Almost a decade after co-founding Singapore-based sustainability lifestyle events and media company Green Is The New Black (GITNB), marketer Stephanie Dickson has left to focus on a consultancy she started that provides advice on low-carbon events.
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She moves on 18 months after selling GITNB to Sean Lee-Davies, founder of impact and venture studio Awethentic Group, and parts ways with co-founder Paula Miquelis, who is staying on at the company.
GITNB is best known for the Conscious Festival sustainable lifestyle event, which has been held in Singapore, Hong Kong and Paris.
Dickson said she was leaving because she felt it was the right time for herself as well as GITNB “to evolve”; she shared that her earn-out period with GITNB after the sale of the company has come to an end. She has re-joined The Wedge Asia, the sustainable events and strategy consulting firm she founded in 2015.
“I felt a strong pull to step into new spaces where I could continue to create impact in fresh and dynamic ways,” she said.
On her new role, Dickson told Eco-Business that there was a gap in the market for genuinely sustainable events in Asia, where sustainability is too often “an afterthought rather than a design principle”.
The biggest issues facing events sustainability are “single-use everything, excessive travel emissions, and a reliance on carbon offsets instead of real reductions,” she added.
The events industry is responsible for an estimated 10 per cent of global emissions, including materials and energy used, but mostly the transport required for participants to access the venue.
“Too often, sustainability is approached with a ‘tick-the-box’ mentality – swapping plastic for paper, but not addressing the deeper systemic issues,” said Dickson.
“At the same time, we are facing widespread climate fatigue. Even Gen Z, who are expected to be the most engaged, are feeling overwhelmed. The same old sustainability messaging isn’t cutting through anymore.”
To achieve real change, events organisers “need to move beyond dull compliance and instead spark intrigue, creativity and inspiration,” she said. She also suggested a need to rethink material use, prioritise local supply chains and cut unnecessary travel and reduce event footprint with hybrid formats.
During her time running GITNB, Dickson also hosted a podcast, Live Wide Awake, and co-founded women’s Web3.0 impact platform
“barely survived” the Covid-19 pandemic, and had to hold The Conscious Festival virtually in 2020.
Before she left, she had planned to pivot GITNB into more of an eco-wellness platform and grow the “conscious leadership” side of the business.
Dickson started her career working in telemarketing in Melbourne in 2008. She later worked for Singapore-based firm Fide Business Solutions as events and marketing manager, before launching GITNB in 2015.
