Master in Sustainable Leadership

OVERVIEW

Driving Sustainable Change

The Master in Sustainable Leadership will enable you to drive the sustainability agenda in your organization. It will equip you with the leadership skills, confidence, and mindset to understand and navigate the complexities around sustainability, as well as the tools to design, execute, and lead others in implementing sustainability solutions.

The programme will enable you to:

• Create an understanding of the motivation and mindset needed to lead change
• Analyse and understand complex sustainability challenges and problem interconnectivity
• Lead the design of sustainability solutions
• Execute and lead others in the implementation of sustainability solutions

This Master is a collaboration between DTU Learn for Life and Lederne.

Find the study plan here.

learning ecosystem

Our Learning Ecosystem

The Master in Sustainable Leadership is built on a multi-disciplinary learning ecosystem of partners who will collaborate on cases and projects, contribute to cutting-edge knowledge, teach courses, and enable participants to practice their skills in a real-world environment.

These partners represent a variety of stakeholders involved in sustainability solutions, including universities, international organizations, corporations, social organizations, regional and national associations, ecosystem hubs, think-tanks and thought leaders.

Each course is taught by a professor from DTU or a visiting faculty member from one of the world’s leading universities, institutions, or industries. We have several exciting partnerships in our learning ecosystem that we look forward to announcing in the near future

programme

Programme Modules and Courses

The Master in Sustainable Leadership is a 21 month, part-time programme, and grants the qualification of Master in Sustainable Leadership (60 ECTS). The structure of the programme consists of three modules, all consisting of three 5 ECTS courses. These three modules focus on the following thematic entities:

1. Why: What is the underlying motivation and global need for sustainability transformation and leadership?
2. How: How can organizations align towards sustainability transformation?
3. Execute: How can you execute sustainability strategy in organizations?

Alongside these modules, the participants engage in an Immersive Learning Project (15 ECTS), which corresponds to a master’s thesis.

Faculty

Each module is taught by a professor from DTU, a visiting faculty member from one of the world’s leading business schools or from the industry.

CompAny Projects

Company project opportunity

Does your company have sustainability ambitions or a sustainability strategy, but you could benefit from support in understanding how to best achieve your sustainability goals and innovate sustainability solutions?

The Master in Sustainable Leadership programme is looking for companies that have sustainability ambitions or goals, but could benefit from support in understanding how to best achieve their sustainability goals.

The starting point could be a question like “How do we achieve our internal sustainability strategy?” (internal facing question) or “How do we better orient our products/services/client work etc. towards our sustainability ambitions?” (external facing question). The question could be within an entire company or could also be within a specific department/team.

Small groups of Master in Sustainable Leadership participants (mid/late career professionals and leaders working with sustainability within their own organizations) will then help identify the challenge in more detail, barriers to success, and innovation solutions to overcome these barriers.

Total time commitment is 2.5 days: 1 day spread over 13-15 March 2024, and 1.5 days spread over 16-17 May 2024. See detailed timelines below.

What you will gain:

1. A detailed understanding of the challenges you face to fully act on your sustainability agenda, including the complex sustainability ecosystem in which you operate.
2. Innovative solution ideas that overcome your current barriers, and action points to bringing these solutions to life so you can better meet your sustainability goals.

Project requirements:

To participate in this project, you must:

• Have sustainability goals and/or strategy that the company wants to achieve
• Have an initial idea of where the barriers are to achieving your sustainability goals

Additionally, you must meet the following operational requirements:

• Key leadership is willing and able to participate in the project
• More than 5 employees in the company
• Located within one hour of Copenhagen
• Ability to collaborate in English

Expression of interest:

To express your interest in participating in this project, please fill out this form and the Master in Sustainable Leadership Programme Team will be in touch.

For any questions, please contact Sara Sewell at sasew@dtu.dk.

Key dates and timelines:

This project takes place in two parts.

PART 1: Understanding the challenges you face

Date and time	Location	Description
Wednesday 13 March 2024, morning (approx 9.00-12.00)	Company visit	MSL groups (of 3 to 4 participants) visit your company to learn: Overview of companyMeetings with key leadership to understand strategic direction and perceived challenges regarding sustainable transitions
Thursday 14 March 2024, morning (approx 9.00-11.00)	Q&A session at company	MSL groups meet with key leadership and other key stakeholders to fill in informational gaps
Friday 15 March 2024, afternoon (approx 14.00-16.00)	Final presentations at Lederne	All participating companies join the MSL participants for final presentations on their findings and recommendations

PART 2: Innovating solutions to meet your sustainability goals

Date and time	Location	Description
Thursday 16 May 2024, full day (approx 9.00-16.00)	Company visit – innovation sprint	Full day innovation sprint with company representatives to innovation solutions to the previously defined challenges
Friday 17 May 2024, afternoon (approx 13.00-16.00)	Final presentations at Lederne	ll participating companies join the MSL participants for final presentations and a Friday beer

application process

MASTER IN SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP APPLICATION PROCESS

Your application consists of the following four parts. These parts give us an opportunity to evaluate your overall fit into the overall outcome and demands of the programme.

