John Reid, Coke's VP of Corporate Social Responsibility, gives Keynote

"I think what you're getting when you get me is eclectic."

Indeed, eclectic is the right word to describe John Reid's career. Before becoming the Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility for The Coca-Cola Company he was involved in many areas of the business: marketing, operations, supply chain management, and strategy. Outside of Coke, he served as the Chief Administrative Officer of the City of Atlanta, Assistant Secretary for Education of New York State, and Deputy Director of State Operations of New York State. To top it all off, Mr. Reid has helped launch five start-up businesses, three in education.

With this impressive background, Mr. Reid was in the right position to give us some career advice, greatly welcome at a time when most of us wonder how we can get a job in his field.

He talked about collaboration and of aligning your personal goals with those of your team in order to achieve great goals. (Sounds like he took LO back in the day!) To the more qualitative-driven students in the audience (like me!), he stressed the importance of developing analytical skills. He talked about the value of immersing oneself not just in one's job, but in the system as a whole - in his case, having a solid understanding of Coke's business, the bottlers' and of all the steps in the supply chain. Finally, he talked about taking a "left turn."

"But I don't even know how to spell the word environment!"

This was Mr. Reid's initial reaction when his boss asked him to be the head of Corporate Social Responsibility for Coke. His linear career path took an unexpected turn. He took on the challenge. He took the left turn. Now he focuses most of his time on making sure Coke is responsibly and sustainably managing three areas: water, climate (carbon emissions), and packaging.

It's certainly hard to wrap one's head around the impact that Mr. Reid's decisions have on sustainability efforts around the globe. Coke produces 22 products in 206 countries and sells over 500 brands around the world. If I were interviewing for consulting, and knew anything about case interviews, I could probably tell you exactly how many pounds of plastic, glass, and aluminum bear Coke's label on an annual basis. I could also probably tell you how much water is required to make a year's worth of coke products and how much gas you need to transport them. All i can say is that it's a whole lot!

The Q&A session that followed Mr. Reid's address tried to get a bit deeper into Coke's sustainability initiatives. For better or worse, Mr. Reid continued to suggest we find answers in Coke's recently published 2009/2010 sustainability report.