
Discover the ESG revolution, its history and definition, how it differs from CSR, and how to build, report, and market an effective ESG program amid evolving trends.
Explore what ESG is, how it differs from CSR, and its history, including the acronyms; learn to reconcile CSR with ESG and empower all employees to drive accountable ESG reporting.
Define ESG as the measurement of environmental, social, and governance factors used by investors to assess long-term risk, return, transparency, and sustainable corporate impact.
Compare esg and csr, showing csr as a subjective, qualitative, self-regulated model and esg as objective, measurable criteria investors use to assess and compare companies.
Align your business with the global shift to audit-ready, mandatory ESG reporting by embracing the ISSB baseline, dual materiality, and board-level governance to unlock capital access and lower costs.
Clarify what ESG means beyond climate and DNI, and learn to apply environmental, social, and governance issues across the company to ensure consistency and voice on risk, compliance, and stakeholders.
Trace the evolution of ESG from early corporate initiatives to modern governance and reporting, highlighting water reuse, sustainable packaging, solar power, and performance with purpose.
Track ESG's shift from a values-based, exclusions-focused movement to a mainstream practice framed by data for risk. Regulators scrutinize disclosures and ESG products across jurisdictions, signaling a pivotal inflection point.
Define ESG as both what it is and what it isn't, incorporating environmental, social, and governance factors to advance equity through impact investing led by women and people of color.
Reframes corporate purpose toward stakeholder capitalism by incorporating environment, society, and governance. Explores disclosure and regulatory obligations, climate risks, and pathways to net zero for boards and executives.
EsG guides strategy and delivers a competitive edge as investors, customers, and employees demand beliefs and values in decisions, while compliance and reporting mandates grow, boosting performance and world impact.
Understand why ESG performance and disclosure strategies are increasingly consequential as compliance shifts from voluntary to mandatory, with nearly 400 provisions in 80 countries.
Explore how the global reporting initiative (GRI) enables ESG disclosures with materiality standards and ESG KPIs, shaping governance, climate change, human rights, and social well-being for the Fortune 250.
SASB develops standards to identify and report financially material sustainability information to investors. It uses a materiality map and 77 industry metrics, now evolving under the International Sustainability Standards Board.
Highlight how the Climate Disclosure Standards Board helps organizations integrate climate change information into financial reporting. Learn about its own framework now used by nearly 400 companies across 30 countries.
Explore how the World Economic Forum's stakeholder capitalism metrics standardize ESG reporting with 22 core and 34 expanded metrics across four pillars—governance, people, prosperity, and planet—aligned with the UN SDGs.
Identify and prioritize ESG topics through a materiality assessment to align reporting with stakeholder needs and business goals, guiding your sustainability strategy.
Implement centralized data systems to track ESG metrics and hold leadership accountable through regular updates and board oversight. Align incentives and duties with long-term ESG goals to ensure credible reporting.
Master ESG reporting to communicate goals, metrics, and progress to investors and customers, promote progress, balance external and internal updates, and align reporting with business objectives.
Engage key investors to shape governance and ESG practices by meeting the top 50 investors, gathering feedback on board diversity practices, and updating our framework next year.
Highlight how boards oversee ESG through governance structures and committees, tailoring materiality to each company. Build long-term trust among stakeholders by adapting to ESG changes.
Culture drives engagement with ESG principles; transparent, accountable cultures embracing diversity, equity, inclusion, and public commitments advance ESG goals and attract talent.
Identify common barriers to implementing an effective ESG program and share practical strategies to overcome them, with focus on governance, environmental metrics, and social issues.
Identify and overcome common barriers to implementing an ESG program, from distraction and complex frameworks to data accuracy, time and resource constraints, organizational silos, leadership gaps, and disclosure challenges.
Overcome ESG barriers by cultivating a purpose-driven culture, understanding ESG frameworks, prioritizing metrics, authentic reporting, and inclusive ownership across the organization.
Explore the challenges of implementing ESG programs, focusing on building auditable processes, board oversight, and measurable environmental metrics like carbon footprint to demonstrate transparency to investors and stakeholders.
Uncover the biggest ESG challenges, from environmental and labor standards pushback to deal-blocking perceptions, and learn to empower ESG with direct reporting to the CEO and company-wide KPI scorecards.
Overcome esg obstacles by securing leadership tone at the top, building a fluent board, and aligning governance and ghg emissions monitoring to bridge short-termism with long-term purpose.
The three challenges (awareness, cost resistance, and poor record keeping) hinder ESG programs in Africa; overcome with leadership training, governance integration, robust data collection, CO2 reporting, and AI-powered data sharing.
Explore the challenges of esg implementation, focusing on forward-looking metrics, governance, and supply chain impacts like lithium mining, equity and inclusion, and community effects across ecosystems.
Monitor the rise of country-specific ESG laws and consolidated reporting frameworks. See how the IFRS Foundation's ISB, the Value Reporting Foundation, stakeholder capitalism metrics, and the Ten PFD shape disclosures.
Explore how mandatory disclosures set baseline norms for ESG data, improve trust and comparability, and how voluntary disclosures continue to drive innovation beyond regulation.
Explain why ESG is here to stay with disclosure requirements from regulators like the SEC, and how investors push for board composition, DNI measures, and environmental metrics to drive value.
Explore how flexible ESG frameworks, notably tcfD and SASB, shape climate disclosures, biodiversity considerations, and the move toward mandatory, standardized metrics across industries.
