Celonaut Spotlight: Finja Butteron, Ecosystem Sustainability Lead

Meet Finja Butteron, Celonis’ Digital Consulting Intern turned Sustainability Lead - Partner Ecosystem. A Celonaut for over 3 years ago, she joined Celonis with a computer science background and a passion for sustainability and looking after our Earth.

Finja spoke to us about her transition from Digital Consulting to Sustainability, why she chose this career path, and her proudest moment at Celonis so far.

Finja Butteron

Ecosystem Sustainability Lead

Why did you choose this career path?

I always had a huge, huge passion for math, but I wanted to have something with a bit more speed in it, a bit more future-forward looking. So computer science was a very obvious choice, an innovative field with elements of math. It was more of a typical gut decision that most 18-year-olds take, and I really enjoyed my time studying, especially the coding, surprisingly, and all of the programming, but I got into the consulting area throughout my internship.

Can you walk us through the transition from digital consulting to sustainability?

I joined as an intern for the first two months in the digital consulting team, building this completely new go-to-market model, Celonis For Consulting, specifically for consultancies; it was so exciting so I joined full time. I supported our VP of digital consulting and helped to build the team from 3 to 25, and also my own team. After two years, I realized I wanted to focus on something that had an impact on society. I was looking for the opportunity to build something new from the ground, and most importantly, I wanted to follow one of my passions - taking care of Earth.

"The diversity of the tasks were so engaging, there was never a boring day, so I very quickly decided that I wanted to join full time.”

After the sustainability program started to play out and I worked a bit with our director of sustainability, I started speaking to our leadership about changing departments. It became very apparent quite quickly that sustainability is something that was also close to the heart of our executives, and where they saw a major opportunity for Celonis as well. I had the chance to build my own role and create the ecosystem role for sustainability, showing that there’s a need in the market for us, working with our partners on sustainability topics to create new solutions for our customers. So I became the second member of the team.

What is a typical day like at Celonis?

There isn't really a typical day, it's always changing because there’s always some new great idea, or initiative coming up. Generally, we're in the process of delivering sustainable procurement and carbon emission measurement solutions to our customers and partners. The day is filled with discussions with partners who are new to sustainability or Celonis, sharing our vision and value proposition, and understanding where we have overlapping capabilities and what we can bring to the customers jointly.

Then that is spiced up by some additional projects like our ecosystem hackathon or thought leadership pieces as we did with IBM on the sustainable supply chains.

Can you describe your team in three words?

Future-oriented, hands-on, and fun.

What is your proudest moment at Celonis so far?

I'm not sure if there's one single proud moment, but it's every time we get super excited feedback from partners or customers, when they have that “aha” moment of “awesome, this is what Celonis can do for sustainability, and how they help customers reduce their emissions and costs”. I'm very proud every time sustainability pops up in a discussion.

I do think my proudest moment is still to come. We have the sustainability panel at the World Tour, which I'll be moderating, so that's going to be great.

Which of the Celonis values matters most to you and why?

Obviously, it's Earth Is Our Future, but that’s not just a value, it's the vision of our team. We need to make sure that we conserve our Earth and society so that we can continue living here safely.

I would rather focus on The Best Team Wins value because I've seen a lot of teams within Celonis grow, especially in digital consulting and sustainability. Seeing our teamwork skills develop and being able to discuss ideas with your colleagues, no matter the size of the team, is always super inspiring. Everyone has a hands-on mentality, it’s what gives a lot of inspiration and drive.

Why should someone join your team?

It's the mission we’re on, to enable every company in the world and make their processes as sustainable as possible. It’s something that needs to happen, especially when we talk about environmental sustainability. Seeing how companies are struggling and being able to help is great.

It's really inspiring to feel you have a reason beyond forecasting and customer calls every day, because it's the impact that you can create. Being able to work with an amazing team, with people from different backgrounds from all around the world. There are always discussions with ideas about what we can do, and how we can push this vision further into the world.

What key qualifications or type of background should applicants have to join both digital consulting and sustainability?

What’s important for Celonis in both departments is having that specific drive and interest in navigating a volatile world of building something completely new because we're still on a journey within Celonis. You need to have a hands-on mentality, not have a fear of touching anything, and that confidence in yourself. If you're excited about the product, that helps a lot, especially in our customer and partner-facing roles, because you need to spread the excitement about what Celonis can do.

Digital consulting is about being able to understand the challenges that consultants might have in their day-to-day work and how we can help them to overcome this. You’ll need to quickly switch your mindset from that scale-up world at Celonis, to a more hierarchy-oriented and traditional world and consulting.  It's beneficial to have a bit of confidence because you’ll speak with our partners and higher-ups, so you need to have a strong presence to be successful and lead them.

In sustainability, you need to think outside of the box, because we're trying to create something that hasn't been done before. How can we reach our targets and ambitions? How do we bring it into the process requires being future-oriented, having a vision in mind, and being innovative? And obviously, you need to have a passion for sustainability, and understand how important it is for our and future generations to be far more conscious of the way we interact with the environment and our footprint.

👩‍🚀 Finja joined our Munich office in February 2019, starting in Digital Consulting, and after progressing through various roles, currently positioned in the Sustainability team. In her free time, she loves to spend her weekends hiking, climbing, or biking outside, trying to catch all the sun rays.

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Through our Internal Mobility series, we want to illustrate our employees and their internal journeys through Celonis, showcasing Celonaut’s professional development and growth paths. 

Want to hear more internal mobility stories from Celonauts? Come and meet Emma Hart, and learn about her Celonis mobility journey!

Ria Sheta

Talent Marketing Intern