shifting from engineering to commercial to sustainability, then combining them all to become a holistically integrated person leading Schneider Electric’s partner ecosystem, Sorouch Kheradmand, Global Head of Sustainability at Schneider Electric, looks to create meaningful changes at scale by aligning them with positive business outcomes.
Earlier in his career, Kheradmand was faced with a choice of countries to operate from—Brazil, China, or Japan—for his first technical role, of which he chose the latter and found comfort in the country where he later met his wife. Kheradmand is incredibly fascinated with the inner workings of things, which is what led him initially to a career with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, leading commercial projects in the power plant business. He soon after joined Schneider Electric to lead several assignments, from managing their Electric Vehicle business in Japan to leading large scale global commercial teams and strategic projects including M&As, including the integration of a large manufacturing company with HQ in Japan.
“I must say I was not at all ready back then for such a job, so it didn't go so well. I mean, we achieved the objectives, but I wasn't satisfied with it,” says Kheradmand. “I was integrating a 250 million euros global company based in Japan, and we had 1,200 direct employees back then.”
It wasn’t until he took an MBA at INSEAD to accompany his previous qualifications that through its coaching program, he re-built his leadership style to better manage a global workforce. Learning a lot about himself from this training and the process led Kheradmand to later becoming a coach himself.
“It was such a great learning that I even ended up becoming a coach myself, because I enjoyed that so much, and it was such a life changing experience that I decided to even continue it. As a coach, you also learn from yourself as much as you help others do about themselves,” Kheradmand says.
Before long, he began to question sustainability and the motivations of industries to make changes to the way they operate, leading Kheradmand down the path of sustainability, exploring the gaming, transportation and manufacturing industry among others, consulting on sustainability, which then led him to lead Schneider Electric’s Sustainability efforts towards its portfolio first and ecosystem then at a global level.
Kheradmand decided to focus on showing sustainability can and should be a key aspect of successful businesses. He believes this is the way to maximise the much needed transformation of the industry. As the new regulations that will shape the “Net-Zero world” are coming to force and expectations from the public are strengthening, he is a strong advocate of scaling the transformation needed by businesses to maximise impacts in a shorter time. “By demystifying the topic of Sustainability for businesses and having all do a bit, we achieve a lot more collectively than just focusing on a few large corporations.”
This process of self-discovery helped him to come up with his ideas that now shape Schneider Electric. This has evolved from the idea of collective intelligence to make sure that businesses are on the same page as their suppliers and customers when it comes to driving the business ecosystem’s much needed change towards a more sustainable operating model.
Remaining in the APAC region, Kheradmand now resides in Singapore to manage global proceedings from the continent.
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