Our mission is to empower individuals and organisations to take leadership to tackle critical global challenges.

We are an institution within the University of Cambridge

Across complex and connected issues, we challenge, inform and support leaders from business and policy to deliver change towards sustainability.

We help influential individuals, major organisations and whole sectors develop strategies that reconcile profitability and sustainability and to work collaboratively with their peers not only to develop solutions to shared challenges but also catalyse real systems change. 

Our work

For over 25 years we have been working to build leadership capacity to tackle critical global challenges, through our business action, executive education and Master's-level programmes.

International locations

We have offices in Cambridge, Brussels and Cape Town, and delivery partners in Beijing and Melbourne.

Working with multinational businesses, multilateral agencies and national governments, we deliver projects on the ground in Europe, Africa, North and South America, Asia and Australia.

We have a strategic focus on extending our work with business and governments in China, Latin America and across Africa.

Governance

Our Management Board appoints its Advisory Board to give advice on long-term strategy and to act as a sounding board on further developments.

Patron 

HRH The Prince of Wales is our Patron and has inspired and supported many of our initiatives. 

"CISL is sustained by the continuing and indeed increasing relevance of the work it does. In a field which grows thicker every day with science and policy, and where the body of stakeholders grows continually, CISL has proved itself to be a trusted expert voice – a voice which interprets NGOs to big business, and business to academia, when they seem to speak different languages."

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor