From Darden to Decarbonization: Virginia Covo on Building What Sustainability Was Missing

“You can’t track what you can’t measure.”

That line captures the essence of Virginia Covo’s mindset. For the past ten years Covo (MBA ’16) worked at Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewing company with a global portfolio of beer brands including Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois.

Before co-founding Greentor, Virginia Covo (MBA ’16) spent ten years at Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewing company with a global portfolio of beer brands including Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois.

She devoted seven years to driving the company toward its carbon emissions, renewable energy and sustainable packaging targets and reporting — goals that were largely met by 2025. In the process, she uncovered a persistent challenge: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data that could be inconsistent and unreliable. Seeing an opportunity in the complexity of ESG reporting, Covo set out to solve the problem.

The End of an Era

AB InBev established its sustainability goals in 2018. During her tenure, Covo held several sustainability roles, ultimately serving as Global Director of Sustainability. In that capacity, she helped transition the brewer to 100% renewable electricity, drove emissions reductions and extended those targets across the supplier network.

By the time she left AB InBev late last year, the maker of Budweiser and Stella Artois had reduced emissions from operations by more than 40 percent and cut emissions intensity (the amount of emissions per unit of production) across its value chain by a third.

“It felt like the closure of a cycle,” says Covo. “We set these goals in 2018, and by 2025 we had mostly delivered on them. It was the end of an era.”

But for Covo, that progress also highlighted a gap. There was more sustainability-related data than ever, but it was often fragmented and hard to use in decision making. “There’s a lot of data, and a lot of ambiguity,” she says. “We often don’t have a clear view.”

It was time to set aside the corporate role and step into a new one: entrepreneur.

Built to Build

Covo’s entrepreneurial instincts stretch back decades to Cartagena, Colombia, where she grew up and began experimenting with small businesses from a young age. As a teenager, she bought jeans from wholesalers and resold them to friends at a markup. Before that, she sold popsicles from a foam bucket.

“I’ve been inventing businesses ever since I can remember,” says Covo. “That fire was always there.”

Her early career, however, followed a more conventional path.

Working at Coca-Cola FEMSA, the largest franchise bottler of Coca-Cola products in the world, Covo spent five years in sales in Colombia, eventually overseeing a sizable portion of the country’s modern trade revenue.

In 2014, she moved to the US to attend the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. After graduating in 2016, she entered the sustainability world following a summer internship at AB InBev.

Data Without Direction

The deeper Covo delved into sustainability efforts at the brewing giant, the clearer she saw their limitations: with more than 20,000 suppliers, much of the value chain data relied heavily on self-reporting.

“It starts getting very difficult when you look at your supply chain,” Covo says. “You have to rely on data that is not always reliable.”

Scope 3 emissions — indirect emissions that occur outside a company’s operations, such as delivery trucks or business travel — were particularly hard to measure. Data sat in different parts of suppliers’ businesses and was often inconsistently collected and reported, with much of the work still being done manually.

The result was more reporting, but not much direction. “Companies are asked to report on hundreds, if not thousands, of KPIs,” says Covo. “It’s hard to know what to focus on.”

Over time, it became clear that this challenge was pervasive and in need of a broader solution. “I realized I wanted to help more than one organization tackle these challenges,” says Covo. “That’s when it clicked; I should do something about this.”

Turning Data Into Decisions

In December 2025, she co-founded Greentor, a New York-based startup that turns fragmented sustainability data into usable risk analysis. “We are not a data platform,” Covo emphasizes. “We are a decision system.”

Greentor brings together disparate ESG data, links it to financial and operational impact, and uses AI to analyze risks across supply chains and model how they change over time. The aim is to help companies prioritize. “Sustainability risks vary by geography,” Covo explains. “Greentor helps you see where to invest. For example, where to decarbonize first and where carbon costs could rise.”

This was not the company’s first iteration. Originally, there were several ideas suggested by both Virginia and her business partner Melissa, but after speaking to companies grappling with this challenge, they shifted the focus towards a tool for making decisions.

Covo says that Darden taught her how to make decisions with imperfect information and to prioritize what matters most to customers. The school’s case method puts students on the spot to form an opinion and defend it. “You have to build a point of view with what you have,” she says.

The case method also teaches students to change their point of view or direction as new information comes in, an approach reflected in how Greentor has evolved.

“It’s only through conversations with people who do the work every day that you get to a conclusion,” Covo notes.

Automation Is King

Covo also saw AI as a critical piece of the technology solution. Greentor engages AI to pull together scattered ESG data and uses frameworks such as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to structure it.

“It helps unify fragmented inputs,” Covo says. “And it allows you to understand what those risks mean for your business.”

One key feature is the ability to simulate how supply chain risks evolve over time. “An AI agent can show you how your risk profile changes depending on what actions you take,” she says.

Striving for Transparency

The technology solution comes at a time of growing uncertainty around sustainability, as policy support weakens in some markets and strengthens in others. Companies who have committed to sustainability targets are increasingly being pressured to show results.

In the past, companies focused on setting commitments. Now, she says, the emphasis is on delivery. As Covo puts it, “People are saying: show me. Show me what you’ve done. Show me the results.”

The shift is being driven by regulators and investors, and by the need to link sustainability more closely to financial performance. ​​“It’s more a shift towards showing what the operational outcomes are,” she notes. “It’s becoming business as usual.” In other words, sustainability as less of a set of commitments and more of a basic condition of doing business.

There is a sense in some quarters that sustainability is taking a back seat. Covo emphatically disagrees. “I don’t think it’s going quiet,” she says. “It’s an evolution.”