“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
As Schrödinger continues building upon our commitment to Corporate Sustainability, I’m struck by this quote* and the immense progress we’ve made over the past year to create value for the world, while simultaneously creating value for our company, a principle we call VALUE². While we often focus on the end goal — doing our part to create a better world (and company) — these words serve as a reminder that our efforts along the way are what makes true progress feasible.
Our mission at Schrödinger is to improve human health and quality of life by transforming the way therapeutics and materials are discovered. As Head of Corporate Sustainability, I’m focused on ensuring we fulfill our mission in ways that benefit our stakeholders and society at large, and protect the planet we share.
Getting this right is essential. Our world and communities face change and uncertainty, and the healthcare industry, in particular, is reaching an exciting inflection point driven by new technologies and evolving patient needs and expectations. The decisions we make now will impact generations to come. That’s what Corporate Sustainability at Schrödinger is all about — minimizing risk while maximizing positive outcomes for customers, shareholders, employees, communities and the world around us. But real progress cannot happen overnight. It requires thoughtful, comprehensive, and sustained action that fosters genuine, long-term change.
The significant strides we’ve made over the past several years are due to an ongoing process that keeps all of our key stakeholders top of mind. I’m pleased to share the efforts we made in 2023 to propel our journey forward, by highlighting some of the featured topics from our second annual Corporate Sustainability report:
- With the future in focus, we developed a road map for our environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts that includes setting goals within each of our material topics.
- We advanced our environmental sustainability journey through investments to better monitor and measure our environmental impacts, including our carbon footprint. This work informs the development of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets in alignment with the Science Based Targets initiative.
- Our commitment to employee development, health and belonging was reflected in the ongoing work of our diversity, equity, and inclusion team and expansion of our employee resource groups and well-being benefits.
- We continued to prioritize academic and community outreach initiatives to lift up underrepresented groups in our industry. In its second year, our Teaching with Schrödinger program helped more than 800 students and teachers integrate industry-leading molecular modeling into their learning.
- To empower our colleagues to affect change in their own communities, in 2023 we released a new social impact platform for employees to consolidate matching gifts and access to local volunteer opportunities.
- We further strengthened our conviction in our computational platform to help make drugs and materials discovery faster, less expensive, and more precise while offering solutions that enable better environmental outcomes.
These achievements represent a selection of the key milestones we accomplished over the past year. The work we do every day can create a more inclusive environment for colleagues, open a student’s eyes to a career in STEM, identify a new opportunity to reduce our environmental footprint, or bring a life changing therapy or breakthrough material one step closer to market.
You can read more in Schrödinger’s second annual Corporate Sustainability Report. This report, developed in alignment with established reporting standards including the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), demonstrates our ongoing commitment to continuously creating value for our company and the world.
Corporate Sustainability practices are constantly evolving, and the bar keeps getting higher. That means there is not really an “end” to our journey, and that’s okay. What matters most — and what leads to lasting progress — is the dedication, collaboration, and hard work we exhibit all along the way.
*Quote often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but actually originated with author, Ursula K. Le Guin.
