If you don't comply with that regulation, you can't actually do business in the EU. It's, pretty strict the way that they've set it up. So I think that's gonna drive a lot of business to get a much better understanding of what's going on. It's gonna have ripples in the supply chain. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, where ever in the world. Welcome to episode 90 of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the only podcast focused exclusively on the intersection of sustainability and supply chain. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and I'm delighted to have you here today. Oh. And by the way, this week's episode was very generously sponsored by Blue Yonder. Before we get started, a quick reminder. You can now support the podcast and unlock the full back catalog by becoming a Sustainable Supply Chain Plus subscriber. For just five euros or dollars a month, less than the price of a fancy coffee, you'll get access to all 80 plus episodes of this podcast and more than 380 episodes of the Digital Supply Chain Podcast. The most recent four episodes remain free for everyone, but the archive is exclusively for subscribers. Plus members get a shout out here on the show and a direct line to me for suggesting guests topics or even shaping where we take the podcast next. You'll find the link in the show notes or at tinyurl.com/ssc pod. Now onto today's conversation. And it's a big one because we're tackling one of the hardest questions in business today. What does a sustainable supply chain actually look like, and how do you build one in a world of tariffs, regulation rollbacks, and climate risk? To answer that, I'm joined by Jamie Barsimantov, Vice President of Supply Chain Strategy at Sphera, a global leader in sustainability and operational risk software. Jamie's journey from environmental researcher, to startup founder, to VP at one of the world's top sustainability data companies gives him a uniquely grounded view of how supply chain sustainability has evolved and where it's heading next. We dig into why true sustainability is never done, how data overload can paralyse progress, and why the smartest organisations are using software, AI and supplier collaboration to turn information into impact. We also explore shifting global dynamics from investor and regulatory pressure, to supplier diversification, and the EU's deforestation rules and what they mean for business resilience in 2025 and beyond. If you wanted to understand how companies can stay compliant, competitive, and climate conscious all at once, this episode is for you. Jamie. Welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? hi, Tom. Of course. Thanks for having me on the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Jamie Barsimantov. I'm the VP of Supply Chain Strategy at Sphera. Okay. And for people who are unaware Jamie, Sphera is what? For sure. Yeah. Sphera is a sustainability and operational risk software company. We serve customers across all sectors around the globe on a range of products that help a company understand their risk, understand sustainability impacts, and do something about that. And what got you into this, Jamie? Oh, Great question. Well, I did a PhD in environmental studies wow, a couple decades ago. And I thought to myself, there are too many problems in the world to continue studying them and teaching about them. I need to go do something about them. So that led me to start a small consulting company that focused on climate change and sustainability. And that led me to founding a software company called Supply Shift, which focuses focused on sustainability and supply chains. Built that company up with my co-founder to 70 people or so a few years ago. And that company was then purchased by Sphera. About a year and a half ago. So I came over to Sphera with that acquisition and continued to work on that product that I founded, but also how it relates to the other products within Sphera and supply chain sustainability more generally at the company and, and obviously outside the company. And what has surprised you most would you say on that journey from teaching in university to now being VP Supply Chain for Sphera? Wow, what a surprising, I mean, there are so many surprising things that you discover almost every day. I mean, early on when I was still learning about different sectors and their supply chains. Each one has its own peculiarities as far as supply being consolidated in a certain small number of large companies that trade things around the world, or having an exceptionally large number of tiers in a supply chain, or having materials that are transformed and mixed so many times that you have no idea where they come from. So all of these things that the peculiarities of each sector and each commodity. And the sustainability challenges involved with them, and then how a supply chain is structured and what must happen to deal with those things. I think that that was definitely as, as I learned that in that, in that whole journey is quite surprising. And I think very few people understand and why can't we just fix these problems, right? They're actually very complex. And, and it takes a lot of understanding of the specific sector and understanding of sustainability. And those things are rarely combined in the same people. And so you end up having a lot of challenges just explaining what's going on and then explaining what's going on to people who actually have decision making power to do something about it. So it's an ongoing challenge, I'd say. Sure. