Q&A with Kendra Tolley on All Things Athian

Kendra Tolley co-founded Athian with a clear conviction: that the livestock industry needed its own dedicated sustainability infrastructure — not an afterthought grafted onto frameworks designed for forestry or energy. As Chief Commercial Officer, she leads Athian's market strategy and industry partnerships. We sat down with her to discuss Athian's journey and what she sees ahead.

**What problem were you and Paul trying to solve when you founded Athian?** The core problem was trust. There were plenty of voluntary carbon programs, but livestock producers told us they didn't trust them — the rules were opaque, the payments were slow, and the methodology felt disconnected from how farms actually operate. Corporate buyers had the opposite problem: they wanted to make supply chain sustainability claims but couldn't find credible, audit-ready data to back them up. Athian was built to solve both sides of that trust deficit simultaneously.

**How do you think about building credibility in a market that has faced a lot of scrutiny?** We start with the science. Our scientific advisory board isn't a branding exercise — it's a working technical committee that reviews our protocols and holds us accountable to rigour. We also believe in radical transparency: our methodologies are publicly available, our verification processes are third-party audited, and our data trails are designed to be audit-proof. Credibility is built one verified outcome at a time.

**What excites you most about the next few years?** The convergence of regulatory pressure, corporate net-zero commitments, and genuine consumer demand is creating a market that didn't exist five years ago. Livestock producers have been undervalued contributors to sustainability solutions for too long. I believe we're entering a period where that changes — where the producers doing the hardest work finally get paid fairly for it. Athian is going to be the infrastructure that makes that possible.