ESG — environmental, social, and governance — is a rapidly growing and complex landscape. From diversity to supply-chain due diligence to reducing carbon emissions, ESG cuts across vastly different corporate functions. As this course will reveal, ESG is not a discrete set of issues, but a powerful process for managing risk and leveraging business advantage.
Investors and other key stakeholders recognize that ESG is a proxy for effective risk oversight, and there is increasing pressure on board members to focus on ESG issues. But given its breadth, how to do so remains unclear. This course answers that challenge, pinpointing how corporate board members, whose legal duties and strategic roles are very different from management, can embed ESG into board operations.
To ensure that we have tailored this course for corporate directors, we convened an advisory council, composed of corporate board members, investors, senior executives, legal advisors, and ESG experts. This introductory course, which is designed to be completed in six hours, incorporates their practical insights, the cutting-edge research of Berkeley Law faculty, and industry-leading reports published by Ceres.