Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Contact Us
The Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership course is a program at the Exposure, Epidemiology and Risk, Department of Environmental Health at Havard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
For questions, please contact:
Email: SustainabilityLeadership@hsph.harvard.edu
Phone: 617-384-7276
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Leith Sharp, M.Ed. Director, Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
A dynamic change leader with 25 years of practice, research and teaching, Leith has taught leadership for sustainability at Harvard University for 18 years, earning numerous commendations for distinguished teaching performance.
Leith founded the Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership program at Harvard in 2014. This cross-sectoral, residential leadership program brings sustainability leadership, human well-being, purpose, biomimicry, agility, integrated business models and organizational design together.
In 2017, Leith co-founded Leaders on Purpose to engage global CEOs in defining and scaling a new leadership paradigm and business logic with the fitness to deliver on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Global CEOs from Paypal, Siemens, Mastercard, Ikea, P&G, Sodexo, Danone, Mars, Best Buy, Phillips, SAP, BMW, L’Oreal and many more have contributed.
Leith is well known for founding Harvard’s Office for Sustainability, where over a period of 9 years she led Harvard to become a global leader in campus sustainability. In 2010, Leith became the founding executive director for the Illinois Green Economy Network, working with the state’s 40 college presidents to raise $24 million for green workforce development.
Leith has consulted with over 200 organizations and has received numerous awards internationally, including Young Australian of the Year, NSW Environment Category and a Churchill Fellowship. Leith has an environmental engineering degree (UNSW), a master of education (Harvard) and is currently completing a Master of Science in Biomimicry (ASU).
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
High-impact Sustainability Leadership
In our rapidly changing world, ensuring that our planet will continue to sustain our children and future generations is an all-hands-on-deck endeavor. The impacts of climate change are already upon us, and the gap between rich and poor is such that the richest eight people in the world now own the same wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion, according to a recent report from Oxfam.
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Alumni Perspectives
Participants often walk away from this program talking about the unique and transformative experience they have had during the offering. But don’t take our word for it: Watch, hear, and read for yourself what your peers are saying.
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Virtual Info Session
Upcoming EESL2025 Info Sessions:
- Monday, July 14. 4:30pm ET, Register via Zoom
- Tuesday, August 5, 4:30pm ET, Register via Zoom
- Wednesday, August 6, 8pm ET, Register via Zoom
Can’t attend a live session? You can still register to watch on-demand.
Past EESL2025 Info Sessions
- Tuesday, May 27, 8:00am ET, Watch on demand
- Thursday, June 5, 4:30pm ET, Watch on demand
- Monday, March 24, 4:00pm ET, Watch on demand
- Tuesday, February 4, 4:00pm ET, Watch on demand
Info sessions are intended for prospective attendees of the program or others wishing to promote attendance to senior leader in their organization or network, or for those just wanting to learn a bit more about what we do.
The organizing team will provide an overview of the course frameworks which center around organizational design and Idea Flow concepts to optimize and accelerate impact for sustainability and innovation. We will then have the opportunity to hear from several program alumni who will describe their experience and the lasting impact of the program on their approach to sustainabilty work. We will round out the session by sharing the nuts and bolts of the next course offering which runs virtually September 8 – November 24, 2025.
To learn more, contact us at SustainabilityLeadership@hsph.harvard.edu or call (617) 384-7276.
Previous webinars: for EESL2024
Tuesday, April 2, 4:00pm ET – Watch on demand
Monday, August 5, 4:30pm ET, Watch on demand
Monday, July 15, 4:30pm ET – Watch on demand
Monday, June 3, 4:30pm ET – Watch on demand
Tuesday, May 7, 4:00pm ET – Watch on demand
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Apply
Admissions
This program is best suited to senior leaders and sustainability professionals with a senior reporting relationship. We will also consider accepting a few, select, high-potential emerging leaders.
Access the online application here.
We welcome leaders that are new to sustainability, and those who are already fluent in it. The crucial mindset we seek is that of wanting to go beyond positioning sustainability as merely an “add-on” and beyond settling for simply “doing less bad.”
We seek leaders with an appetite for driving sustainability into the core of their business and mission by unleashing its potential for improving employee engagement, organizational performance and innovation.
In our selection process we seek to achieve a balance of participants from diverse sectors. We strongly encourage teams.
Common titles of successful applicants have included:
- Higher Education Sector: President, Vice Chancellor, Vice President, Provost, Director
- Government Agencies: Airport VP, EPA Director, Utility Manager, City Manager
- Corporate Sector: CEO, Senior VP, VP, CIO, Chief Sustainability Officer, Head of Sustainability
Admissions Process
Admission to each offering is competitive and is based on leadership experience, organizational responsibility, and reporting relationship to the executive function of the organization. Participants will be chosen to ensure a diverse mix of sectors.
