CSOs at a Crossroads: Shaping the Path Ahead

BSR Members Only

Date and Time

October 29, 2024
11:00 am-12:00 pm EDT

Location

Webinar

This event is for BSR members only. Members, please log in to register.

Today’s Chief Sustainability Officers (CSOs) are at a pivotal moment – facing more opportunity, relevance, visibility, and pressure than ever before. With growing conversations around the changing nature of the role, BSR’s recently released report offers timely insights. Drawing from interviews with more than 30 CSOs from some of the world’s most influential companies, the report traces their evolving role amidst a backdrop of rapid changes and proposes three potential paths ahead. Learn more about these findings from BSR leaders and how you can reassert an ambitious vision of your role.

Scheduled Speakers

• Christine Diamente, Managing Director, Transformation, BSR
---

Christine Diamente
Managing Director, Transformation, BSR
London
---
Christine leads BSR’s Business Transformation team, helping companies to manage sustainability throughout their business and across their supply chains and to develop resilient business strategies that leverage insights from BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab.
She works with companies across sectors and geographies to structure a sustainability management approach that mitigates risk and captures emerging opportunities, creating strategic advantage for their businesses, while contributing to a more just, sustainable world. Christine also co-leads engagement with boards of directors to promote effective board governance and leadership ambition on sustainability. 
She brings over 20 years of experience in leading brand, sustainability, public affairs, communications, and reputation management with multinational corporations at the executive leadership level. This also includes overseeing corporate relations with external stakeholders, such as the World Economic Forum, the UN, European institutions, and investors.
Previously, Christine was Head of Brand Strategy at Nokia. She has also held major roles at Alcatel-Lucent and Alcatel, leading Brand and Corporate Sustainability and European Affairs. Christine has also served on various boards, including as a chair of the Telecoms Industry Dialogue on human rights, as an advisory board member of Reuters Events Sustainability, as a member of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, and on the European Internet Foundation.
Christine holds a MA in History and a BA in History and International Politics from the University of Ottawa. She completed the Management Acceleration Program (MAP) at INSEAD, and she achieved the ESG Competent Boards Certificate and Global Competent Boards Designation (2021). She speaks English, French, Spanish, and Italian.
Close
• Laura Gitman, Chief Impact Officer, BSR
---

Laura Gitman
Chief Impact Officer, BSR
New York
---
Laura is a global expert on corporate sustainability, with two decades of experience in strategy consulting and has advised senior executives at global companies across a range of industry sectors and sustainability issues.
As Chief Impact Officer (CIO), the first in the organization’s 30-year history, Laura focuses on maximizing the impact of BSR’s work with its network of over 300 members, both through direct engagement on project work and as a mentor for teams throughout the organization. She also oversees BSR’s collaborative initiatives and the Center for Business and Social Justice, and a recognized thought leader and innovator in strategic business.
She has been an instrumental leader in BSR’s organizational growth and impact. She launched BSR’s financial services practice and New York office, and she served as Chief Operating Officer for five years, leveraging her strengths in strategy, organizational change, and people management. Laura works with leading global companies to develop and enhance their sustainability strategies to maximize value for business and society, and she is sought after to facilitate senior-level strategy workshops and multi-stakeholder collaborations.
She previously worked for Deloitte Consulting, where she acquired extensive strategy experience advising multinational financial services companies. She also worked on several community and economic development projects in Latin America.
Laura holds a MBA from Stanford University and a BS in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. She is an adjunct professor in the Bard MBA in Sustainability program, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and a member of the UN Global Compact Expert Network.
Close
• David Korngold, Managing Director of BSR Innovation Group, BSR
---

David Korngold
Managing Director of BSR Innovation Group, BSR
New York
---
David partners with corporate boards, executives, and investors to develop high-impact sustainability strategies. As part of BSR’s Transformation team, he co-leads engagement with boards of directors to promote effective board governance and leadership ambition on sustainability. 
Having previously led BSR's Financial Services team, David continues to work closely with financial companies on sustainability, ESG integration, and impact investing. David has led engagements in nearly all of BSR’s focus areas and major industry groups. This includes leading climate scenarios workshops with boards, creating net-zero road maps for investment firms, designing and operationalizing a leading impact investing fund, conducting materiality assessments, undertaking human rights impact assessments, and co-authoring research on topics like ESG for emerging public companies and responsible investment policies for private equity firms.
Before joining BSR, David worked in strategy and management consulting at Bain & Company.
David holds a BA in History from Amherst College.
Close
• Jacob Park, Director, Sustainable Futures Lab, BSR
---

Jacob Park
Director, Sustainable Futures Lab, BSR
New York
---
Jacob leads BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab, a new practice using strategic foresight techniques to help businesses engage with emerging issues that are reshaping the global landscape.
Before joining BSR, Jacob was the lead futurist in the New York office of Forum for the Future, where he used scenario planning and other futures techniques to develop sustainability strategy and drive innovation for leading businesses, foundations, and multistakeholder groups. Prior to that he worked at Adaptive Edge, a boutique strategic foresight consultancy, on collaborative scenario planning. Jacob began his career doing human rights research and advocacy at Human Rights First and the Center for Economic and Social Rights. He speaks English and French.
Jacob holds an M.B.A. in Sustainability from Presidio Graduate School and a B.A. in History from the University of Chicago. 
Close