Hey, world—say Hello, ZEO to Stéphane Dierick.
This series follows the unique stories of our people, whom we call ZEOs, to celebrate their contributions to Zuora—and beyond—and share with the world why we are so proud to be on this journey with them.
This Earth Month, we’re featuring Stéphane Dierick to learn how his career journey and personal purpose led him to become a ZEO, in addition to the ways he’s fighting climate change—from inside and outside of our company.
Hi, Stéphane—Let’s start from the top. Tell us about you, what you do at Zuora and the teams you work with.
Hello, everyone! My name is Stephane. I’m a Senior Client Manager working on our Customer Service team in Paris. My job consists of deploying Zuora in our major’s customer organizations in EMEA along with our Customer Service’s team and our integrator’s partners.
What’s the most exciting part of your job?
I think that innovation is in my DNA, and Zuora is a powerful transformation lever on the road to more sustainable business. One customer that I work with has changed gym equipment to the “anything as a service” mindset, and I’m in the passenger seat with a major car manufacturer that’s driving us to the “car as a service” future. It’s exciting—I’m at the heart of a major transformation!
Partnering with the Zuora ESG team is also something exciting and valuable for me because I believe that tomorrow’s ESG is not only satisfying formal criterias or passing grades, but it’s now strongly linked with our business and the business of our customers. We are at the beginning of the great sustainability shift. This will affect all businesses and Zuora helps in this major move—I couldn’t be at a better place.
How did your passion for climate change and innovation lead you to Zuora?
I started taking part in the fight for climate change back in 2018 and I decided to do it in 3 fields: transforming companies, creating new sustainable models, and finally educating people so they understand the problem before acting.
So I joined Zuora where my daily job has a real impact on transforming companies to adapt to climate change.
Talking about business transformation, I’ve always been excited about how technology can help companies to deeply change their business models. As a former Director of Innovation, I was excited to help companies think differently and build new, more sustainable business models like moving from units to usage.
If transformation is the first action, what other actions are you taking to fight climate change?
My next actions were to support new business models and to educate those around me.
And so, I co-founded Sailcoop, which transports people by sailboat using only wind, as a solution to the environmental issues caused by the conventional transportation methods frequently used by French tourists to travel to the enchanting sunny French islands.
About four years ago, I also co-founded Citizen For Climate, which is a non-government organization (NGO) that provides climate change education to schools, companies, and the general public in France, with plans to expand. We know that this topic is complicated and overwhelming—there’s so much information out there. What our NGO focuses on is helping people begin to gain awareness and perspective on the problem.
It’s my belief the only way to make a difference as an individual, as an only person, is to gather more people with you. You cannot fight a problem that is caused by 8 billion people just alone. So I believe that by gathering people, explaining the problem, and trying to work together to try to solve it is the only way I can see to make a difference.
What small actions can we all take to continue fighting climate change together?
It’s important to first pick something that feels easy but also something that you can notice and feel good about. At Zuora, we celebrated Earth Day by asking all ZEOs to power down their laptops every night for one week—you should look up just how much energy that can conserve. Things like this can save on your energy bills and reduce your personal carbon footprint! Your next small action will surely be to look at the way you commute or how much meat there’s in your plate. Let’s keep fighting!
Want to be part of our team? Explore our current openings and apply on our Career Site.