b'C E L E B R A T I N G 7 0 Y E A R STim Sander (continued) How do you feel that we have made advances in the area of sustainability? Sustainability has always been and must remain a core value of our company that we continue to improve and develop: Sustainability is part of our corporate history dating back to Teigo Ibas reforestation project, and even further back to Masatomo Sumitomos Founders Precepts. Yet I agree that our company has recently had to face the challenge of enhancing our sustainability program. We need to address sustainability issues moremethodically by measuring our progress toward achieving sustainability goals such as carbon neutrality by 2050.Our recent establishment of a Sustainability Department represents a significant advancement for our sustainability efforts. This new department will ensure that we will continuously prioritize and assess the progress of our sustainability goals. I am also convinced our D&I efforts to increase our ranks of local leaders represents an essential part of our sustainability efforts. Despite our need to make further progress, I believe we have successfully promoted several local staff to important roles in recent years. What do you foresee future work looking like? In a word, the future of work is: flexibility. The advancements in communication technology have blurred the lines between our working time and private time. At the same time, the COVID pandemic has also demon-strated that we are all capable of working remotely whenever necessary. So I believe talented knowledge workers like those who work for SCOA will continue seeking flexible hybrid workplaces that give them increasing freedom and autonomy over how they complete their work assignments. In my view, this does not mean that there is a secret formula to the number of in-person office days or office hours that everyone must strictly abide by. This is not flexibility and does not accommodate the various working styles that may be necessary throughout an employees career to perform most effectively. While managers may achieve some sense of comfort from a strict policy imposed by Human Resources, I believe managers in the future will increasingly need to assume direct autonomy for supervising and managing the working style of their teams as necessary to perform the functions they are responsible for overseeing. The necessary working style required will vary not only from position to position but also from assignment to assignment. Employees will also need to adjust to the future flexible working environment that emerges.In the past, company cultures were built in part on practices such as working in an office 9 am to5 pm five days a week. Moving forward, I believe companies will be unable to rely on such practices (even with a different mix of office days and core working hours) to create a sense of belonging with-in the company because knowledge employees will demand flexibility and work different schedules depending on their responsibilities. This will place the onus on companies to build their corporate culture around their history, purpose and values. So given the strength of our history, purpose and values, I believe the employees working for SCOA and the entire Sumitomo Group organization will be well positioned to make the adjustments necessary as the nature of work and the workplace change in the future. Above: What does our corporate message, Enriching Lives and the World mean to you personally and howTim Sander givinga presentation at Columbia does it apply in your role? Business School.Our corporate message is beautiful and inspiring. For me this means enriching the lives of our employees first. Our company can only enrich the lives of others through our employees, so this is where we must start. I believe my primary responsibility is to ensure that our employees feel appreciated and respected for the work they do every day.This also means respecting and empowering them to achieve their goals, and encourag-ing them to set high aspirations for how they would like to contribute to our organization. This is the reason I am a strong proponent of Servant Leadership, not only for myself but for all our employees. Throughout our worldwide organization, I would like to enrich lives and the world by spreading the concepts and principles of Servant Leadership, a term best described by the Greenleaf Center on Servant Leadership as a non-traditional leadership philosophy embedded in a set of behaviors and practices that place the primary emphasis on the well-being of those being served. 10 visions Fall 2022'