Tag Archives: Comerica
Interview with Rita Rausch, VP and Sr. Sustainability Officer, Comerica Bank
Posted on 01. Nov, 2009 by Susanna Schick.
Rita Rausch is the Vice President and Senior Sustainability Officer at Comerica Bank. Under her guidance, Comerica has developed a 32-member sustainability council representing managers from all business units.
OG: What are you looking forward to the most about the conference?
Rita: What I’m most interested in is the opportunity to hear people in other industries as well as some in my own, with respect to where they are in the sustainability process. Many North American companies are just now getting started, coming to the table a bit late, and I’d like to know how they’re integrating their initiatives and goals within the corporation, as well as how upper management is viewing the process.
OG: Within banking, who would you name as leaders in sustainability?
Rita: Comerica is a mid-sized bank, with total assets of $60-70 billion. We benchmark ourselves against the mega-banks such as Bank of America, Citibank, and others. We then use the information from that to decide which sustainability initiatives we’ll pursue, what makes the most sense for a bank of our size.
Mainly, we focus on facilities, since that’s where the bulk of our greenhouse gas emissions are coming from. But the banks we benchmark against are now also going into their portfolios and addressing the GHG of companies they invest in. We’re just starting to look into that. Our inaugural Sustainability Report was released in September of this year, and it details where we stand regarding GHG emissions and other Corporate Social Responsibility issues.
