Lina is the former Director of Sustainability and Social Responsibility at WeTransfer with over a decade of experience in sustainability, social impact, and Tech for Good. Since she took the helm at WeTransfer in 2020, Lina was key for the company's expanding Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts, helping the business achieve and maintain its sustainability and B Corp certifications.
Lina cemented WeTransfer’s active role as a business that met high environmental and social impact standards; while growing a healthy and diverse creative community through partnerships and collaborations. She previously worked at Fairphone, a Dutch electronics manufacturer that designs smartphones with people and the planet in mind, leading campaigns and events. She led the launch of Fairphone 3 and ran a crowd equity campaign that raised €2.5 million.
Follow Lina on LinkedIn.
Toby: Hi Lina! To get started, could you tell me a little about your background and why B Corp is important to you?
Lina: I’m a visual artist at heart. I come from Colombia, where many creatives struggle to make a living from their craft. That led me to cultural management and eventually to studying for a BA in Creative Industries. Along the way, I fell in love with the B Corp movement.
My B Corp journey started with Fairphone, which was amazing because I got to see how better business practices could be applied to such a problematic industry—electronics. Fairphone focused on fair living wages, community engagement, and ethical supply chains. After four years, I was headhunted by WeTransfer, where they needed someone to help drive their sustainability efforts and explore B Corp certification.
Toby: Can you walk us through WeTransfer’s journey to becoming a B Corp? What motivated the company to pursue certification in the first place?
Lina: In 2019, WeTransfer was celebrating its 10-year anniversary and reflecting on what kind of company it wanted to be moving forward. I joined to help enable that B Corp journey.
The CEO at the time, Gordon, was a big believer in better business and saw B Corp as a way to align with our existing values. WeTransfer was already investing 30% of its ad inventory into social causes, so there was a strong mission-driven foundation. But back then, B Corp wasn’t widely recognised as a framework for businesses looking to transform—it was more associated with social enterprises.
What B Corp really forced us to do was formalise and measure our impact. We were doing great things, but we weren’t tracking them properly. The certification process helped us define who we were impacting and how we could better support creatives. It was crucial to have leadership buy-in—it made the whole process more solid and embedded within the business.
Toby: Getting buy-in for sustainability can be tough. What made B Corp a successful journey for WeTransfer in terms of internal engagement?
Lina: Leadership commitment was essential. You need that support at the top to drive real change. But beyond that, it was about engaging employees at all levels. We had to make sustainability relevant to different teams and show how it connected to their work.
For example, when we wanted to reduce emissions from our server use, we had to engage engineers. In 2019/20, cloud emissions weren’t widely discussed. I approached our CTO and senior engineers and proposed a “game day” with AWS to explore cloud efficiency. The first attempt was a failure—only eight people showed up out of nearly 200 engineers! But one of those eight was a senior product engineer who became a champion for the initiative – and that was the spark that we needed. That snowball effect is what really drives change.
Toby: You made significant strides in reducing digital supply chain emissions at WeTransfer. How did you approach this, and what were the key levers?
Lina: One of the biggest lessons I learned was that “the cloud” is just a marketing term—it’s still physical infrastructure, with emissions and energy demands. We started by asking simple but crucial questions: Are you measuring your emissions? Can you give us a number, any number?
Initially, we didn’t get much data, so we did our own desk research to establish a methodology for measuring digital and advertising-related emissions. Once we had some numbers, we could start building a business case. We engaged AWS and framed our conversations around collaboration rather than blame. Instead of pointing fingers, we asked, How can we help? This approach helped us get leadership and external partners on board, making emission reductions a strategic priority rather than an isolated initiative.
Toby: How do you ensure sustainability isn’t just a one-off initiative but is embedded in company culture and long-term strategy?
Lina: Intentions aren’t enough—you have to act on commitments. One of the biggest challenges is that sustainability is often deprioritised in the face of business-as-usual pressures.
A key question for sustainability professionals is: Are you in the right rooms? Early on, I was mainly engaging with fellow sustainability professionals, but impact and emissions are foreign concepts to most business leaders. I had to learn to speak their language—tying sustainability to revenue, retention, and business growth. Over time, I built allyship across departments, from HR to finance to legal. One of my proudest moments was receiving an unsolicited email from our legal team asking, How can we help? That’s when I knew sustainability had become embedded in the organisation.
Toby: What were some of the biggest challenges WeTransfer faced during B Corp certification, and how did you overcome them?
Lina: One of the hardest lessons was that sustainability can’t be a one-person job. In my first year at WeTransfer, I tried to do everything myself, and it didn’t work. B Corp requires cross-functional collaboration, especially from teams like finance and operations, which often aren’t immediately involved in sustainability efforts.
Another challenge is that once you get certified, scrutiny increases. Every inconsistency and failure is noticed. But instead of taking criticism personally, we saw it as an opportunity for continuous improvement. B Corp isn’t about being perfect—it’s about committing to better business practices and constantly evolving.
Toby: What top tips would you give to businesses considering B Corp certification or looking to improve their impact?
Lina:
Don’t go at it alone. Sustainability needs to be a collective effort across teams.
Engage internal detractors. Instead of avoiding the tough conversations, bring sceptics into the process and address their concerns.
Make it a business priority. If B Corp isn’t part of your KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] or OKRs [Objectives, Key Results], it won’t get prioritised.
Embrace transparency. Once you’re certified, expect increased scrutiny. Use it as an opportunity to improve rather than a defensive stance.
Measure what matters. If you’re not tracking your impact, you can’t manage it effectively.
Toby: What’s next for you?
Lina: I’ve just left WeTransfer after five years and am taking a well-earned break! I’m excited about what’s next—I want to continue working with tech businesses that are reshaping industries in a more sustainable way.
Toby: Finally, if you could get every organisation to do one thing differently, what would it be?
Lina: Sustainability should always be a key point on the board agenda. It shouldn’t be treated as a side project or a marketing exercise. Every business should consider double materiality—understanding both the impact of the business on society and the environment, and the risks sustainability issues pose to the business itself. For finance teams and Boards, understanding the imminent financial impacts of climate change is a real wake-up moment. The companies that get this right will be the ones that thrive in the long run.
Toby: Thanks so much, Lina. This has been a fantastic conversation!
This series of interviews is in support of our mission to accelerate sustainability and decarbonisation across SMEs, NGOs and value chains. By sharing experiences, lessons learned and tips and tricks to embedding sustainability, we can all learn how to improve more, faster.
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