Striving for a greener future, Brigitta Witt aims to cut Hyatt's consumption of both water and energy.
Hyatt’s global vice president of environmental affairs Brigitta Witt walks Hotelier through the company’s green initiatives and explains how to incorporate sustainability into everyday tasks
In 2007 Hyatt brought Brigitta Witt on board, serving as vice president of environmental affairs, to develop and implement the company’s corporate responsibility schemes.
Witt’s experience suited her perfectly for the role, having previously been director of business development and general manager for a company dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of junk mail. “When I first started, my background was in change management,” she explains. “It was basically in getting companies to do things differently.”
She also has more than 10 years’ experience in marketing and strategy consulting, having worked with Eplyon Corporation to implement a sourcing scheme for the New York City board of education, as well as with Wayport Inc., where she deployed technology and WiFi solutions to more than 8000 McDonald’s.
However, at Hyatt, Witt found that getting the company and staff to change wasn’t going to be a problem. “I thought the hardest thing would be to get people to adopt the green initiatives and implement them,” she says, “but that has actually been the easiest thing. People are already so passionate throughout the hotel, from the top to the bottom and back up.”
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She is now touring the globe to meet with divisional heads to implement a standardised structure at all of its offices. “At the moment each hotel has green teams, which are groups of employees that have a very specific charge to really get their hotels’ environmental goals and objectives implemented.
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