THE SUSTAINABILITY INTERVIEW
Moving beyond reporting Like many corporate leaders, Dana has spent much of her career“ drowning in reporting”. ESG disclosure has become a dominant part of the sustainability profession, driven by investor expectations and tightening regulation. Dana is candid about the downside, arguing that reporting has too often become the end in itself rather than the means to drive better decisions.
“ Previously, we’ re always counting the holes in the sinking boat,” she explains.“ But weren’ t stopping to decide what to do about the holes causing us to sink.”
For Virgin Media O2, the move is now towards using data to inform action. That means investing as much in execution and change as in metrics and dashboards. Dana says the business will strike“ more of a balance between reporting and doing something about the data”. Her role, and that of her nine‐strong sustainability team, is to ensure the rigour of evidence remains, while shifting the emphasis to impact. An example of that is turning Virgin Media O2’ s TCFD disclosures into the‘ Cost of Doing Nothing’ paper that is regularly updated and used to engage key parts of the business to understand the impacts of business decisions long term.
From Better Connections to responsible business Virgin Media O2 was formed in 2021 through the merger of Virgin Media and O2. Both legacy companies arrived with established sustainability programmes organised around ESG pillars.
Post‐merger, the challenge was to unify that heritage into a single strategy for a much larger, infrastructure‐heavy business.
In 2022, the company launched the Better Connections Plan, setting out ambitions to reach net zero across its full value chain by 2040, 10 years ahead of the UK’ s national target. Despite customer demand for data steadily increasing, Virgin Media O2 has reduced its carbon per gigabyte overtime. It has already cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 63 % against a 2020 baseline and is on track to reduce operational emissions by 90 % by 2030.
22 April 2026