Responsible Leadership
q&a series

With Tessa Clarke
Co-Founder & CEO of Olio

Introducing Tessa Clarke Co-Founder & CEO of Olio, the world's largest food sharing platform: 9.3 million users, 100,000 trained volunteers, 156 million meals saved from the bin.
Olio helps retailers, manufacturers, caterers, hospitality businesses and workplaces turn unavoidable surplus into measurable social and environmental impact.

[Q:] What moment, personal or professional, shifted your
perspective from profit to
purpose, or made you
realise you couldn’t lead
any other way?

I actually want to flip this question on its head. Because for me, the idea that business should be about more than just generating profits has always felt intuitively right. And if you ask most kids, they feel the same way.

Yet we’re systematically asked to unlearn this basic truth. For me, that happened first at university, and then later as a strategy consultant and during my MBA. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that Milton Friedman’s doctrine, that the “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits” – was the gospel.

Today, as we’re witnessing the consequences of shareholder profit-maximisation being played out above all else, and as I’ve grown older and more confident, I’m recalibrating. I’m tuning back to what I know in my bones: What’s the point of business if it isn’t making our lives better?

So no, there wasn’t a single dramatic epiphany. Instead, I’ve carried with me a truth I’ve always known, and I’ve finally found the courage to respect it rather than silence it, in the face of conventional business thinking. The result is that I feel far more energised and fulfilled than I ever have.

That it can actually be fun. We hear so much about it being “lonely at the top” or unbearably stressful; but those experiences are often the result of choices we make. It’s lonely if you choose to isolate yourself from your team. It’s crushingly stressful if you lose perspective, disconnect from reality, and frame every challenge as a crisis.
For me, leadership is an extraordinary privilege. It’s deeply gratifying, intellectually stimulating, and endlessly rewarding. You get to wrestle with fascinating problems, collaborate with brilliant people, and step into rooms and conversations you’d never otherwise encounter.
And I wish more leaders felt able to say that out loud: that amidst the responsibility and the hard days, leadership is also joyful, energising, and genuinely interesting. Remembering that, and allowing yourself to feel it, makes all the difference.

That it can actually be fun. We hear so much about it being “lonely at the top” or unbearably stressful; but those experiences are often the result of choices we make. It’s lonely if you choose to isolate yourself from your team. It’s crushingly stressful if you lose perspective, disconnect from reality, and frame every challenge as a crisis.

For me, leadership is an extraordinary privilege. It’s deeply gratifying, intellectually stimulating, and endlessly rewarding. You get to wrestle with fascinating problems, collaborate with brilliant people, and step into rooms and conversations you’d never otherwise encounter.

And I wish more leaders felt able to say that out loud: that amidst the responsibility and the hard days, leadership is also joyful, energising, and genuinely interesting. Remembering that, and allowing yourself to feel it, makes all the difference.

I often think back to my early performance reviews in strategy consulting. I was diligent, hard-working, and produced high-quality work; but I was constantly told I needed to “speak up more” in meetings. I really struggled with that feedback. My instinct has always been that unless I have something genuinely useful, insightful, or helpful to add, it’s better to stay quiet. And back then, I honestly didn’t feel I had anything valuable to say.

Fast-forward 25 years, and I’m now extremely comfortable speaking up in meetings, and on stages. That shift didn’t happen overnight though; it came from finally accumulating enough experience, confidence, and perspective to know that what I have to say is valuable. And so my younger self would never have believed that the girl who “didn’t have anything to say” would one day be giving a TED talk watched by over 1 million people, or being invited by the United Nations to speak at its inaugural Zero Waste Forum. But here we are!

My side hustle at the moment is writing a book, with the working title Simple Swaps – a warm, practical guide to living more sustainably through tiny changes in our daily lives. The process of writing it has made me feel far more authentic as a sustainability leader. It’s forced me to deepen my own lived experience of trying to tread more lightly on the planet, and to fill in the gaps in my knowledge along the way.

One of the biggest realisations I’ve had through writing Simple Swaps is that if you take care of yourself, the planet will often take care of itself. By that I mean: if you optimise for your own health and wellbeing (the “selfish” lens), you naturally make choices that are also better for the planet. Understanding that people are ultimately motivated by what’s in it for them – what we call “selfish altruism” at Olio, has been incredibly clarifying.

It’s sharpened my thinking as a leader, and it’s sharpened Olio’s go-to-market messaging too. When you align personal benefit with planetary benefit, that’s when real, scalable behaviour change becomes possible. Writing my book has made that truth feel more vivid and actionable than ever.

The injustice that keeps me awake at night is food waste. Globally, we throw away a third of all the food we produce each year – food worth over $1 trillion – while 800 million people still go to bed hungry every night. In fact, they could be fed on just a quarter of the food we waste in the Western world. And this isn’t a distant problem: here in the UK, 11 million people are struggling to afford food, including 4 million children.

The environmental impact is equally shocking. If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China, generating more emissions than the entire fashion industry. And yet the part that surprises most people is where this waste actually happens. It’s not supermarkets or restaurants; it’s us in our homes: in the UK, households are responsible for 60% of all food waste.

This combination of moral failure, environmental destruction and everyday invisibility is what fuels my mission, and why I’m working every day towards our vision of a world without waste.

I’m going to cheat and pick two! First: the Better Business Act. I’ve long believed business is our most powerful agent of change, and that it must be harnessed to improve lives and protect the planet. Yet too many companies still operate under the assumption that the sole responsibility of business is to maximise profits. The Better Business Act campaign aims to challenge that. Over 3,000 companies large and small have signed up to demand an amendment to Section 172 of the Companies Act, which would require businesses not only to deliver profit, but to also benefit people and the planet. This is a lever I feel could be absolutely game-changing.

Second: the push to stop Ecocide Law. We cannot continue to operate on a model of profit at all cost, regardless of the harm done to the animals, plants and nature that sustain us. I believe that recognising ecocide “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment” – as an international crime would fundamentally change the rules of the game. It would send a message to business, governments and investors that there are limits to what we can take from nature without consequences, and that destruction to nature cannot to be ‘business as usual’.

Together, these two levers: the Better Business Act and Ecocide Law, embody the mission I’m committed to: to help shift how business operates, how we view success, and how we measure value. They anchor purpose, while aiming to protect the planet, and elevate people.

[ Tessa Clarke bio ]

[ Tessa Clarke is the Co-Founder and CEO of Olio, the community-driven app tackling waste and promoting sustainable living. Under her leadership, Olio has grown into a global movement with millions of users sharing surplus food and household items. Tessa is also a TED speaker, columnist for Sifted, and an ambassador for the Better Business Act. In recognition of her impact, she was named Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman of the Year in 2023. Passionate about the power of technology to drive systemic change, Tessa champions purpose-led business, climate action and community collaboration to build a more sustainable and equitable future. ]

RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP

Do Epic Good's Responsible Leadership Q&A series spotlights voices who are leading with integrity, courage and impact. These are people like you. People who remind us that no matter what industry you are in, responsible leadership is the only way to lead.

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