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And how do you then define what is a sustainable supply chain for an organisation? Because as you said, it changes from different industry to different industry. Yeah. Well, I mean, sustainability is not a thing that you get done with. It's not a thing that you can, oh, now I have a sustainable supply chain, and I'm all good. I don't think any company anywhere in the world could say that, right? Sustainability is a journey. There are obviously lots of impacts of any company, any supply chain, and those take, you know, no one has successfully eliminated them or even minimised them sufficiently. And then also you have the problem that when you solve one problem, you usually end up creating another problem. So then you have more work to do. But I would just alter your question, right? Rather than how do you define a sustainable, a sustainable supply chain for a company? What do you recommend a company does about it to, to get on that journey? Right? I guess maybe that's, that's something that it's a little bit more answerable, I guess, at least from my perspective. So, the first thing is information, right? Very few companies know who is in their supply chain and what are they doing. That's kind of like the basis for action. You can't really do much unless you, you have that, that kind of information. And obviously that information in itself is a journey, right? Knowing your first tier suppliers and their impacts and exactly what's going in your products, and having full confidence in that is a journey itself. And then doing that upstream is, is even more complicated, right? So, and then you can have the problem of, you know, death by analysis. And, and I think there's a, there's a, a general challenge that sustainability professionals tended to have come from academia or from you know, really understanding the problems of sustainability really deeply, and only seeing that the way to do something about them is by analysing them further. So we have this kind of like challenge in the industry of overload of information sometimes. And so we spend too much time gathering data, right? So then, so you have to have, you know, who's in your supply chain, what they're doing, but only to the extent that you're capable of doing something about it. It doesn't make sense, you know, constantly have companies say I need full transparency in my supply chain okay. First of all, what does that mean to you? But second of all, and more importantly, why? What are you gonna do? Let's say you had that information, what would you do with it? And they can rarely answer that question. There are obviously many things you can do with that kind of information and that kind of understanding, but it takes a lot of time and effort to get that level, you know, carbon emissions of each tier of your supply chain, audited human rights information about each tier of your, it's, it's almost impossible, right? So then you have to know, I'm trying to solve a certain problem. I need a certain level of information. I'll use that information, I'll show the impact I made, and then I'll discover what more information I need. So, having that basis of understanding is, is that the first step? And then knowing what you're gonna do with that information once you have it, right. Having some specific goal, some specific thing you're trying to reduce, carbon emissions, deforestation, plastic usage et cetera. And then knowing that your business is capable of, of digesting that information and actually using it. And age old question. How do you get that data from your suppliers? Ah, well, something that I've been doing for about 14 years now is creating tools, software and also standardised methodologies, calculation methodologies for doing that, right? So, the thing you shouldn't do is create it yourself. Early days we would see companies saying maybe I should just build software capability internally to do this. And even the largest companies no longer think that that's a smart approach because of the effort required to do that. But much more importantly, the burden on suppliers. If suppliers are answering different questions and different Excel file formats, it's just overwhelming. A decade ago it was only leading companies, right? The the ones who have really public facing brands where the customers actually care about sustainability. So you have this kind of small universe of companies asking suppliers for information. So it's okay, you know, I wanna learn about the sustainability of the mint in my chewing gum, right? And I wanna have a special way of doing that. Great. Go ahead. Right? But we're, we're way beyond those days. So latching onto what is already out there embedded in software tools, right? You need to be able to capture the information efficiently, follow up with suppliers efficiently, trend the data efficiently and have that really, I'd say, you know, the thing that often gets overlooked is that two-way communication with suppliers. So they gave me something, what am I gonna give them back? I'm gonna show them their score. I'm gonna show them how they compare their peers. I'm going to know for myself what's the most important thing for them to improve and we're gonna both be able to see that so that we can have a conversation about it. So having that kind of process set up and automated via software is kind of, the only way to really be successful. Otherwise you have this supply chain sustainability manager who is just drowning in information and spending all their time chasing suppliers and doesn't have actually time to work with the data and use it to influence change within their company. So what shifts have you seen in the drivers for sustainable supply chains over the last few years? It, you know, that, that's a fascinating thing that I think is just shifting the way businesses allocate budgets, what they wanna do with their budgets, how they hire people. It's, it's been a landscape that has changed dramatically over the last, let's say, decade. Started with the pioneers, companies stepping out in front who, the largest companies, the ones who had, you know, big Greenpeace shame campaigns against them saying, I need to do something about this. Right. And that's, that's kind of where it, it started. And that was again, public facing companies didn't have, like chemical sector companies