NSS Member Highlight: Omar Gadalla, Axel Johnson Inc. Global Head of Sustainability
- 5 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Omar Gadalla
Global Head of Sustainability
Axel Johnson Inc.
Give us a cross-sectoral, transdisciplinary, intersectional elevator pitch, describing what you do.
At Axel Johnson Inc., I get to wear two primary hats. Part of my job is very big picture, it's making sure that sustainability is built into how our businesses grow, how we invest, and how we bring products to market. It's really a strategic view.
The other half that really speaks to the engineer in me is the hands-on part, where I'm working directly with our teams to track our carbon footprint, meet new regulations, find smarter and more sustainable ways of doing things every day.
I think the best part is that I don't do it alone. I work closely with the sustainability leaders inside each of our (8) businesses, so together we've got the right focus and resources in place.
For AJI, sustainability isn't an add-on, it's a must-have. It's something that we feel is a competitive advantage and creates real impact. We're owned by the Axel Johnson family (based in Sweden). They have a long history in environmental sustainability. I'm talking decades and generations back. So, it's really about being part of that legacy and continuing that moving forward.
In your work, where you're doing some strategic thinking and planning, and you also get to do the hands-on building engineer work, what is one persistent challenge you face?
I'm going to go with bandwidth. I'm a chemical engineer by training, and being an engineer makes me very pragmatic, or maybe I'm very pragmatic, which made me an engineer, I'm not sure… but either way I like to get things done. That's my thing. I've been in the environmental field since graduation because Chemical engineering really didn't speak to me in a purposeful way, so I went into environmental engineering. The first 10 years of my career were in the trenches. Things like wastewater treatment, surface water and groundwater remediation, superfund sites, that sort of thing. We'd go into a site, we'd clean it, and we'd leave it better than we found it. Or we would design a system, implement it, and the water discharged to the environment would be clean. With every project, we were making immediate and real world change.
Sustainability, however, can be very heavy on the procedural side, and frankly, it's one of my biggest criticisms of our industry. Companies can get so wrapped up in accounting, disclosures, reporting, signing on to agreements and pledges and all this stuff, they can go years without actually doing anything that actually helps the environment. I see this all the time; one thing I always say is, a photon of light coming from the sun does not give a shit what your CDP score is. It only cares whether it runs into a greenhouse gas molecule or not. That's my pragmatic side. So, in developing AJI’s Strategy, I've pushed action first, straight from the beginning, which is what my presentation (at the NSS conference) is going to be about.
Presentation at the NSS:
Track D: Tue Oct 21, 2025, 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
However, I am coming to grips with the fact that procedural work is important, and just as important in some respects. So, I'd say the biggest challenge is really bandwidth and focus on both. Not getting too wrapped up on the procedural side, where we lose sight of, ‘hey, are we better today than we were yesterday for the environment’ versus what maybe some disclosure system says. But also knowing, yes, this is important too, because it's about communication, it's about understanding whether we are hitting our KPIs, and getting the messaging out. So, it's balancing those two things.
What made you move away from the consulting, where it sounded like you were in the field hands-on 100% of the time, to something different, where you were doing this larger strategic and planning stuff that is important, but doesn't give you immediate results?
It was a slow transition. You know, first of all, once you’re out of your late 20s, wearing the giant Tyvek suits with the breathing apparatus and the face mask, doing the 40-hour trainings every year along with blood work to make sure you’re not getting sick from the environment you work in… that got a little old.
As you grow, you learn your expertise and that what you've built can be deployed over larger areas.
Beyond that, in the environmental consulting firm, we were installing equipment and products (things like biological reactors and separation equipment) that were designed by somebody else, and I wanted to do the design on those. So, I went to a company, Parkson, which is one of the companies AJI owns, because they actually designed and created this equipment, and at the time, they were creating a lot of new technologies, and were on the forefront of phosphorus and nitrogen removal. They were doing a lot of pilot studies with these cool bioreactors, and I was like, I want in on this! So, I guess I was kind of back in the trenches; but it was more in a corporate role. However, I did plenty of field work there, too. Then, because of my experience, when AJI started the sustainability program here the CEO at the time brought me in and said, “Do what you're doing at Parkson, but do it for everybody: develop the strategy and the program at AJI.”
Let's move to something that brings you hope.
A couple years ago, I had a really amazing opportunity to help develop the first sustainability class in the chemical engineering department at the University of Pittsburgh, my alma mater. I had participated in a mentorship program with the school of engineering for a number of years. Each year, they would hook you up with a senior engineering student, and then you would mentor them their senior year. The professor that was in charge of that program was developing their first sustainability course for the chemical engineering department, and I got the opportunity to help out and guest lecture.
I really did not know what to expect at all, especially with chemical engineers. I remember when I was in school… we would have probably been like, I don't hear about this environmental stuff, right? So I was pleasantly surprised when I got in there, and all the students were incredibly engaged and excited about sustainability. I could see that this next generation really cares. They were asking so many questions, and we had such a great day.
Mentorship is something that brings me a lot of joy. I'd love to have opportunities like that again. Any professors reading this… I just love this sort of thing. I've been involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters, I mentor seniors at Pitt every year and I mentor a number of people in our company. It just brings me so much joy.
