She joins the company’s corporate responsibility and sustainability team as climate action project manager to develop, measure, and implement Olam’s emissions-cutting journey towards net zero.
Olam is part of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which in 2020 required its 200 members to make commitments to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Olam is owned by Singapore state investor Temasek, which has set mid-century as a target for portfolio companies to decarbonise.
In Tan’s new role, she will work on ways to decarbonise the company’s global supply chains, with a focus on priority crops such as grains, edible oils, rubber, cotton, and timber. She will also work on nature-based solutions and carbon credit projects.
She comes to Olam from a two-month stint sponsored by the United States’ State Department where she was placed at the Albemarle Climate Protection Department as part of the Young Southeast Leaders Initiative, which aimed to boost leadership skills in Southeast Asia.
Tan has almost a decade of experience working in conservation and sustainability, with a background in environmental geography as well as forest carbon science, policy and management. She has worked for agrichemicals company Syngenta, civil and social non-government organisation Climate Conversations, as well as carbon finance consultancy South Pole.
Projects she has been involved in include Syngenta’s Asia Pacific biodiversity programme, Climate Conversations’ sustainable financing working group initiative, and developing a tool to model the carbon roadmap for Abermarle County’s land and agriculture practices.