James Gowen

James Gowen is vice president, Supply Chain Operations and chief sustainability officer for Verizon. Since taking on these complementary roles in 2009, he has enlisted more than 20,000 Verizon employees in 28 countries around the globe in helping to reduce the company’s environmental footprint while increasing the efficiency of a growing enterprise.

Gowen has been deeply involved in the advancement of innovative and sustainable technologies and recently spearheaded the launch of Verizon’s flagship $137M green energy initiative which enabled Verizon to eliminate 20,000 metric tons of CO2. Gowen also oversees other green initiatives being implemented across Verizon including the introduction of a carbon intensity metric, paper suppression, waste reduction and recycling, and management of end-of-life-cycle material recovery.

In his supply chain role, Gowen leads centralized operations including regional distribution centers and the global customer premises equipment program with responsibility for over $10 billion in annual through-put.