It’s not uncommon for us to say, “The next generation of sustainability professionals are the ones that give us hope.” But here you are also speaking to your own role in their personal and career development, and that that relationship brings you, yourself, joy. I think that is extremely powerful. Sustainability isn't just your chemical engineers that are doing the science, but there's some internal stuff that matters: your values, and your dedication, and the joy you get from your impact.
You have to believe in what you do. You really do.
The moment I had a little bit of an epiphany was when I was in my engineering program. I remember going to the job fair, and I just had this moment of, “Oh my god...” From a personal level, I grew up extremely poor, and my family struggled with food and housing insecurity quite a bit. When I got the opportunity to go to college, my main goal was just to get out of that. I went and looked up what the highest paying career was, and it was chemical engineering. I had no idea what that was but I just signed up for it. I've always been good at math, so it worked out. It was hard, obviously. I worked multiple jobs, cleaning UPS trucks at night, serving food at the college cafeteria, serving tables, clothing stores, you name it. I was working well over 40 hours a week to survive, making for a very difficult four years. College was not fun at all. But when I got to the point where I had to pick my co-op… I'm looking around [this job fair], and I'm like, this is just not me. It's just not me, I can't do this, I can't work at a chemical plant, I can't work in an oil refinery.
There was one booth in the corner that was this environmental consulting firm. They needed somebody to do sanitary sewer inspections. And I remember, nobody wanted anything to do with it, and I went over and talked to them. They have these things called CSOs, which are Combined Sewer Overflows (which is another joke I have in my head: How far apart sustainability can be from the actual environmental field, because nobody in the environmental field would ever want to be called a CSO!)
They needed someone to go and map out the system so that they could close the CSOs, and most of my classmates were saying “I'm not gonna spend my time looking at manholes!” But for me it was purpose. At the end of this project, we’re closing these things. No more sewage is going to be discharging into the water. That was it, I was sold. To my friends, that was insane.
But you have to have a passion for what you do.
If you could have lunch with a famous person, who would you choose, and why? And what do you think you would talk about?
Stephen Hawking. I am really intrigued and amazed by quantum mechanics and astrophysics. I wasn't originally, because I had to take pchem (Physical Chemistry) in college, and collapsing wave functions is not that fun. But, once I got past hating Schrodinger for his equation, and actually learned what he did, I was like, oh, this is actually pretty cool! I've been obsessed with it since, because the way I see it is we have all these books and movies and stories we use to escape reality, about fantasy worlds, where magic is real and the world is a mystery. But you don't actually need it, because magic is real when it comes to a subatomic level, we have no idea what's going on. It's all magic. You don't need a fantasy world, because we live in it. And so that's why I'm so intrigued by it. I heard this quote, and I'm going to have to paraphrase it, but it was something along the lines of, “way back in history, everything was a mystery; we had no idea how anything worked, and our world was filled with magic. And then science came along, and we lost that. We figured out why everything happened, and we lost that magic. Then quantum mechanics came along and goes, you're wrong! Everything IS magic, and you have no idea how anything works.”
I'm obsessed with it, but I'm not as smart as all these physicists to really understand it that well, which is why I read so much. So, obviously Stephen Hawking or Carlo Rovelli - one of the big names - but honestly, if any physics professor was unlucky enough to get stuck next to me on a flight, they would regret it instantly, because I would be badgering them the whole time with questions.
I love that. It's like another element of mystery, hope, optimism, things to strive for.
You know, there's this little bit of the universe that we know we know… a bit more that we know we don't know… and there's a vast chasm of what we don't know we don't know.
What hobbies or interests do you have outside of work?
I am a huge endurance junkie. I have done probably 8 full Ironman triathlons, 30 half Ironmans, and more marathons than I could count. I got really competitive for a while. My last ironman I completed before COVID, which was my last, was Ironman North Carolina, and I finished 29th out of 3,000 overall at 42 years old which I’m quite proud of. But that took a ton of training and time away from my family, so I’ve moved to running only.
And family. I just love my family… My kids are getting older, and I think one of my biggest fears is being an empty nester! I just love spending time with them. I coach my son's football team and take part in their activities as much as they’ll let me. Two of my kids are in a sustainability-based middle school. It's called BUGS. It stands for Brooklyn Urban Garden School. As much as I am allowed – because they're not big fans of it – I go speak at their school. One time, I was giving a presentation at their school about what I do, and this one kid raised his hand, and he goes, “I don't have a question, I just have a comment. You have a very BUGS job.” And I was like, “Yes, I do!”
That, and just family time. We're huge Scrabble addicts. We have a game scheduled tonight.
And reading. I read A LOT. Physics is a big thing, and lately I've been getting more into consciousness, because I think that's another huge mystery. In essence, we are the universe, but we've gained consciousness, and we are the universe looking back at itself! It’s just so incredible!
We're on to our last question. How can the NSS support you in your career, or other sustainability-related aspirations?
I believe the biggest asset is teamwork. The more industry and academia can work together, the better.
We fit extremely well together, bridging theory and practice, but historically, those are at odds, and that makes no sense, right? Because if you have one person that's good at one thing, and another person that's good at a different thing, you shouldn't be fighting each other, you should be on the same team. Building off of each other. That's why I got so excited about NSS. Anybody who wants to do any sort of collaborative projects… I'm very interested in that. One of the great things about my job is I have the freedom to pursue these types of things.
