Net-Zero Changemaker of the Year
Winner:
Karen Pulley
Consilient Health
Karen Pulley, Head of Sustainability at Consilient Health, won edie’s Net-Zero Changemaker of the Year Award for making net-zero practical for a fully outsourced, highly regulated pharmaceutical SME.
The challenge
Consilient Health is a virtual pharmaceutical company: it owns no factories, fleets or warehouses, relying instead on external partners for manufacturing, packaging, testing, storage and distribution. As a result, more than 99% of its emissions sit in Scope 3.
Change is further constrained by the nature of pharmaceuticals, where product specifications, packaging, artwork, stability, batch testing, Qualified Person release and patient-safety requirements restrict how quickly changes can be made.
The solution
Karen reframed the challenge as one of governance and influence, not simply reporting. Under her leadership, Consilient Health adopted SBTi-validated near-term and long-term targets, annual GHG Protocol measurement across Scope 1, Scope 2 and all 15 Scope 3 categories, and a Carbon Reduction Plan aligned with healthcare procurement expectations – connecting climate targets to supplier conversations, Board oversight, commercial resilience and day-to-day decisions.
Her advocacy has focused on the parts of the value chain Consilient Health can realistically influence: supplier-level carbon data, ESG supplier due diligence, logistics redesign, batch optimisation, packaging data, digital workflows and regulated operational improvement.
How the project works
Rather than positioning sustainability as a separate agenda, Karen has embedded it into governance, supplier management and operational planning, engaging the functions that make decarbonisation possible in a regulated outsourced model: Supply Chain, Quality, Regulatory, Procurement, Finance, IT, HR and Commercial.
Her supplier engagement work introduced structured ESG questionnaires covering carbon, environmental management, social responsibility, governance, cybersecurity, health and safety, anti-corruption and diversity, with current and new suppliers reviewed, ranked and scored internally. She has also supported workstreams that reduce emissions while improving resilience – including product-release redesign, digital batch-control, packaging data readiness and e-signature workflows – all designed to work within pharmaceutical compliance requirements.
Internally, Karen has made sustainability accessible through training, governance conversations and the 3Rs behavioural framework – Rethink, Respond, Relay – encouraging employees to challenge wasteful processes, act on practical opportunities and share improvements across teams. Beyond the business, she contributes to wider sector learning through medicines sustainability groups, academic teaching and external forums.
The results
Consilient Health’s latest reported footprint shows total market-based Scope 1-3 emissions reduced from 8,295.4 tCO2e to 4,655.1 tCO2e – a 44% year-on-year reduction. The company is transparent that methodology improvements and supplier-specific emission factors contributed to some of the reported reductions; strengthening the data needed for credible Scope 3 action is itself part of Karen’s impact.
Within Scope 3, upstream transportation and distribution emissions fell by 94%, from 1,860.3 tCO2e to 111.0 tCO2e, while purchased goods and services emissions fell by 31%, supported partly by better supplier data. Logistics redesign reduced average weekly stored pallets from 1,100 to 755, halved monthly pallet receipts from 458 to 229, cut average monthly product returns from seven to one, reduced distribution complaints from 27 to three, and improved perfect orders/OTIF from 94% to 98%. Batch optimisation also reduced shipment frequency from 19 to five per year, delivering an estimated 33,556kg CO2e annual reduction and €133,442 in annual operational savings.
Consilient Health achieved CSR-A Gold Accreditation and went on to win CSR-A Medium Business Silver 2026 at the International CSR Excellence Awards on 1 June 2026.
At a glance
Who: Karen Pulley, Head of Sustainability, Consilient Health
What: Embedding credible, practical decarbonisation across a virtual pharmaceutical business
Why: To make net-zero achievable in a business model where conventional decarbonisation levers are limited
Runners up
Agnes Czako, AirEx Technologies
Agnes Czako founded AirEx Technologies and leads it as chief executive, developing a smart air brick that regulates underfloor ventilation to cut heat loss from homes. Her approach was shaped by earlier work delivering more than 30,000 energy assessments in fuel-poor communities, and she has argued consistently that retrofit must account for how people actually live in their homes rather than how models assume they do. She has raised over £10m through grant funding, equity investment and partnerships, including during the pandemic. More than 40,000 units are installed across over 6,300 UK homes, which AirEx projects will save households £40m in bills over their lifetime.
Claire Rainsford, Winston Taylor
Claire Rainsford is head of sustainability at the law firm Winston Taylor, where she has drawn separate environmental activities into a single strategy and improved internal and external reporting, allowing the firm to evidence its performance in client tenders. She led the refurbishment of its London office, cutting operational and embodied carbon, and has extended sustainability into procurement and supply chain decisions alongside building electrification and smart energy controls. She also contributes to Legal Charter 1.5 work across the sector. The firm's EcoVadis rating has risen from Bronze to Gold in two years, alongside a B rating from CDP.
David Dundas, Lunar Society
David Dundas leads the climate change working party at the Lunar Society in a voluntary advisory capacity. A chemistry graduate and retired energy consultant, he previously worked in oil and gas well servicing at Schlumberger, in supply and distribution at Texaco Europe and in energy products marketing at Dow Corning Europe, and ran his own company for more than 25 years. He runs daily online discussions with working party members and delivers webinars to the Society and to the u3a network. He has advised Midlands local authorities on energy saving measures, including a ground source heat pump installation at a community hall.
Emma Pye, PYE Management
Emma Pye founded PYE Management and co-created Carbon Sherpa, a tool intended to help highways, construction and infrastructure organisations apply PAS 2080 whole-life carbon management in practice rather than in principle. With more than 25 years in environmental work, she has authored carbon footprinting methodologies and produced Scope 1 and 2 guidance for ADEPT, the local authority directors' association. She chairs BSI's SES/1/1 committee on environmental management systems, where she has pressed for early-career practitioners to take part in standards development, and founded a scholarship at the University of Hertfordshire, where her own career began.
Megan Youngs, NatWest Group
Megan Youngs is Scope 3 carbon reporting manager at NatWest Group, where she has rebuilt the bank's approach to emissions in its own operations that fall outside its direct control, historically its largest and least reliable operational carbon category. She has established methodologies, credible baselines and forecasting tools, strengthened audit readiness, and introduced service-level carbon footprints with key suppliers, exposing emissions that were previously invisible and allowing teams to target specific hotspots. Supplier-specific emissions data coverage has risen from 18% in 2023 to 44% in 2025. She has also co-led a financial services white paper on Scope 3 reporting.
Ovie Frederick-Simon, SP Energy Networks
Ovie Frederick-Simon is a sustainability specialist at SP Energy Networks, working across both the transmission and distribution sides of the business to move carbon management out of reporting and into investment, design and procurement decisions. He has led a shift away from spend-based carbon accounting towards supplier-specific and lifecycle methods, improving Scope 3 data quality, and has embedded carbon considerations into RIIO-ED2 delivery and RIIO-ED3 business planning. He has commissioned and managed PAS 2080 implementation, SteelZero assessments and pilots of AI-assisted sustainability tools, and coordinates cross-business groups on supply chain decarbonisation and generator fuel reduction.