1. The formal application
   This is a simple form with some basic information about you, your current organization, and your experience.
2. Your updated CV
   We would like to see your sustainability and leadership experience and the journey that you have taken in your career thus far.
3. Transcripts or copies of completed degrees
   Please share copies of your previously completed degree or educations.
4. A motivational letter of maximum 3 pages
   This is your space to tell us about yourself and your motivations. Please include:
   a. A bit about yourself, including who you are when you are not at work;
   b. More details about your current role, and in particular your scope to lead, implement, and/or execute sustainability within your organization;
   c. Your current connection to both sustainability and leadership; and
   d. Your envisioned ideal future within sustainability and leadership, including desired personal development areas.

Once you submit the full application package, the Programme Directors will reach out to schedule an admissions interview prior to making an admissions decision.
Applications are received and processed during the entire year and on a first come, first served basis Please submit your application by email to Programme Directors Salla Laasonen (salaa@dtu.dk) and Jackie Stenson (jevst@dtu.dk).

BLOG

Impact & Sustainability Blog

Here we discuss trends within sustainability and give a voice to our current participants. Stay tuned as the blog is updated continuously.

Latest article:

Sustainability is Capital Markets Biggest Blind Spot: Recognizing and Addressing Accounting’s Global Challenge

Written by Santiago Isnardi 20/06/2023

Introduction: To gain a comprehensive understanding of the climate change problem and its potential solutions, it is crucial to acknowledge the significant oversight of not incorporating companies’ climate impacts into their mark-to-market value and balance sheet accounting. In my view, this omission represents one of the most significant failures in modern economic history. Although market price discovery has encountered notable shortcomings in recent decades, the failure to account for the extensive influence of companies on climate and sustainability surpasses them all, as I procure to explain below. Luckily, help is on the way, but the solution can create tectonic shifts for industries.

Why we all missed it.

Companies’ excessive climate impacts seemed inconsequential in isolation.

Firstly, our seemingly inoffensive excesses, together with resistance to change, the inertia of established practices and the niceties of modern comfort, have contributed to this sustainability oversight. So, it is our cultural habits and the parabola of the frog being slowly boiled alive. On average and individually, companies’ trespasses may not seem significant, but the total effect of all firms at a global scale, cumulative through time, is. This has led to excessive of greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and increasing depletion of natural resources. It is compromising future generation’s needs; it is not sustainable.

The most influential can have the most negative impacts.

Secondly, the interests of the most powerful entities, with their very global and large dimension, and subsequent market control, conduced to lower competition, and lobby resulted in protection, hindering the sustainable agenda progress. It is important to know that countries and companies with the most influence played a major role on the problem, for they consume and produce the most. There is a strong country variation in the intensity of the climate Impact, for example, how China, US, EU27, and India, impact the environment in the form of emissions is disproportionately high when compared with those countries not making the top ten major emitters. This also applies to the companies that we all buy from. How to decrease the mentioned aggregation, in a granular bottom-up approach at activities and process level is the challenge.

Transcontinental upstream and downstream value chain complexity

Thirdly, geopolitical problems have also made the problem more complex to understand. One example is that while many dominant European companies (for example fast fashion) have little climate impact in Europe (EU), the impact of their factories and suppliers in developing countries is larger than heavy duty emitting manufacturing companies in EU (for ex. Cement production). These transcontinental upstream and downstream value chain complexity (Scope 3 emissions) has also contributed to the formation of the current conundrum and created an international blame game. There is added complexity as, some of the countries with higher emissions (such as India), also have a much more carbon sink, complicating the international interaction.

Comparison to other market oversights:

The failure of markets to include the cost of recycling of hazardous materials end of life and the excessive use of finite resources is almost unparalleled. The damage caused by the excess carbon emissions from fossil fuels, has not been accounted in the carbon sinks procedures, nor priced in the products. It is quite remarkable, because prior instances of market oversights, such as Enron’s financial losses covered by hidden debt, were overlooked by analysts and investors, but the mechanisms were there, trying to account for those metrics. This is not the case for Sustainability.

Similarly, the Financial Crisis debacle of 2007-8 was a cumulation of excessive debt leverage hidden behind securitizations, and derivates. The problem snowballed almost undetected, and it was missed by market users, such as regulators, rating agencies, and governments, until again we came to an almost overnight realization. Here, we also had mechanism that tried to account for metrics of debt and losses, we just missed them. Conversely, in the climate crisis, companies do not need to disclose their emissions. It makes things harder indeed.

