Blogs

29 January 2020 – Having spent the first days of the new decade escaping the smoke of Australia's devastating bushfires, Amelia Moulis assesses the potential for business leadership to drive climate action in this critical year.The first day of 2020 set a sombre tone for the climate emergency’s defining decade.I was at home in Australia, where our …

21 January 2020 – Mike Rogerson is a chartered accountant with a decade of experience working in finance and operational management across three continents. He shares his experience of studying the Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Value Chains, and how his time with CISL nurtured his interest in social sustainability and led him to pursue a …

28 June – Ben Kellard, Director of Business Strategy, CISL, explores the challenges of aligning purpose and strategy with the transition that is required to enable a business to succeed into the future.The challengeHaving recognised, in my last article, the shifting view of businesses as part of complex, global value chains that are operating in a …

CISL Faculty Dr Nicky Dee and Lisa Smith have been involved with the Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards since the Awards began in 2013. As well as being lead faculty for the accelerator programme, Nicky and Lisa work closely with every winner to provide mentoring for them and their businesses. Here Nicky shares her insights into the challenges fac…

8 May 2019 – To stay within the boundaries of the Paris Agreement, Europe needs to accelerate efforts to achieve a carbon neutral future and put climate change at the top of the EU agenda. Frank van der Vloed highlights five key steps that are critical for businesses to make the transition.This spring, two faces from two generations brought us the …

18 December 2018 – Sue Garrard, CISL Senior associate and Unilever’s former EVP Sustainable Business, was responsible for leading and embedding the company’s ambitious USLP (the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan) into the business and ensuring progress against its 70-plus time bound targets. Here she provides 10 lessons for embedding sustainability…

17 December 2018 – Following a recent roundtable discussion hosted by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and the FutureDAMS consortium, Dr Judith Plummer Braeckman, CISL Senior Research Associate, discusses the risky reputation of hydropower projects and the potential solutions that could help to drive inve…

12 December 2018 – Dylan Tanner, Executive Director and Co-Founder of InfluenceMap on the need for the companies to use their lobbying for good and drive change at the pace and scale required for a net zero future.The Paris Agreement was unique for the breadth of support garnered from a large number of the world's largest corporations. Throughout t…

Helen McTaggart, Senior Sustainability Manager at Amazon reflects on how undertaking the Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Value Chains (PCSVC) at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in 2015 enabled her to strengthen her professional network. PCSVC is now offered as an elective stream of the Postgraduate Certificate i…

1 February 2018 - Simon Mackenzie, Group CEO of Vector, New Zealand's largest distributor of electricity and gas, describes how CISL has helped to build leadership and embed sustainability across his organisation - from deepening the understanding of its leaders on the sustainability agenda to helping its board set a strategy to help Vector become …

I manage the global sourcing office for Amazon but my role isn’t specifically focused on sustainability. In a broader sense it involves vetting and selecting factories to supply Amazon but these criteria include socially sustainable factors such as how the manufacture of materials affects the workforce and the conditions in which they operate.It is…

As part of our Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Value Chains, Paul Cassell, Vehicle Engineering, Jaguar Land Rover, evaluated the REALCAR project: a closed-loop value chain collaboration between Jaguar Land Rover, Novelis, Innovate UK and other partners, with the aim of introducing more closed-loop aluminium into Jaguar Land Rover cars.What’…

Fostering sustainability leadership for over a quarter of a century Polly Courtice, Director, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership21 October 2015Dame Polly Courtice DBE, LVO, was Founder Director of the University of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (1989–2021). She is now Emeritus Director and Senior Ambassador, C…