We limit the number of participants due to the interactive nature of the program. We encourage you to apply early because we admit qualified candidates on a rolling, space-available basis. Applications received after the deadline will be considered only if space remains in the class. No payment is due at the time of application.
Upon acceptance into the program, prospective attendees will have up to 30 days to register and pay tuition. Applicants who are admitted into the program are required to pay the program fee to reserve their place. If accepted applicant has not registered and paid after the 30 day expiration, we will no longer be able to guarantee your spot unless there remains availability in the course.
Access the online application here.
Additional Resources
We are including a couple of resources to help as you navigate your decision-making, application and registration processes:
- Tip sheet with creative strategies for funding your participation mined from the experiences of past participants
- FAQ Sheet to address some questions that frequently arise from prospective applicants
Fluency in written and spoken English is necessary for participation in the program.
To access the application, click on the “Apply Now” link at the top of this page or email SustainabilityLeadership@hsph.harvard.edu to request one. You may also call (617) 384-7276.
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Resources
Articles and Published Works
Learn more about program aspects that define our unique approach to high impact sustainability leadership.
On Idea Flow Mapping
How We Teach High Impact Sustainability Leadership
Put Simply, We Are in the Wrong Organizational Vehicle for the 21st Century
Mandate Capital: Blend It Before You Spend It
Leaders on Purpose CEO Study – Co-authored by Leith Sharp, Director and Lead Faculty, Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership Program
Videos & Podcasts
Hear from past program participants and faculty about the relevance of the program content to their work.
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Presenters
Our program faculty and guest presenters are carefully selected for their proven track record as engaging, relevant, and cutting-edge content providers.
Learn from a world-renowned cross-sector faculty who are deeply engaged in transformative sustainability leadership around the globe.
While we are working to finalize our faculty and guest presenters for our Fall 2024 offering, and we will likely have many of our wonderful contributors back for this upcoming session – see below for our 2023 line-up:
- Leith Sharp, M.Ed., Director and Lead Faculty, Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- John Spengler, Ph.D., Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- Malcolm Preston, Former Partner | Global Leader, Sustainability & Climate, PwC
- Rebecca Henderson, Ph.D., John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard Business School, Author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire
- Erin Meezan, Chief Sustainability Officer, JLL
- Katherine Collins, Head of Sustainable Investing, Putnam Investments
- Dayna Baumeister, Ph.D., Co-Founder, Biomimicry 3.8
- Nicole Hagerman Miller, Managing Director, Biomimicry 3.8
- Anne-Claire Berg, Former Global Culture and Engagement Director, Danone; Chief People and Impact Officer, Gen II Fund Services
- Matthew Kamakani Lynch, Director of Sustainability Initiatives, University of Hawai’i System
- Zeyneb Magavi, Co-Executive Director, HEET
See more past presenters and topics by viewing the agendas below:
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
Course Details
Our thoughtfully-crafted program design and faculty will provide a cohesive, progressive, and powerful encounter with the core concepts and will inspire participants to rise to the critical leadership demands of the 21st century. This selective program utilizes Harvard’s convening power to attract best-in-class faculty, contributors, and a high caliber, diverse cohort, ensuring engaging, high level exchanges and powerful networking and mentorship opportunities.
Course Fee
Early Bird Rate (register and pay before April 1, 2025) – $3500 USD
Standard Rate – $3850 USD
Partial scholarships may be available for participants with demonstrated need working within non profit and public sectors – please contact us at SustainabilityLeadership@hsph.harvard.edu to inquire.
Program Structure
The program starts September 8 – November 24, 2025.
Of this time requirement, 25 hours will involve asynchronous learning (scheduled at your own convenience) while 43 hours will require synchronous learning (live group work, faculty discussion and skill building with advanced scheduling).
During this time, participants are required to keep up with weekly requirements so they can integrate their learnings and practice into their respective professional contexts as the program progresses. There are three rest weeks included in the program designed to enable time for catching up if needed.
We have provided the schedule so that you can lock all required synchronous learning dates and times, along with rest weeks, into your schedule.
Our program participants are selected from all over the world. Doing synchronous learning together across vastly different time-zones requires a combination of considerate design and forward planning by attendees. To this end, participants will work in timezone compatible working groups of 25 – 35 participants. Once you have completed the registration process you will receive your Working Group Session time allocation, and you will have 48 hrs within which to let us know if you have significant scheduling conflicts and need to be reassigned to another group with a different time allocation.
Through this program, leaders learn powerful new strategies for enacting high-impact sustainability leadership that positions sustainability as a driver of organizational engagement, authenticity, agility, innovation, and change-capability.
Our focus is on organizational design to optimize and accelerate impact for sustainability and innovation.
What is sustainability?
We define sustainability as the triple bottom line enterprise of achieving economic and social wellbeing derived from a mutually regenerative relationship with our planetary life support systems. We also define sustainability as the ideal adaptive challenge for building your organization’s fitness for the 21st century.
