Ellen Jackowski always thought she would work in government.
She grew up outside of Washington, D.C. She interned for her U.S. senator. She spent part of her junior year of college in Brussels with the NATO. But while in Belgium, Jackowski found herself at an inflection point. She began asking herself where she saw herself making the biggest impact and how she could drive change with her voice and capabilities.
“That’s when I shifted to the private sector,” she told Newsweek.
After graduation, she took a job as a management consultant. That position led her to a 15-year career at HP, where she grew her sustainability experience within the global supply chain and eventually became the executive director of the company’s nonprofit. In 2022, Jackowski made the decision to join Mastercard. This time, working on the demand side.
As the company’s chief sustainability officer and senior vice president, Jackowski has successfully helped the multinational card services corporation grow its net revenue while decreasing its environmental footprint—an achievement for which she was recognized as one of the most influential climate leaders of 2024, according to TIME magazine.
Under Jackowski’s leadership, Mastercard returned to this year’s Newsweek ranking of America’s Most Responsible Companies, produced in partnership with data firm Statista, climbing up five spots from last year’s seventh position to No. 2. The company also held onto its title as the most responsible company in the financial industry.
Courtesy of MastercardMastercard has appeared on America’s Most Responsible Companies every year since Newsweek began publishing the ranking in 2021. This year has been Mastercard's highest performance to date.
The company’s approach to sustainability is centered around its philosophy of “doing well by doing good.” The foundation of this mission is built on three core pillars: people, prosperity and planet. The “people” aspect, Jackowski explained, means empowering the employees of Mastercard, while the “prosperity” piece focuses on harnessing Mastercard’s technology and partnerships to connect people to critical networks.
“Planet,” then, relates to the company’s focus on environmental sustainability strategy, or as Jackowski put it, “How do we take care of our own house?”
Part of the answer lies in moving closer to the company’s net-zero goal, which Mastercard has made meaningful progress towards. Last year, Mastercard grew its net revenue by 12 percent while reducing emissions by 7 percent, according to its 2024 sustainability report. The other half of the answer has to do with driving sustainability choices. This piece is a big reason that Jackowski joined Mastercard.
“I think that’s really where the future [of] opportunity and impact lies,” she said. “When you think about the scale of who we are, [Mastercard’s] got 150 million merchants on our network, thousands of banking partners and 3.5 billion cards in circulations.”
“We sit in the center of the global economy, and that position really can allow us to help accelerate more sustainable choices, both from the merchant point of view—what our merchants are offering and selling—and the cardholder point of view—[thinking about] how can we inspire, inform and enable more sustainable choices from that perspective,” she said.
With access to billions of transactions every day, Mastercard has partnered with the Mastercard Economics Institute (MEI)—a global research and advisory group—to examine the data and understand how markets are shifting. And right now, Mastercard’s unique data shows that the boost in sustainable consumer trends, like circular fashion, is here to stay.
Earlier this year, an MEI analysis found that nearly 29 percent of online luxury apparel transactions in the U.S. are being made on fashion resale or rental platforms—the highest share of transactions since this data began being collected in 2019. In the mass market, secondhand apparel transactions represented more than 5 percent of all transactions, up from 4.1 percent in 2024 and the previous high of 4.3 percent in 2021.
“Amid ongoing economic uncertainty and concerns about tariff-induced price increases, the Mastercard Economics Institute expects shoppers will likely continue to prioritize value as they optimize their financial resources, and many will continue to lean into sustainable consumption as concerns about the environment grow,” MEI wrote in an April press release.
The institute also reported in August that the circular economy has been gaining momentum in the sporting goods market.
Citing tariffs as a driving force, MEI said that broader economic forces are pushing circular sports into the mainstream, with sales up 11 percent year-to-date. In comparison, the total sporting goods category grew by only 3 percent in the same time frame. Sales of used sporting equipment are now nearly 30 percent above 22 percent levels, with demand highest in Alaska, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, Vermont and Montana.
As Mastercard parses transaction data, its sustainability team seeks to answer: “How do we close this ‘say-do’ gap?”
“People want to buy more sustainable or more circular, but they don’t,” Jackowski said. “There’s a reason why. It’s either harder or more expensive, more complicated, takes longer.”
Mastercard, then, is trying to figure out how to make the circular economy more accessible to consumers and move the global market towards “a new regenerative economy.”
The company is also working with its merchants to close this gap. The morning before Jackowski spoke to Newsweek, she met with sustainability executives at IKEA and Walmart—key merchants on Mastercard’s network—to hear what’s important to their business goals and to learn how Mastercard can help enable and advance those sustainability goals.
“We have so much data, and it’s really valuable when you identify these types of trends and make sure all the merchants on our network understand this moment—the big opportunity and the shift that’s happening,” Jackowski said. “People feel good when they contribute in a positive way to our environment, and they feel even better when it’s lower cost, or more affordable, or more accessible.”
Research commissioned by the New York-based card services company found that 58 percent of those surveyed globally have become more conscious about how their actions can impact the environment than ever before, with Gen Z and Millennials, 65 percent, leading this trend.
In response to these statistics, Mastercard unveiled its Carbon Calculator in April, empowering cardholders with a snapshot of the emissions generated by their purchases across spending categories. Although the feature is still in its early days, Jackowski said those who have been accessing this information have been observed to use it to shape their future purchases. Mastercard is working on making the data more granular so that cardholders can estimate their carbon impact before making a purchase—similar to the way its Reewild app works.
Reewild is an eco-loyalty app that Mastercard piloted at the University College London (UCL). The app, which was launched in partnership with the Start Path program, provided diners with data on different food items at UCL cafes, including the carbon impact of each item as well as PlanetPoints that could be redeemed at certain stores for products and services.
Jackowski said the pilot has shown that students engaged with the program have shifted their consumer behaviors and choices as well as influenced their future purchases, with more of them making repeat purchases within the university cafe system rather than going to an external merchant.
She added that while most of Mastercard’s pilots have been in Europe, where there’s a regulatory environment and culture more willing to shift their behaviors, “it symbolizes a bigger shift that’s underway.”
“The culture is shifting, and that’s driving a lot of opportunity,” Jackowski said. “A lot of new markets are opening up. I think that’s really important for businesses to track. It’s certainly important for us to track, and we’re excited about that future.”
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