• Executive education

Executing Sustainability Strategies (Executive course)

Equipping leaders to move beyond compliance and translate sustainability ambitions into organisation-wide action — designing strategies that create lasting value, drive resilient growth and deliver meaningful impact.

Course key facts

  • Date

    16 - 20 November 2026

    24 - 28 May 2027

  • Duration

    5 days

  • Credits

    Non credit bearing

  • Format

    In-person

  • Fee

    £6,950

  • Location

    On Campus (South Kensington)

Overview

This executive course sits within a wider set of sustainability management courses at Imperial College Business School and connects strategy execution with Environmental Management principles. The societal and environmental challenges in front of us are existential, and they demand stronger Environmental Management across organisations. Addressing them calls for a collective effort from all parts of society, including business. Sustainability is no longer an option; it is a requirement for every organisation on the planet to develop and execute sustainability strategies, supported by Environmental Management and clear governance. At the same time there are significant opportunities to develop businesses or propositions and improve the lives of customers, colleagues and across society. 


Being sustainable in strategy, practice and impact requires going beyond compliance. It involves designing and implementing business sustainability strategies that create positive and tangible impact and value for your entire ecosystem of stakeholders, including environmental outcomes. 


This calls for a holistic and integrated approach that drives value and sustained growth; growth that meets the needs of today as well as those of tomorrow, grounded in practical knowledge. 


To move from sustainability strategies to holistic and cost-effective actions plans, organisations need new processes underpinned by systems thinking, a reined organisational purpose, structural changes, and the systemic controls to align and inspire your team. This programme will provide the tools to protect your sustainability action plan from the perils and pitfalls that lie ahead, and help students build practical skills they can use in their role. Some challenges are common to all strategic initiatives – others deeply specific to executing sustainability strategies. 


The programme gives you the depth, time and space you need to refine and implement your sustainability strategy, with continuous, follow-through support and guidance from the Imperial College ecosystem of world experts in sustainability and leadership at the University. 

Learning journey

The execution of your strategy is planned with continuous support as you discover and apply new ideas, build skills, and strengthen professional judgement. You start off with a self-paced programme preparation and then join your peers in London to work on the execution of your upgraded strategy plan, with a short module briefing to guide your study. Once back to your organisation, you start the execution of your strategy, building on the action plans developed. During this phase, you continue to be supported with a live online touchpoint and have opportunities to measure the impact and initial results of the deployment of your strategic plan, share information, and learn from the rest of the cohort. Each online touchpoint includes a short assessment to help students track progress, consolidate knowledge, and translate learning into practical steps for their organisation. 

Online, self-paced learning (a total of 3 learning hours) and one live virtual session (90 minutes) with faculty and peers; students use this time to study key concepts and build practical skills. 


You access the Executive Education programme app and begin to familiarise with your peers, key information, and programme learning material to support your study. This is where you start to validate your existing sustainability strategy as well as your own capabilities as a change leader for your organisation, and build skills to lead implementation. 

Executing Sustainability Strategies | Programme Outline

Dr Frank Brueck, Head of the Leadership Lab at the Leonardo Centre on Business for Society, outlines how the programme gives participants exposure to experts and mentors that will guide them through strategy design and implementation.

Course details

Participant share their experience

What participants say

It's a rare privilege to be able to sit down with fellow sustainability professionals and challenge yourself, ask questions and see what they would do in your position, and it helped me build practical skills. Kate Wright Group Sustainability Director

Course instructors

Gbemi Oluleye

Associate Professor in Sustainable Market Mechanisms at the Grantham Institute

Dr. Gbemi Oluleye is Associate Professor in Sustainable Market Mechanisms at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London (University). She heads the Market Interventions for Deep Decarbonisation Lab. With over 15 years’ consultancy experience, she has advised global clients including the World Bank, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Schneider Electric, Scottish Power, BP, Skydiamond and the OECD, bringing professional experience. Her work equips financial institutions, and corporates to manage climate risk, understand carbon markets, and carbon-linked market mechanisms, assess carbon value at risk, and guide investment decisions in climate mitigation, sharing practical information. She also supports organisations in accelerating clean technology uptake and aligning transition strategies with long-term competitiveness.

Ed Daniels

Chief Technical Officer

Ed is the former Strategy, Sustainability and Corporate Relations Director for Shell Plc. In this role Ed was a member of Shell’s Executive Committee had accountability for the company’s existing Strategy, Sustainability and Corporate Relations organisations. Ed joined Shell in 1988 and has held roles in Shell’s Upstream, Integrated Gas, Downstream and Projects & Technology businesses. He previously served as Shell’s UK Country Chair, prior to becoming a Director, he was the Executive Vice President Strategy, Portfolio & Sustainability, he led the development of the company’s ‘Powering Progress’ strategy to drive the decarbonisation of the energy system and achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Maurizio Zollo

Scientific Director of the School's Leonardo Centre on Business for Society (University)

His research aims to understand how business organisations learn to grow and adapt to environmental turbulence and how managers can guide these evolutionary processes, building knowledge for professional practice. His research has been published in several leading journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review and the Strategic Management Journal. His work has been covered in mainstream publications including Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Professor Zollo is Editor-in-Chief of Organization & Environment and a past editor of the European Management Review. He served for a decade on the Executive Committee of the Academy of Business in Society, which he helped establish in 2002. This perspective is particularly relevant for students seeking Sustainability Management capability that aligns strategy, culture, and Environmental Management in complex organisations.