doing this kind of stuff because consumers don't buy their stuff and so they don't know. Right. It's so, it's kind of consumer facing brands really started this off. Early days supply shift, we would try to sell to a broader range of companies. And they'd also, they always ask us, well, why, why do I need to do this? Right? And without that kind of consumer pressure, that NGO pressure, it, it was hard for 'em to see a reason to do it. Then came investor pressure. That then brought in a whole new wave of companies you know, large publicly traded companies, any large publicly traded company then had a driver to do something and really focused around climate. I think that was kind of like, maybe call that like the second wave. Third wave then as a few years ago, is this really increase in regulation, especially from the EU, but globally. And that caused an explosion in hiring led to like a labor shortage of, of, of sustainability professionals. Like, the consultants from like boutique consultancies all getting hired by Deloitte and all these huge consultancies is literally like a, a brain power short shortage to be able to handle what companies wanted to do. And this was maybe like, four or five years ago or so. And that kind of continued. And, and really set companies on this really strong trajectory to where it's like, we've gotta measure, we've gotta plan, we've gotta reduce. And now we're in a new phase, right? As of like, a year ago, less than a year ago, you have the EU kind of rolling back or delaying. They're, they're all still there. All these regulations haven't gone anywhere. And they still, they're, they're more achievable and maybe, you know, companies can actually, they were just kind of too, too much before. That's probably a, a good thing. The delays maybe not as much of a good thing. And then tariffs, supply chain, uncertainties, wars. The idea of like supply chain disruptions was like a, a once in a while thing that, you know, what can we do about it, you know, and we can try to understand it, but it's so. Now it's like supply chain uncertainty is just like part of what it means to run a supply chain. The regulation rollback plus the tariff uncertainty and all of the other things associated with that have really caused companies to, to really change their, their perspective. And that's kind of like, I think we're still somewhat defining what this new, this next phase is. I, I'd say it has a few key characteristics. This, this kind of like this current phase. The EU taxonomy is just immense, right? And, and, and you look at it and you're like, how, how do I even do this? And, and what's the most important thing? Right? So I think it, it's a good thing for companies to always ask, why are we doing this? What are we gonna do with it? What are we gonna achieve? How can we make it more efficient? Right? Obviously, that's what companies do, that's what they're born to do. But they, they should be doing it on sustainability, and there's a new pressure to do that, which means that more and more companies need software tools. They need standardised methodologies. They need to rely on the information their, that their suppliers have already provided to other companies instead of going out and asking again. And then that kind of relates to AI, right? That's kind of the other big thing that goes with this. This kind of like, what do we have to do? How do we keep it simple? Is then AI. How does that help us? And then within that AI context, there is something a little similar that was happening with the blockchain craze a few years ago, which is that people, AI is great. It can help, it can do a lot, but then it can't do everything. So really companies getting real with, with that reality and getting the right AI tools and not abandoning their efforts to engage suppliers and think that it's gonna be magic. Right, because this, and again, it's not magic. AI, web scraping will scrape what's there. It's not gonna make up stuff that's not there. Right. So this is where, if there was you know, so we have a great n-tier mapping tool within Sphera. It's going to kind of map your supply chain, tell you who is upstream, upstream, several tiers and give you that visibility. From our perspective, we're baking an AI wherever we can. Right. Wherever it makes sense. We're doing that as are our, our competitors doing that. Of course. Right? So that with their, with the simplification, is causing that, that kind of wave. And I think that that kind of all results with, I think like the, the biggest theme being if sustainability is gonna make a big push, it's gotta align with business goals and, and really companies taking that, that perspective. But it's different than it was at the very beginning when companies again were saying, how, why should I do this? And the main answer was to help with my reputation. And now there are other answers. There are other answers. Why should I do this? And I think the biggest one that jumps out is supplier diversification. A few years ago everyone's trying to consolidate. We have too many suppliers. It's inefficient. We don't need to have so many suppliers. Let's have less suppliers and that and that made sense. Right. And now there's a push the other direction. We don't know what's gonna happen over here. We don't know what's gonna happen over there. Tariffs might jump and increase, so if we have a more diversified supply chain, we'll have the ability to ramp up and down where we need to. Right. And then that comes with all the impacts of diversification. So that's where I think you can get probably the best synergies between sustainability and business goals is in the context of this new era of supply chain uncertainty and supply chain diversification. And I mean, we're seeing not just tariffs, but we're seeing kind of the political climate around sustainability become more polarised than ever. how are businesses adopting to that tension? they're saying, what do I have to do? And