A day in the life of a Master's in Sustainability Leadership student
Friday 15 August 2025 - Catherine Dickie, Change & Transformation Leader in the Media sector and a student on the Master’s in Sustainability Leadership, shares her experience of studying the programme and details what a day looks like during the second of her residential workshops in Cambridge, UK.
My day begins with…
It’s day six of the workshop and I’m a little tired. My brain is about 90% full by now. I’ve got to review my notes for a small group supervision. My study group has shared notes, so I’m comparing mine to what others thought. Most people have gone for breakfast but as we had a group project team meal with our supervisor last night, I’m giving it a miss.
Instead, I meet other students (now friends) at my college to walk to the venue. We spend the 20 minutes chatting about how yesterday went. We listened to lots of different presentations. We have choices to make about which sessions to attend, so the group shared what they have learnt and the ideas the different sessions inspired. I attended sessions on ‘How to conduct double materiality assessments’, ‘Sustainability in operations’ and ‘How LEAN methodologies can support reaching sustainability goals’. Everyone really loved hearing from Karen Hamilton, ex-CSO for Unilever, because she brought so many practical examples, which was then followed by an active learning session using CISL’s Business Transformation Framework to address a problem someone in our group is currently facing. The conversation was insightful and broad due to the varied experience in the group.
The workshop starts with…
We arrived at West Hub with 10 minutes to spare and used our student discount (love being able to say this) to get a strong coffee before heading into a full schedule. We’re reminded that the schedule has multiple parallel sessions and to review which we want to attend.
“Extraordinary performance from ordinary people” is the first topic of the day with an online presentation, which thankfully goes smoothly. We discussed organisations as adaptive systems and the need to balance levels of freedom and control and the impact that can have on employees’ willingness to innovate and/or go the extra mile. Then almost directly into an eight-person small group supervision where we discuss three papers that we were asked to read in advance. Someone else always has a different take on the papers, which makes for some great discussions.
The morning finished with Dr. Poornima Luthra, author of ‘Can I Say That’ discussing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The session was highly interactive with discussion on the recent backlash against DEI in the US and the need to move from DEI as a zero-sum game to a place where the business benefits are full understood. We discussed the need for inclusion to ensure that DEI initiatives deliver so everyone can bring their unique selves to work. Reflecting on earlier sessions in the week, one of the clear messages this week is the need to make clear compelling business cases for sustainability, the moral case cannot be the only case.
Between sessions we…
On the way to grab a coffee a few of us continued the discussion from the session, commenting on how helpful it was to also get some tips on engaging with case studies and academic papers for our own assignments and future dissertations.
I had the opportunity to have lunch with my supervisor to bounce around my ideas on possible dissertation topics, receiving constructive criticism on my rationale and suggestions to expand my thinking.
After lunch…
The full group, which includes students from difference flexible route cohorts, are back together for the first session on the ‘Future of Work’ with Patrick Hull. This is a wide-ranging presentation which challenges us to think about the impact of aging populations, AI and the rise of flexible employment models on the future company operations, and the need to continue to adapt and learn (which we’re all doing a lot of on the course).
We had choices of sessions this afternoon. My favourite was the session on the role of intrapreneurs in driving change within organisations and transitioning between systems. Working through live examples of change we want to make, we completed several exercises in pairs to work through our proposal and how we might communicate them effectively.
After sessions finish…
It’s Friday night so no reading to catch up on thankfully. The social committee have organised a quiz in a bar in town with a buffet, so we head there. My team of six has a variety of backgrounds and after five eclectic rounds, we come second just missing out on the quiz duck. My cheeks hurt by the end of the quiz from laughing. I spend a couple of hours chatting to lots of different people from the course. I love the representation from around the world in the cohort. It makes for fascinating conversations and lots of laughs. The night ends with some dancing with my new friends from Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Hong Kong, Norway, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Japan, UK and New Zealand. Being a student again is hard work but also lots of fun.
After a day of learning, I feel…
It’s the end of a long week so my brain is completely saturated. It’s going to take some time to digest all I’ve heard and learned. I feel really energised though. Spending a week with this fantastic group of people and learning from their experiences and contexts is a huge addition to the core learning from CISL. I can’t wait for the next workshop.
I am excited by/inspired to…
The residential workshops always make me feel ready to take on the major challenges in the world. Being part of a group who are there to make a positive influence on the world is really invigorating. This week gives me renewed focus to make the changes I can in my community with the projects I’m involved in at schools and supporting a community cooperative focused on renewable energy solutions.