Anastasia Ostapchuk, HBA '13, discovered her passion for sustainability through Ivey courses. Her experience in the HBA program provided her with the foundational skillset that helped her build a successful career at TD Bank.
Isn’t it amazing when a course in school completely changes and inspires your life direction? This is what happened to Anastasia Ostapchuk (HBA 2013).
Discovering Sustainability
When Anastasia entered the HBA program, she didn’t know anything about sustainability. An Ivey course introduced Anastasia to the topic for the first time and cultivated a new passion for her. Anastasia initially wanted to pursue a career in the non-profit sector and came to Ivey to learn the necessary skill set to thrive in that setting.
That first sustainability course inspired Anastasia to take a leap and join the second-ever cohort of Sustainability Certificate students. The combination of the Sustainability Certificate program and the fundamentals provided through the HBA gave Anastasia a foundational skillset that kick-started her career in corporate sustainability.
From NGO to ESG
Anastasia’s first role was as a consultant for a non-governmental organization focused on engaging the private sector with sustainability issues. This role further built her corporate skillset and was a great stepping stone toward Anastasia’s next position at TD Bank. After working her way through a multitude of roles at TD ranging from Product Manager to sustainability-focused functions such as Environmental Reporting, Anastasia now holds the position of Senior Manager of ESG Policy & Commitments.
Strategic oversight of TD’s most essential ESG commitments is one of Anastasia’s most critical responsibilities in this role. TD was the first Canadian bank to set a target to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Anastasia is proud to work for a company that holds the same values as her and actively pursues them.
“Over my close to 8 years at TD, I have seen an incredible evolution of the sustainability function. The most exciting transformation has been the growth in awareness and focus on sustainability in so many different areas across the organization. When I started at TD, there was a small, centralized team focused on environmental issues and philanthropic giving. Today, there are pockets of sustainability across the entire organization, including within the key revenue generating areas of the bank,” states Anastasia.
Understanding Business Fundamentals in Corporate Sustainability
Her time at TD has helped shape how Anastasia views sustainability as a whole. She now realizes that in large corporations, understanding the fundamentals of the business is critical in order to make change. This is why during her time at TD, Anastasia chose to take a role outside of the sustainability division in one of the bank’s key lines of business within retail banking. She hoped to expand her skillset and gain an understanding of how the bank generates revenue and manages risk, in order to one day bring these insights back to the sustainability division. Her time in retail banking equipped her with the skills and context that she was looking for and have set her up for success in her most recent role as Senior Manager, ESG Policy & Commitments.
Anastasia also sits on the Board of Directors of a non-profit, Impact Zero. She is “incredibly proud of the work Impact Zero does, including empowering consumers to support circular businesses by developing a circular business directory, building a network of hundreds of circular economy professionals and entrepreneurs, launching a successful podcast showcasing circular solutions and leaders around the world, and building an accelerator program that has helped launched 7 circular startups so far.”
Anastasia’s hope for the future of sustainability is that the momentum of the last few years only continues to grow and that eventually, sustainability becomes truly embedded in how companies conduct business.
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