Jaycee Pribulsky, chief sustainability officer at Apollo Global Management, credits her early government experience, including at the Agency for International Development, with setting the foundation for her long-term tenure in sustainability and supply chain work at footwear company Nike.
“What that really taught me was a macro view of economies at scale, what the geopolitical implications are and were, and how economies adjust, how they adapt, how they grow, how they’re financed and funded,” she said during the latest episode of Climate Pioneers, the Trellis video interview series.
Pribulsky joined Apollo in October 2025, after close to nine years in supply chain and sustainability roles at Nike — the last year as its CSO. She replaced Davis Stangis, the former chief sustainability officer of Campbell Soup Company, who became Apollo’s first CSO in 2021. (Stangis is still an Apollo partner.)
She was brought in to further “operationalize” how criteria such as energy strategy and supply chain relationships are considered when Apollo is mulling an investment or looking for ways to mine more value from portfolio companies.
“At Apollo, we view sustainability very much through the lens of a management discipline,” Pribulsky said.
Apollo is one of the world’s largest private equity firms, with slightly more than $1 trillion in assets under management (AUM), as of June 30. Over the past five years, it has incorporated sustainability criteria into its due diligence and portfolio management processes.
Those initiatives are coordinated by the Office of Sustainability, which reports to the firm’s Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility committee five times a year. Pribulsky reports to one of Apollo’s co-presidents.
“At any company today, I think part of this work is being able to influence at scale, and the team does an incredible job at that,” she said.
Demonstrable results
For example, Apollo’s Sustainable Credit & Platforms team completed more than 9,000 sustainability risk assessments in 2025, covering 90 percent of Apollo’s AUM, according to the Apollo 2025 Sustainability Report published in June.
“Physical risk is particularly important,” Pribulsky said. “We could also be looking at where there are regulatory and transition risks.”
Meanwhile, work by the Responsible & Sustainable Operations team, which advises portfolio companies, has translated into an estimated $164 million in EBITDA improvements alongside measurable reductions in emissions intensity. Apollo’s goal is to improve the carbon intensity of “flagship” investments by 15 percent over the project hold time.
“We can also really zone in and focus on where there are opportunities for those businesses to preserve cash that could potentially be used for other investments,” she said.
One example is Restaurant Group, which operates more than 300 drinking and eating establishments across the U.K. and Ireland. Apollo’s team suggested new energy management systems that have helped cut consumption by an average of 7 percent per location. At Apollo’s direction, Restaurant Group has also added sustainability criteria into many of its procurement contracts.
“We’re making investments, particularly on the equity side, in how we can buy companies and continue to drive business value for the long term,” Pribulsky said. “The ultimate goal is obviously being able to capture some of that on exit — whether it’s a public exit, whether it’s an acquisition — and being able to quantify not only what we’ve achieved over the hold period.”