The Biggest Blind Spot in Capitalism Modern History:

I believe that sustainability is the largest blind spot in our modern markets’ history. This is especially true, within the realm of accounting. While in previously encountered financial crises, the metrics were obscured and went unnoticed, on the climate crisis, firms did only not need to disclose the information that caused the crisis, but a comprehensive mandatory measurement of climate impact and sustainability did not exist. The sheer size and complexity made the problem difficult for me to understand. I was baffled that international and national accounting associations, who have discussed the details of assets amortization periods for decades, and whether to use last in first out on inventory accounting, have fully missed accounting for climate impact and sustainability in general. See IFRS Standards and climate-related disclosures article by Nick Anderson (November 2019).

In the more progressive sustainable world, discussions are also complicated, as proposed solutions tend to carry out large paradoxes, and there is a tendency to vilify some industries. There is also a propensity for idealism that nobody lives up to, or grand ideologization which has not tracked in the past, nor can be operationalized. Luckily, at the convergence of the progressive sustainability and the traditional accounting worlds, there seems to be the answer. The mechanisms of how and what to disclose are coming.

The Solution:

The year 2015 with the Paris Agreement, and the creation of organizations like the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Developing Goal (17-SDGs), proved have a watershed effect in the economy and sustainability. They have set up global collaborations to develop climate and sustainability frameworks. This is an effort of the Financial Stability Board, the G20s, but also many of the grassroot sustainable movements, the scientific community, and NGOs around the world.  They have all come together creating all-encompassing sustainable frameworks.

In addition, following the 1997 Exxon-Valdez oil spill catastrophe, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) established a reporting standard for measuring the climate impact, risks, and opportunities of companies towards the climate. Increasingly, large companies have voluntarily utilized these standards. The international accounting bodies have also been working hard in the last years. See article on Effects of climate-related matters on financial statements by the IFRS Standards (November 2020). How climate can impact companies with an investor focus, has been covered by, for example the Sustainability Accounting Board (SABS). The International Financial Reporting Standard (IRFS) has since 2022, assumed responsibilities from SABS and now have created the International Sustainability Standard Board, (ISSB), which will integrate climate disclosures with accounting disclosures. In this way, the roadmap is set up, but full national implementation will take time.

The aforementioned initiatives primarily fall under the category of soft laws, meaning they are non-binding and rely on adoption driven by usability, peer influence, and societal pressure. Notably, the global sustainability reporting rates have seen a remarkable increase in adoption, with 96% of the world’s largest 250 companies embracing them in 2022, compared to less than 45% before 2000. Source: KPMG Survey of Sustainability Reporting (September 2022). This impressive track record underscores how concerted efforts can change the world.  It also shows that given the right circumstances global companies can display a quick sustainability action.

From the voluntary adoption, the EU is now making environmental sustainability reporting mandatory. They have issued the Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive (CSRD), which has set up the use of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS’s). Comprising of 12 standards, the ESRS’s align with and can be transitioned from the previously mentioned reporting procedures. Worth noting is the ESRS’s are more comprehensive in their requirements and will affect many more companies that voluntary report today. The ESRS make a special effort enabling meaningful comparisons of the sustainability metrics and associated narratives across different EU-Sectors, companies, and their value chain that can span through multiple countries.  It also promotes time comparison. The latter is an enhancing quality information of the IFRS that have now fully been incorporated in the ESRS General Disclosures (ESRS-1).

While promoting this agenda within sustainability circles, I encountered skepticism, with some expressing concerns that it lacked the necessary forcefulness. It is a common misunderstanding, as well in financial circles, to perceive climate accounting as merely a reporting endeavor. It is true, that climate accounting alone does not guarantee a company’s sustainability success. Rather, it serves as a necessary step that produces comparable sustainability metrics at a company level, together with its corresponding strategies, and transition plans towards (Paris-aligned) targets. By doing so, we address the challenge of working with a non-executable top-down approach mentioned at the beginning, and instead use a concerted and organized activity by activity process.

“relevance requires considering and evaluating the undertakers’ magnitude of impact on various stakeholders, including investors and nature“

Disclosures and metrics in sustainability assessment are a complex task, as they involve concepts that can be subjective such as relevance, which is a fundamental characteristic in traditional accounting frameworks such as IFRS and ISSB. This characteristic has also been fully integrated into the ESRS-1. It directly relates to materiality, which is currently the key topic in the sustainability field. Assessing relevance requires considering the confirmatory and predictable value of disclosures and evaluating the undertakers’ (companies in ESRS jargon) magnitude of the impact on various stakeholders, including investors and nature. This is referred to as carrying out an impact risks and opportunities material assessment. Thereafter, the challenge lies in the fact that metrics and disclosures hold significant consequences, particularly for late movers. So maybe the “reporting” is a misnomer in the ESRS anacronym, there is much more to it.

