Leslie Marshall

Corporate Energy Engineering Lead, General Mills, Inc.

2017 Business Award Winner

Leslie Marshall is the Corporate Energy Engineering Lead for General Mills. General Mills has committed to reducing its absolute greenhouse gas emissions across its full value chain by 28% by the year 2025 using 2010 as a baseline. Marshall is tasked with developing and executing the global strategy for reducing the energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions that result from production at General Mills’ food processing plants. Since 2013, General Mills’ corporate and plant energy teams have reduced the company’s adjusted energy usage by 11% and saved $23 million in energy costs. She manages the utility data for General Mills’ food processing plants and identifies the largest opportunities for reducing energy usage. Her work involves providing cost analyses to justify implementing capital projects for new technologies that will enable plants to run more efficiently. General Mills’ energy reduction strategy emphasizes making behavioral changes to plant utility and facility operations. In addition to eliminating energy usage, this has improved the reliability of the utilities delivered to production departments and decreased maintenance costs. Her work has demonstrated that energy reduction can be achieved in businesses even when the company’s priority is to deliver a different product to the consumer. She actively participates in sustainability events to educate her community about General Mills’ commitment to the environment, and she frequently speaks at international conferences to collaborate on energy-reducing best practices with her peers across other industries. She is a member of Middle Tennessee State University’s Engineering Technology Department Advisory Board, which provides input on how the department can develop students to meet the community’s needs. She also volunteers with Partners in Food Solutions, providing technical consultations to food processing plants in Africa that wish to reduce energy consumption but do not have on-site resources for assistance. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.