I keep it simple, but they're not saying, oh, this is now gonna go away. I don't see any companies saying that. They're saying, well, maybe I can focus better. Maybe I have a little more time to prepare. Maybe I can really understand how this is gonna benefit me and, and be smarter about it. But they're not saying, oh, phew, that stuff's gone. Right? That's, that is And, and, and you laugh, right? Because clearly it's not. Yes, climate change in the news is a fraction of what it used to be, but people are dying in flash floods. And so it doesn't take long until something shifts and people start talking about it. And, business leaders aren't dumb, right? They know that, okay, maybe there's a little breathing room, maybe I can focus, maybe I can start to measure better and do this right, but it's not going away. And, and the, the problems on the planet are not going away. They're probably getting worse. So this is all, it's just waves and, and this, I've seen how many waves happen so far of businesses saying we have to do this tomorrow. Okay, we can do it the next day. But in the end, they're doing more and more. Right? And, and, and they will continue to. Yeah. And you mentioned supplier diversification as well.'cause that's kind of trending at the moment, especially post pandemic and admit, amid tariff pressures, what are the sustainability blind spots companies often miss when they are diversifying their suppliers? Well, it, you know, I, I think the root of doing it well is having, again, information, right? So, let's say I buy, I don't know a certain mineral, right? And I need to buy it from somewhere else, right? If I don't have all my information in front of me, I might start buying it from somewhere else and all of a sudden run into a big problem with conflict minerals, with human rights, with a whole range, right? And that deforestation, right? The EU deforestation regulation, I can source, I can change my supplier from, I dunno, China to Thailand, and that might seem safe, but then I don't realize that my supply in Thailand is getting their palm oil from somewhere in Indonesia, and that has deforestation challenges. You know, I, I might add to my challenges without knowing, right? So more and more we see companies having more holistic views of their supply chains and even not just their existing supply chains, but their potential suppliers, right? So companies now have the opportunity and the need to vet a whole new wave of suppliers, I buy cobalt. I, I'm nervous about where it's coming from. Why don't I vet cobalt from other sources? Right. But if I'm gonna vet cobalt from other sources I shouldn't leave behind the human rights assessment. I shouldn't leave behind understanding, you know, all the things that come with sustainability. I might as well do that in a smart way from now and then, so that when it comes time, wow, now, now I gotta move over that new one I found. You're not gonna cause new problems by doing that. It's supply chain leaders understanding all the impacts that they have and having the right tools at their fingertips to be able to get that kind of visibility. Part of that is moving the sustainability assessment process from my current supply chain to my potential supply chain and assessing suppliers before they come in the door. So, you know, what problems you're, you're getting into from the start. Yeah. And how do you do that? Because it's difficult enough to get information on current suppliers. How do you get that information on potential suppliers? You know, you might think it's actually easier to get it from potential suppliers, you know? You're dang dangling a carrot. Yeah. It's like, okay, you know, you're buying 5 million bucks of my product every year and you're asking for this, but I kind of think you need that product. So, you know, that's fine. Right. Whereas if you go to the new one and say, Hey, I'm gonna buy 5 million bucks of your product, I just need you to fill out all this information, you bet they're gonna fill it out, right so. Sustainability in the supply chain is much easier to implement if you do it from the start because the expectations are set. They're part of the business relationship rather than this like thing that like someone in some other department says that they have to do. And then the supplier's like, Hey, you know, you who buy the stuff. Do I really have to do that? And the person in this company who actually buys the stuff says. Let me check. I'm not sure. Right. And they go call someone and then it, that already waters it down, The pressure to do something already kind of gets a little loose, right? So, yeah. If you were to fast forward five years, what would you hope to see in terms of how companies approach supply chain sustainability and Scope three, for example, as well, which we haven't explicitly talked about so far? Yeah, let's let, yeah. Climate change is, is the one, right? I think that well let's, let's take five years, right? So five years, politics comes in waves, right? We see it all, you know, in the US it change, you know, it's four years or eight years, it changes, right? It's clear. We know, we see this, so, so there'll be some shift, whether it's in two years or five years or eight years, I don't know. But there will be a shift the other direction. And so that, that will come. That's one thing that, that will happen. There will be new emerging sustainability challenges beyond climate change. I think that'll be water. Water scarcity specifically I, I think is gonna be more and more of a, of an issue. Unlike climate change, you can measure a ton of carbon as a ton of carbon no matter how it's done, and it has the same currency and water doesn't. So it's much more confusing. Water scarcity is comes and goes. You know, droughts come and go. I think we're in a really exciting time with companies and their work on climate change, and I think the reason is the ability to actually get much better data than we could