The single most unique leadership demand of sustainability is the sheer pace, volume, and depth of change it requires. To rise to this challenge there is a profound and immediate need to provide senior leaders across all sectors with sustainability-centric executive education that empowers high-impact sustainability leadership.
To date, the most prevalent senior leadership response to sustainability has been the adoption of goals and metrics associated with environmental impact reductions that amount to simply ”doing less bad.” There is an urgent need to go beyond this incremental “command control” approach. It is failing to produce the pace, volume, and depth of change needed because it is failing to produce the engagement, innovation, agility, and change-capability needed.
We are looking for senior leaders and sustainability professionals ready for a new kind of high-impact sustainability leadership dedicated to driving sustainability into the core of their mission and business by unleashing new levels of organizational effectiveness. This will place new leadership demands on senior leaders and sustainability professionals, as well as on the very structure and design of their organizations.
We welcome leaders who are new to sustainability, and those who are already fluent in it. We are seeking leaders with an appetite for mastering a new kind of high impact sustainability leadership that will transform their organizations into agile, innovative, and profoundly change-capable enterprises. The crucial mindset we seek is that of wanting to go beyond positioning sustainability as “doing less bad” and moving towards the triple bottom line of economic and social wellbeing based upon a mutually regenerative relationship with our planetary life support systems.
To this end, the critical leadership conversations encountered in this program will include:
- Unleashing human potential across your enterprise through purpose-driven engagement
- Creating clear pathways for good ideas to come from anywhere and to take root
- Leveraging positive social dynamics and social learning to increase engagement, idea flow, and organizational learning
- Revolving loan funds and other mechanisms to ensure finance and accounting processes enable innovation and engagement
- Engaging millennials
- Working with the strengths and weaknesses of your command control operating system to advance change-capability
- Decision-making agility to allow for good ideas to be scaled up quickly
- Change management as a practice of reducing risk and instability
By preparing leaders to generate the right organizational fitness for the sustainability triathlon (social, economic, and environmental), many other complex 21st century problems will also become easier to address. From this viewpoint—and with the right leadership application—sustainability can be the “problem that solves your organization.” The value proposition of this new kind of sustainability leadership is enormous.
The program is offered once a year, typically in a 5-day residential format, but this year in a longer term virtual format, with the intent of having participants experience the content and apply the tools first hand, develop strong networks within their cohort, and interact directly with the faculty to optimize their learning experience and their effectiveness as a sustainability leader “on Monday.”
Attendees gain mastery in a powerful new framework and lexicon designed to increase rates of engagement, change and innovation across their organization through purpose-driven organizational design and idea flow. The program delivers a strong balance of guiding principles, case stories from the field, and activities & direct application grounded in the core framework of adaptive organizational design. Dynamic networking across sectors and the sharing of best practices are key elements of the program design. Our selective admissions process ensures that you will be as stimulated and inspired to action by members of your cohort as you are by the course material and program faculty.
This program is connected to a growing global network of collaborators and trainings, all sharing and co-evolving the open-sourced content, tools and case stories.
Our program will enable participants to:
- Evaluate what has and has not been working with efforts to take sustainability from the margins into the core of your organization
- Learn a powerful new framework for increasing your sustainability leadership impact
- Position sustainability as a driver for innovation, agility and effectiveness
- Unleash human potential through purpose-driven engagement
- Design pathways for good ideas to come from anywhere and to take root
- Advance your ability to make the sustainability business case
- Align finance and accounting structures to drive innovation, engagement, and change-capability
- Leverage positive social dynamics and social learning to drive idea flow and organizational learning
- Increase decision-making agility to allow good ideas to be scaled up quickly
- Engage millennials by leveraging your sustainability enterprise
- Reduce risk and instability by mastering sustainability change management
- Deepen the engagement of other senior leaders and the entire leadership system within your organization
- Embed an adaptive capacity for stable change across your organization
- Engage in meaningful thought partnership on shared problems and opportunities regarding this critical leadership challenge with senior leaders from diverse sectors
Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Learn powerful new strategies for making sustainability a driver of organizational engagement, innovation, and change.
About
To learn more, contact us at SustainabilityLeadership@hsph.harvard.edu or call (617) 384-7276.
Leith Sharp, M.Ed.
Director, Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Leith Sharp is the lead faculty and program director for the Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership Program offerings. Leith also works to facilitate the growth of the wider network.
Maggie Husak
Program Coordinator, Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership
Maggie supports the program’s outreach and administrative needs, and works with Leith on content delivery.
Our collaborators and thought partners have contributed intellectually to the development of content related to this work, and in some cases have served to help parnter on the organization of convenings for this work. We believe that the space between people is the most vibrant source of our best ideas. We continue to seek those conversations, interactions, and synergies that lead to shared discovery. Important collaborators and past contributors include the U.S. Green Building Council, Sustainable Brands, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, Leaders on Purpose and Urban Sustainbility Directors Network (USDN)..