Evaluate third party assurances in ESG reporting as a validation tool for disclosures. Decarbonize operations and supply chains, leveraging capital, technology, and innovation to translate assurances into real impact.
Investors engage with companies to advance ESG among long-term institutions, impact investors, and private equity, and firms with a clear ESG strategy attract lower cost of capital through transparency.
Boards set the tone for ESG, oversee risk, and ensure governance through committees; management updates committees on cybersecurity, climate disclosures, and regulatory expectations, including pay equity and carbon footprint.
Boards guide esg integration as the corporate compass, aligning governance, r&d, and supply chain with values reflected in financial statements during inflation and recession.
Explore how leadership tone and stakeholder expectations—from employees to investors and regulators—drive authentic ESG commitment, accurate disclosures, and accountability across scope 1–3 emissions.
Discover how the board of directors advances ESG through governance, information quality, and accountability, with improved board packs and governance and nominations committee leadership.
Evaluate the strengths and limitations of regulation versus voluntary disclosure for esg, focusing on standard setting, compliance, enforcement, and reporting, with attention to Africa's enforcement gaps.
Explore how ESG definitions converge yet live differently across regions, focusing on Africa's carbon footprint, development constraints, and the need for inclusive funding and practical policies.
Explore how Europe’s green deal drives climate metrics and capital flows toward a net-zero transition, with tcfd standards shaping a broad, top-down approach, versus the US's voluntary sec disclosures.
Explore how ESG lands in diverse markets by centering indigenous and marginalized communities, rediscovering traditional stewardship of resources, and fostering mutual value between cultural wisdom and modern innovation.
Explore how students of ESG will write the future of ESG by collaborating across communities, corporations, nonprofits, and universities to pioneer inclusive, transformative change.
The global investment and corporate community has realized that companies that do good in the world also do better in their business. Programs for corporate social responsibility (CSR) were all "nice to haves," but now investors, consumers, and employees are demanding that companies make positive ESG (environmental, social, and governance) impacts and the game has changed. Positively contributing to society and the environment is now a "must have." ESG frameworks have brought transparency, objectivity, and accountability to companies' environmental, social, and governance impacts. But, ESG frameworks are numerous and confusing. Reporting standards are varied and difficult to navigate. And, the ESG landscape is changing rapidly.
According to the Harvard Business Review, there is an "ESG Reckoning" taking place. ESG is the No. 1 topic investors want to discuss with boards of directors. (PWC.) As of 2020, almost 90% of publicly traded companies and 67% of privately-owned companies had embarked on ESG initiatives. (NAVEX Global). Additionally, 88% of institutional investors believe that companies that prioritize ESG initiatives represent better opportunities for long-term returns than companies that do not. (Edelman)
Whether your company already has an ESG program or is thinking of developing one, this course will help you understand ESG, navigate the alphabet soup of the ESG world, and lead your company in establishing a high-impact ESG program.
Layli Miller-Muro has a 25-year career as a corporate lawyer with one of the top law firms in the world and as a human rights lawyer with one of the most influential non-profits in the United States. Named as one of Goldman Sachs's Top 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, Newsweek Magazine's 150 Most Fearless Women in the World, and a winner of the Washington Post's Award for Management Excellence, Layli is an author and frequent lecturer. Currently, she is a consultant helping corporations with their social impact strategies. With both a legal and practical lens, she will demystify ESG and help you establish an effective ESG program.
What students say about the course:
"This is one of the best courses on Udemy. The instructor is very knowledgeable, her presentation style is engaging, there are a lot of helpful downloadable resources, and the "expert interviews" by ESG leaders in companies like Hewlett-Packard, VISA, etc. are as real as it gets. They are the leading internal practitioners and they know what they are talking about. The course is worth getting just for those interviews. Very well done!"
"The content was amazing and well articulated."
"Wonderful course, well explained, well guided and summarized so beautifully. Very helpful for a beginner to understand and implement ESG."
"Excellent course. A lot of sincere effort has been put in by the course instructor Layli and multiple perspectives offered to make it deep while being fair and balanced. The course takes a nuanced view of cultural complexities while implementing ESG programmes and the practical challenges, while emphasising on the positive direction in offers. Largely resting on some stellar interviews by Industry titans from different spheres of activity that gives an inside view of the past, present and future of ESG in organizations, interspersed with interesting lectures from Layli, this is truly a high value course offered at a very competitive price. Anyone interested in ESG should totally lap this up."
"Thank you very much for creating this course. ESG is complex and rapidly changing, thanks to this training with multiple stories from working professionals and numerous resources it is enormously useful. Highly recommended for all types of professionals; employees, entrepreneurs, producers or consumers."
This course will enable you to:
Understand the history of ESG and what ESG means (including how it is different from CSR)
Realize its relevance to you and your company
Become an expert in the range of frameworks currently out there, as well as those that are pending and coming down the pipe
You will receive a road map for implementing an ESG strategy for your company - whether small or large. (With practical tools, handouts, and exercises to support you in your journey.)
Have a sense of what is coming next in the industry and keep up with ESG's fast-paced changes.
Through Zoom interviews, learn directly from experts from top executives of leading ESG in major corporations (e.g., HPE, Visa, Ben & Jerry's, Mastercard, Twitter, Yeti, etc.) to gain insights by those implementing ESG every day at the highest levels in their corporations.
Most importantly, this course will support you in ensuring that your company has a competitive edge in both making profit and making the world a better place!