Embedding sustainability across LBS programmes

Sustainability is central to LBS’s core degree and executive education programmes, and several electives. It also runs through the School’s Experiential Learning Global Experience weeks, all of which aim to include Environmental, Social, and Governance/Net Zero topics, with some, like the new Mumbai GE on Climate Finance: challenges, strategies and innovation, focusing exclusively on sustainability. Philanthropy helps finance these immersive, real-world educational opportunities, allowing students to work directly with global social enterprises. This in turn creates a positive impact on local communities, whilst providing students with hands-on leadership experience.

Core programme content covers topics like ESG investing, green finance and circular economies, with a new one-year MBA for existing Masters graduates designed to develop a deeper understanding of modern business issues, such as sustainability and digital transformation. 19% of Executive Education custom programmes and 25% of open programmes already include ESG content, and beyond these core programmes there are 21 individual and highly popular sustainability-focused electives.

Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Professor Ioannis Ioannou teaches across MBA, EMBA and executive programmes, and sees it as LBS’s role to ensure tomorrow’s leaders are equipped with the skills they need.

Lucy Palin is a Senior Programme Manager for the Masters in Financial Analysis and represents the Programmes team on the LBS Sustainability Board. She values its broad membership. “It captures every aspect of the School, with each team working on its own action plan. Our main aim at the moment in Programmes is to build sustainability more widely and more formally  into the core structures, to complement the electives portfolio and student bodies currently focused on this topic.”

Lucy also works closely with the Experiential Learning team who run the Global Experience weeks within degree programmes. These experiences allow LBS students to apply sustainability frameworks to real-world business challenges during a week-long immersion abroad. They are a key component of LBS’s programmes, serving to engage the hearts and minds of students and leave a positive legacy on communities across the world.

Donor funding has been further advanced through a transformational £15m/$20m gift from alumni Anjuli Rao MiFFT1999 and Raj Rao MiFFT1998. Their gift establishes three enduring pillars of impact: a flagship scholarship fund for outstanding MBA and MiF students, an endowed faculty chair and, for the first time at LBS, an endowed research fund to support high-impact work shaping business practice and policy.

Fran Sponsler, Executive Director, Proposition Development and Campaign and member of the Sustainability Strategy Delivery Board, emphasises the value of donor funding.