before. So, you know, we know that Scope three is the big impact. Basically everything beyond the four walls of that company, right. And, and they can design things so they use less energy upstream. I mean, sorry, downstream. But upstream suppliers are, are a big source of impact and a big unknown. And a big area of influence, right? Obviously we know that. However, until recently companies are just estimating those scope three emissions using their spend data, maybe the activity data, right? So I bought this many dollars of aluminum. Or even I, I bought this, made tons of aluminum, but not really having an understanding of that third tier supplier. How are they actually producing that aluminum And is, and is that tier three supplier doing it with coal to burn everything or are they doing it with hydropower? That's a massive difference. Right. Companies have always kind of thrown up their arms and say, oh, that's too complicated. Right? I'll worry about what I have to do. But that obviously has, has progressed over the years. And now now we have the product carbon footprint, right? And that obviously the product, carbon footprint's always been a thing, but now we have standards. The World Business Council on sustainable Development kind of set the, the groundwork for how a company should do a simpler product carbon footprint, not a full lifecycle analysis, but a simpler product carbon footprint. And how do you measure data quality of that? How do you exchange that? They set the groundwork and other sectors have now picked that up as well. And it's become more of an expectation that if supplier, if you haven't done a product carbon footprint yet, you will need to do one soon. And then now we have tools, right? We launched a really wonderful product carbon footprint calculator six, eight months ago. And it's, and it's really kind of providing companies the ability to do this at scale. So when you really have that kind of understanding of what is actually going into my carbon footprint. It's much easier to do something about it, right? I buy same thing back to diversification, right? I buy aluminum from two suppliers. I'm nervous. I need to go buy it From five more, I get the product carbon footprint of all of them. I can make, I know what's gonna happen to my, to my overall impact once I do that. And it's one more factor in the decision, right? Obviously companies don't make all their decisions based on climate impact, but when they have a climate goal and when they have reporting and they have a bunch of pressures, it's going to, it's gonna factor into that decision, right? And so we're, we're gonna, so what's gonna happen in five years, we're gonna see that more and more we're gonna see companies able to make smarter decisions on climate. Based on having much better information. And that is gonna, then, that's gonna accelerate, it's gonna be somewhat of a, you know, positive feedback cycle. Where I, and I have a product, product, carbon footprint for this segment of my supplies. I could do something about it. The supplier who didn't have it, who didn't do it, is gonna, you know, it's gonna feed itself. And unfortunately as we see more and more climate disasters and more and more climate impact, that's gonna cause that pressure to increase. So, That's my crystal ball for you. And are there, speaking of crystal balls, are there emerging regulatory or market forces that you think would be real game changers, in the next 12, 15, 18, 24 months? Well, you know, regulation, you have the EU Deforestation Regulation coming into effect at the end of this year. a lot of the other EU regulations have been pushed back a little further or kind of already being implemented. That's kind of the big new one that is kind of full steam ahead. And that's where you're gonna see a lot of companies driving in that direction. Again, getting software tools. The way we do it is either at a kind of full you know, all of the volume from a certain supplier every year, or even on a kind of shipment level, getting the regulatory information that's required and passing that to the buyer, having the appropriate checks on that, submitting it to the EU. So having that, type of system in place is gonna be mission critical for anyone doing business in the EU within the next few months. So that is kind of like the shortest term what companies are, you know what, when they call us, like what are they asking about most? It's the EU deforestation regulation. Which, you know, you can kind of look back, I think the, the deforestation commitments. The earliest ones, was it 2015 or 2020 where they said zero deforestation by 2020? Or was, I'm not sure what it was, but none of them hit it right. And they all kind of like, those things kind of disappeared and this is now the time when it's, it's actually for real. Because if you don't comply with that regulation, you can't actually do business in the EU. It's, pretty strict the way that they've set it up. So I think that's gonna drive a lot of business to get a much better understanding of what's going on. It's gonna have ripples in the supply chain. You're gonna see those, those mid-tier suppliers, the ones who do, you know, like the Cargills and, and those companies who are buying a lot of goods and selling a lot of goods. They're gonna have to figure out a lot of things to, to be able to do things in a smart way. There are unfortunately, probably a few ways they can continue doing some business as usual by like segregating their supply. Okay. That stuff goes to Europe, that stuff goes elsewhere. So that kind of thing will happen, but, the pressure will be great enough that it's gonna cause upstream ripples and it, and the EUDR will have an impact on, on deforestation, which is really gratifying to see. So that's kind of, I think the, you know, short term you know, regulation push. I think that's the strongest one. But you also have CBAM, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for