Through taxes or carbon markets, metrics will play a crucial role in determining the pricing of companies. The establishment of carbon markets holds promise in improving pricing mechanisms associated with sustainability accounting. Although carbon markets have faced controversy and may experience further challenges before improvement, a mature carbon market with a substantial number of participants will bring transparency and help to avoid arbitrary taxes. In the meantime, an imperfect hybrid approach between the markets’ invisible hand (an eventual transparent active carbon market) and despotic but hopefully well intended and corrective taxes, will impact countries and companies alike.

“When tied to taxes, carbon pricing, and fair value… companies will pay increasingly for their excesses”

Risk and Opportunities: When tied to taxes, carbon pricing, and fair value, sustainability metrics and disclosures suffice to drive transformative change; as companies will pay increasingly for their excesses. Solid calculations and diligent efforts are then necessary for companies to mitigate and adapt. Failure to identify risks can result in significant decline of cash flows, and lead to stranded assets. The Nitrogen Farmer’s crisis and subsequent protest in Holland and the current implementation of the transport tax in Denmark comes to mind. At the same time, there will be opportunities for early movers. thanks to their product’s sustainable positive impacts, many companies have interrupted and triumphed in evolved and mature competitive markets. To address the coming changes, it is crucial for companies to establish sustainable impact risk and opportunities mechanisms in their areas of strategy, governance, risk assessments, and metric & target: the 12 ESRSs implementation.

Conclusion:

Recognizing accountings sustainability blind spot is an essential starting point. The implementation of sustainability frameworks and mandatory reporting standards, will result in metrics, and pricing mechanisms, that will drive real change towards a sustainable future for everyone. This climate transition will also affect the pricing of companies. It is our responsibility, as individuals, to drive upwards the price discovery.

Using sustainable problem framing to promote business innovation opportunities

Written by Santiago Isnardi 17/05/2023

Throughout the Master in Sustainable Leadership the participants are introduced to tools and frameworks to help tackle sustainability problems. The goal is trying to understand why tensions and challenges within sustainability still exist and why action to solve these problems has stalled or failed. During one of the modules the participants were coupled with a private company and divided into groups where they practiced using tools and frameworks to help them understand the barriers the company were facing when trying to take action regarding the sustainable transition of their companies.

What I learnt from the case collaboration

The case collaboration with Njord resulted in an amazing sustainable consulting experience for me.

The combination of the right team, the right research tools and support made it possible for the team to work on short notice and to create a framework and roadmap for the case collaboration with Njord. It also perfectly complimented my decades of experience in investment banking analysis and companies’ commercial engagement.

Complex problem framing in the shipping industry 

It was fantastic to have the possibility to utilise the theory we learned in the module Complex problem framing in order to consult and understand the business model of a global green tech company like Njord. Their ambition and reach are huge, and because of this, they have a positive impact on the decarbonization of the world’s shipping industry. Of course, this also creates challenges, which meant it was exciting to explore the company’s risk and opportunities. All in all, I am very pleased that we managed to create an actionable and successful roadmap for the company!

Tools & Frameworks

–Research Tools: The immersive research methods, sustainability tools, business frameworks and coaching technics that the Master in Sustainable Leadership provided me with were crucial to acting as a consultant to Njord in a learning environment. These methodologies were used to create an approach to the challenge of achieving their strategic goals of decarbonizing the world of shipping.

–People and reputation: Our group in the exercise was the perfect combination of talented experts from green consultancy, to finance and shipping.

–Business reach: Establishing the partnership with Njord was a perfect way of using our theory with an actual case.

Our Approach

-We mapped the companies’ eco-system and draw their stakeholder map – It was rather complicated because the ships were partition owned, the different regional financing models, and the customer’s transport routes being global.

-We chose problem framing tools to break down products and their green impact by ship owners and charters. A detailed problem framing tree was done with linkage of customers, the green regulations, technologies, and regional markets. We included short- and long-term return of investment, together with specific financing capabilities. The shipping experts from our master’s group proved to be instrumental in this.

-Finally, we drew opportunity and actions points and visually mapped them. We ranked the actions, by grading the impact and the required effort. It was important that we also operationalized these, so to enable value creation. The finance team helped establish credit packages solutions by customer clusters, their regions, as well as getting credit scores.

Evaluation

For me, the best part was the human interaction within the team. It was an immensely satisfying, enriching and constructive experience. Even more satisfying was the feedback we received from Njord; they decided to prioritize the specific opportunities we presented to them!

It proves to me, that even in these tumultuous times with the right partnerships, long term investment in sustainable initiatives can create strategic growth.

Press & Media

Video testimonials

Articles from Danish Media