EDHEC Sustainable Impact Challenge – ESG Education in Action

EDHEC’s aim is to make an impact and the global MBA is for sure designed to do just that.

The sustainability Challenge and the sustainable focus of the programme was actually one of the reasons that I chose EDHEC’s Global MBA.

The sustainable impact challenge is a programme that we created at the global MBA in order to really inject sustainability into our programme. It's a six-month program where students at the beginning of the Academic Year take on real projects with companies’ real challenges that actual local and European companies are facing, and the students will work on those throughout the core course portion of their programme from September to February. And then we have a pitch contest where each team pitches back to their company sponsors their solutions to the sustainable challenges that the companies gave them earlier on in the school year. 

We had a sustainable impact challenge debriefing today.

We had 16 companies present to us. It was such an interesting period listening to everyone telling us about their projects and what they do and how they're just trying to sustainably lead their businesses.

One company that stood out for me was “Earth plus” I've always been into nature, it's something that has driven me. They have this programme for soil degradation and CO2 emission, and I think that's a great initiative to save this planet take a step somewhere.

Sustainability is important for “IBM”, the expectation of this cooperation is really to get some insight in this year in the case of the challenge we have proposed it's to Benchmark the level of sustainability of some of our clients using generative artificial intelligence.

I believe that MBA students are the leaders of tomorrow so basically when you teach them how the environmental, the social and governance issues affect companies and how climate change affect the value of a company as well this will set the guidelines to create more responsible companies in the future.

We only have one place to live on, which is the earth. It is quite important for us as human beings to ensure that the Earth is a legal place for us.

The environment is changing so there's just a massive amount, especially here in Europe, of sustainability regulation and changes around the European green new deal that are impacting companies every day and right now and I hope that they graduate with a sense of responsibility towards the companies they will join once they graduate and help multiply this effect of not being afraid to take on sustainable challenges, within their own companies, within their own countries, and within their own societies after their studies.

Today we celebrate the finals of the Sustainable Impact Challenge from the Global MBA at EDHEC.

We have 16 presentations of groups of students working with different companies from different industries, and also from different sizes, we have start-ups, we have large industries.

The social impact challenge is for us to get real world exposure and understand what the current companies are facing.

We get exposed to a diverse group of people like we were fortunate enough to interact with the top management at banks and understand how they function, what are the challenges they are facing and we were we could devise strategies for them. So it's really a lot of action learning, practical learning.

Each company comes with its own take on sustainability and the context of their industry and so sustainability could be from reducing carbon to observing fish in the ocean to actually gender equality diversity. So, all those topics around the 17 sustainable development goals defined by the United Nations.

SAP Labs, France, participated in this project with EDHEC so that we could bring the project that we have to build this renewable energy community and life. They really covered the contents that we presented to them. They really went precisely looking for information that were locally and also globally so that they could have the best view possible. So, we're really proud of them, we're proud of what they achieved and we're really proud that they can also help few different companies as well.

Something commits 2 years ago to lower its carbon footprint drastically -50% in intensity for products by 2030. So we need to explore all the solutions that could help us to minimise our carbon footprint even after 20-30. So we wanted to have some creativity work with the students. I enjoy a lot to work with them. They were really organised, they listened a lot, They have improved what they present us today during the six months and it was really interesting to have exchange with them.

What I learned about this project is actually first of all how to work with the team, because we are all from different backgrounds and we all have different ideas just to agree on one idea and try to work on the project out together. And second of all is, you know, trying to capture the main idea and trying to present it in 7 minutes, which is our golden time of course. And also what I love the most about this project is that we'd be able to work with real professionals where they take the problem very seriously.

I'm part of the jury. I am extremely impressed by the quality of what I've seen so far, of course, the presentation skills obviously, but also the nature of the work they did in such a limited period of time and how they managed to understand the specific challenge of the company that we're partnered with is really, really impressive.

It feels great to be a winner. It came as a surprise to our group, but we've worked really hard since the beginning of the programme. So it feels wonderful to be recognised for all that hard work and the research and awareness that we're bringing to the topic of women leadership and that the gender gap currently in France, but also on a global scale.

This is the only programme that I saw in the research that places so much emphasis on sustainability, and it gives a hands-on experience for us to experience what it is. And it's incredible; I think that we get to work with a real company for six months on something that is so dear to them. We were working with a bank, a big bank, actually one of the oldest banks in France, and we were working to integrate sustainability in their philosophy, in their business and to engage their shareholders and the employee community and to get them together to work towards a greener goal.

I'm going to take this experience with me for a very long time to come. This was one of the highlights of my MBA experience.