Working Towards a Sustainable Future at the Ashurst, McLaren, and BRYTER Hackathon

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Global law firm Ashurst hosted its first Sustainable Futures Hackathon in May, collaborating with McLaren Racing and BRYTER.

The two-day Hackathon, held at the McLaren Technology Centre, focused on core sustainability issues, including supply chain decarbonization, decarbonization of buildings, the gathering of sustainability data, organizational carbon footprint tracking, and overall community impact. 

A winning partnership 

Inspired by Ashurst, McLaren and BRYTER’s commitment to building a sustainable and resilient future, teams were challenged to quickly ideate and build solutions to ESG challenges. With attendees including VMO2, the UK Government Legal Department, Balfour Beaty and McLaren as well as Ashurst partners, associates and trainees, the mix-background teams were formed to ensure diversity of thought and each was given a different sustainability problem statement to solve. 

We were delighted to partner with McLaren and BRYTER for this unique event, which brought to life the power of industry collaboration and digital enablement to solve sustainability problems.

Tara Waters, Partner and Chief Digital Officer at Ashurst

On the second day, pitches were made to the judging panel, comprised of Chris Georgiou, Global co-head of Ashurst Advance, Kim Wilson, Sustainability Director at McLaren Racing and Sam Spivack, Managing Director of Legal Partnerships at BRYTER. Teams were ranked based on scope of the problem, feasibility of their idea and the overall proposed solution.  

An ideation session during the hackathon at the McLaren Technology Center.
An ideation session during the hackathon at the McLaren Technology Centre.

Commenting, Tara Waters, Partner and Chief Digital Officer at Ashurst said, “Sustainability and digital transformation is at the top of every organization’s boardroom and business agenda. These are really big topics that encompass a number of challenges that no one organization is likely to solve on its own. Problems this big require new approaches to problem solving and cross industry collaboration.” 

“We designed the Sustainable Futures Hackathon as an event to kick-start new collaborations between Ashurst and its clients, with the shared aim of seeking technology-enabled solutions to sustainability-linked problems.” 

“Studies show bringing together a range of people with diverse experience, giving them the time and space to ideate and arming them with problem solving techniques and tools leads to not just more creative solutions but ultimately more impactful outcomes. That’s why we were delighted to partner with McLaren and BRYTER for this unique event which brought to life the power of industry collaboration and digital enablement to solve sustainability problems.” 

Kim Wilson, Sustainability Director at McLaren Racing said that the event stimulated innovative thinking. “Sustainability is really important to our future agenda so this was a great opportunity to demonstrate how we can ideate, collaborate and move fast at the pace of Racing to try and come up with solutions that we all need for a better society.”  

“An event like this sows the seeds of ideas that going forward we can work on and turn into viable solutions,” Chris Georgiou, Global Co-Head of Ashurst Advance added. “We saw collaboration, open minds, curiosity of thinking, diversity of participants and technology as being the facilitators of making progress, and we are really looking forward to working with our partners and clients going forward to continue to develop innovative solutions to sustainable futures. 

Sam Spivack, Managing Director of Legal Partnerships at BRYTER said, “This event was a fantastic opportunity to partner with Ashurst and McLaren. We were blown away by the venue, the creativity and ingenuity of the digital solutions created by the competitors at this hackathon, and by the energy levels throughout both days.” 

Team Hunt – aptly named after legendary McLaren driver James Hunt – were named winners with their concept, which focused on the decarbonization of buildings and developed a tool to enable them to make an informed and responsible decision to either re-build or retrofit, depending on an assessment criteria, that takes into account environmental, social and governance factors. 

Enquiries to: communications@bryter.io  

About BRYTER 

BRYTER is the no-code app builder that enables business experts to build digital apps. BRYTER gives enterprise teams the tools to build digital applications to provide faster, more accurate services to their colleagues, without programming. BRYTER is especially geared to professionals in law, compliance, accounting and finance, who use workflow automation and no-code to streamline complex, recurring decisions and scenarios. Global brands from consumer industries (McDonald’s), through financial services (ING Banking Group) to professional service firms (Deloitte, PwC and KPMG), use BRYTER to deliver services digitally. BRYTER is a remote-first company with offices in New York, Boston, London, Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin. www.bryter.com

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