What this episode is about
María Ordovás studied Business Administration and Law. She worked in automotive and pharma. In 2020 she walked away from it all for ten months to train in sustainability, because she kept seeing something missing in the companies she had worked for. Today she is an independent ESG consultant, a professor at EDEM and EOI, and one of the most-followed voices on LinkedIn on ESG regulation.
That is where the conversation begins: how do you learn in a sector where what you study today can be obsolete tomorrow? María explains how she built her own information system, which sources she uses, and why LinkedIn, for all its value, is also a trap if you do not know how to filter it.
Three types of company, one question
The central part of the episode is a taxonomy María built from her experience with more than 70 companies at Forética. There are three kinds of company when it comes to sustainability.
Those that do pure compliance: they report because they are required to, and that is the end of it. Those doing compliance-management: they go through the exercise and, if something catches their eye, they look into it. And those pursuing strategic sustainability: sustainability reaches the board, is treated as both risk and opportunity, and is embedded in financial objectives over three, four, or five years.
Juanjo puts the question: can a type-1 company evolve into a type-3, or do you have to change companies? María’s answer is not optimistic, but it is nuanced. The most effective lever she has seen is not conviction but reputational fear. The companies that invest most in sustainability are not always the most convinced: they are the ones most afraid of a scandal.
Omnibus as oxygen, not as victory
Omnibus Package I has been in force for six days when they record. Ninety percent of the companies previously in scope are now out. María sees it differently: it is not a step back, it is oxygen. She has worked with sustainability teams drowning as they tried to reach 1,100 data points. That breathing room could be the window to do things properly, not just to comply.
The pressure does not disappear. Investor expectations continue. Supply chains keep demanding KPIs from their suppliers. The companies that have been reporting since 2018 are not going to stop.
The future of sustainability consulting
The conversation ends in an uncomfortable place: what happens to sustainability consulting when Omnibus cuts the market by 90% and AI starts doing the reporting work? María has a clear thesis: consulting built purely around reporting is going to disappear. What remains is the strategic layer. Setting real objectives, with grounded KPIs, connected to competitive positioning and access to capital. That is not something software does.
Her final advice: take nothing for granted. Do not depend on any single regulation. Do not commit to more than your data can actually demonstrate. The first greenwashing lawsuits have already arrived.
News from the radar
Omnibus I in force. Ninety percent of previously obligated companies are now out. Spain remains in regulatory limbo: CSRD has still not been transposed into national law. Omnibus has not solved the problem. It has revealed who has one.
AI ROI. Two out of three corporate AI projects do not generate a positive return on investment. Sixty-six percent of the spend goes to infrastructure. Investing in infrastructure is not the same as building good infrastructure. The pattern is exactly the same as in sustainability.
EU Data Act. In force since September 2025. Data generated by a product belongs in part to the user who generates it. Europe considers data must be portable, reusable, and accessible. That requires companies to know exactly what data they have, where it is, and in what format. Something most companies cannot answer today.