Eduardo Andrade

Professor of Marketing

Eduardo is a professor of marketing at Imperial Business School (University) and the Co-Director of the MSc Programme on Climate Change, Management & Finance. As a behavioural researcher, he is interested in how individuals feel, think and make decisions in contexts related to sustainable consumption, inequality, and health. His articles have appeared in marketing (Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Marketing Research), medicine/public health (Lancet, Public Health Nutrition, Preventive Medicine, JAMA Network Open), and psychology journals (Psychological Science, Nature Human Behaviour), among others.

Ethan O'Brien

Strategic Advisor to Zendo

Ethan O'Brien is currently a Strategic Advisor to Zendo, a UK energy technology start-up specialising in data centre decarbonisation and renewable energy procurement. He previously served for 5.5 years as the Global Director of Operations Sustainability at Klöckner Pentaplast, a multinational company specialising in food and pharmaceutical packaging. He holds a Chartered Energy Engineer (CEng) qualification and boasts over 12 years of global experience in leading renewable energy, sustainability, and energy efficiency projects across various continents for multiple multinational corporations. An alumnus of the University of Edinburgh, Ethan is deeply passionate about advancing more sustainable operational practices within companies, and supports students through professional insight. He is currently completing an Executive MBA at the University of Warwick Business School, alongside professional work.

Frank Brueck

Leadership Lab Lead

Frank Brueck has more than 25 years of experience as a consultant, trainer, lecturer and researcher in the fields of CSR and sustainability, cultural change, cross-cultural management, team building and leadership development, delivering professional training. Frank cofounded the GOLDEN for Impact Foundation and is a founding member of the International Association for Cross-cultural Competence and Management. His research focuses on the methodologies of CSR, cultural comparison, value-based management, sustainability and intercultural management and training. Frank holds a PhD in Business Administration from the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria, reflecting academic expertise.

Mais Haddadin Finn

Vice President, Global Sustainability Lead at NexantECA

Mais Haddadin is a Vice President, Global Sustainability Lead at NexantECA, with a focus on strategic engagements in the sector. Mais is a chemical engineer with over 20 years’ experience in the advisory sector developing international commercial opportunities in innovation, market expansion strategies, international development, and public private partnerships. She is deploying her versatile mix of experience to support clients in the transition towards carbon neutrality, the circular economy and clean energy. Mais is passionate about comprehensive approach to sustainability and believes that the future is connected, transparent and collaborative. Prior to joining NexantECA, Mais worked closely with multinationals, small to mid-cap enterprises, NGOs, and governments. She led public funded Innovative R&D projects and transformational economic programmes on European and international levels. Mais is also the Vice Chair of the Anglo Jordanian Society in the UK and been involved in sever

Superna Khosla

Global Director for Reporting Strategy and Sustainability Measurement

Superna is PwC’s Global Director for Reporting Strategy and Sustainability measurement, bringing professional experience and Environmental Management perspective. With over 15 years’ experience in sustainability reporting strategies, she focuses on unlocking business value from reporting requirements and emerging measurement techniques including impact valuation. Her experience includes leading multi-disciplinary, global teams for new data solutions to embed sustainability reporting insights in a fast evolving regulatory environment, engaging with standard setters and running workshops on practical implementation challenges, sharing information that helps students. She started her career as a financial auditor at PwC UK, was Communications Director at HRH’s Accounting for Sustainability Project and was the Investor and Business Engagement Director at the International Integrated Reporting Council (now part of the IFRS’ International Sustainability Standards Board). Superna has also cha

Caroline Milliotte

Global Sustainability Lead

Caroline is a geologist - and passionate about natural sciences. She is the Global Sustainability Lead at Ekimetrics; her role is to define and implement the company’s sustainability roadmap and to drive the internal transformations along the way. Caroline started her career as a 3D-numerical and statistical modeler for Earth Science applications. Before turning 30, she created a software and consulting company, focusing on H2 and CO2 underground storage and deep geothermal plays. After completing a master’s degree in environment and energy policies, she joined the French ecological transition agency (ADEME) where she led the EU-sponsored “Energy Transition in the Caribbean” project, in tight collaboration with regional institutions, strengthening academic and practical knowledge. She graduated from Sciences Po Paris (School of International Affairs) and has a double master degree from Ecole Nationale Superieure de Geologie (ENSG Nancy - Engineering school) and Universite de Lorraine.

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José Rosário

Business Development Director – Open Programmes

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