imported goods into the EU where again, companies need software tools to get the data from suppliers, calculate, consolidate, submit. And the nice thing about that one is it's a very kind of market driven type of regulation where it's a tax, right? So it's gonna, EUDR is more, you know, comply or don't. So then you might have companies trying to skirt the regulation, find ways around it, and then checkbox, I'm done. Right? And, and that's one approach. CBAM is gonna say, oh my gosh, I buy from that supplier, but the tax they're causing me is crazy, so maybe I should do something else. So it really taps into that economic decision making that companies make, which can be quite effective. So, that, that's another one. What gives you hope right now in the world of sustainable supply chains? What gives me hope? That's a good question because I would say I have less hope than I have in the past. Just based on what I'm seeing around me these days. I'd say one is that there there's much better tools now. Companies can do a lot more, much more efficiently than they could a few years ago, like 10 years ago, if we managed to get them the information that they wanted. Then we were like, that's amazing. And they're like, that's amazing. But then acting on it and using it was still difficult. Another thing that gives me hope, I think is ultimately, consumers want sustainable products. And how loud that voice is changes over time. But, you know, people don't want PFAS in their bodies. They don't want ravaging floods tearing through places. And that voice is gonna get louder at some point. So, that, that I think gives me hope as well. Okay. Superb. A left field. Question for you now. If you could have any person or character, alive dead, real or fictional as a champion for sustainable supply chains, who would it be and why? Wow. Historical figure, champion for supply. I mean, I guess I thought. No, no, no. I, I mean, I, you need leadership, right? You need like really strong leadership. You need leaders who inspire other leaders. So, and you need information that trust in information. Right. So I guess for the first point, I went to Abraham Lincoln just as like someone who can just get up there and people are like, whoa, I, I gotta listen to that guy. And, you know, so just that, that level of, of leadership I think is, is critical to have. I think we need that. Then Albert Einstein, I went for information. It was like, you know, it's like, you know, the things figured out. People don't dispute, people don't say, well, I don't think that's true, you know, whatever, I'll do something else. Right. So it's just that kind of like, yo, it's science, like this is happening, right? Like, and, and someone who can instill that kind of confidence in, in science and in impact, I think would also be critical. Nice. Very good. I like it. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Jamie. Is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I did or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of? That's a great question. We did cover a lot today. We didn't talk a lot about human rights, I guess. so maybe we could just think about that in the same kind of way we thought about deforestation a little bit and, and, and climate change as well. You know, same thing. You don't hear human rights in the news in supply chains as much as you used to a few years ago. However human rights programs within companies are much more established than climate programs. They've been around for longer. Those kind of common methodologies and tools have been around for longer, so having that kind of basis of we know we need to do this and kind of like you can't have forced labor in your supply chain and if anyone found out that would be horrible. Companies are, are definitely few companies that we talk to aren't doing anything on human rights. Many companies we've talked to, I, don't do much on climate change. Yeah. I mean, I have like my scope one and two figured out, but scope three, no, I'm, I'm fresh. Right. We don't hear that about human rights very much. So I think that's, that's kind of good because it's, and it's also not going anywhere. However, the challenges with human rights tend not to be with your tier one suppliers. They tend to be with the tier two three in the hidden places. So that's where I think the, the AI mapping. What we're capable of doing now is going to infuse the human rights realm with more capability and more insight. It will also infuse the non-profit NGO watchdog sector to find those issues more easily than they used to. So I think you're gonna have that, that cycle coming back where now companies need to deepen what they do on human rights. It's not enough to just ask your tier one suppliers and audit your tier one suppliers. You've gotta know who are your tier two suppliers and then same there. And then map that and, and keep going upstream, right? We do see slowly, but more and more companies saying, I need that same level of human rights confidence on my tier two suppliers. I can't just do it on my tier one. Right? So that's gonna become more commonplace. Right. Interesting. Great. Okay. Jamie, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? For sure. Sphera's website, sphera.com is probably the best place to learn about everything that Sphera does. We have a Scope three report that we just put out. So I can share a link to that with you, you can find on our website, but I think that gives a really good lay of the land of like what's going on with Scope three, what are businesses doing, what are the challenges? I think that's, that's a great place to look. Obviously I'm on LinkedIn so folks can find me there. Yeah. Super great. I'll put those links in the show notes, Jamie, so everyone has access to them. Wonderful. Jamie, thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. It's been really interesting. Yeah, it's fun talking to you, Tom. Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.