As businesses and investors increasingly turn their attention to the topic of climate change, 18 business schools prepare to host an event aimed at educating the next generation of business leaders—today’s MBA students—about the business implications of climate change.
Industry experts, scholars and MBA students from around the globe will convene on Feb. 21–22, 2020 at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in Charlottesville, VA for ClimateCAP: The Global MBA Summit on Climate, Capital, & Business.
The summit will feature leading investors and executives discussing the approaches that companies are taking to reduce climate impact, seize competitive advantage, mitigate risk and navigate a dynamic, climate-shaped business environment.
“Clearly, the time is right to be discussing these issues,” says Katie Kross, managing director of the Center for Energy, Development, and the Global Environment at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Fuqua hosted the first ClimateCAP summit in 2018.
“In the last few weeks alone, we have seen major announcements from BlackRock, Microsoft, Starbucks, and State Street Global Advisors committing to reduce climate impacts and evaluate climate risk in their investment portfolios and supply chains,” Kross added. “Today’s MBA students will graduate into a world where businesses are expected to be part of climate solutions or risk becoming obsolete.”
Climate change represents one of the most pressing issues for business and society. Moody’s estimates that the global economic damage caused by climate change will be $69 trillion by 2100, even if efforts are successful to hold planetary warming to 2° C. Yet, climate change also offers a multitrillion dollar business opportunity for forward-thinking business leaders, creating massive new markets for clean technology and sustainable infrastructure solutions.
At ClimateCAP, MBA students will discuss where the biggest financial and operational climate risks are, and how companies should be thinking about adapting their supply chains, real estate, and energy portfolios to become more resilient.
More than 40 speakers will set the stage for subsequent in-depth panel discussions on product innovation and supply chains, incumbent firm strategies, communicating climate progress, policies and partnerships, and intrapreneurial action. Speakers will include:
- Mark Kaye, CFO, Moody’s
- Scott Price, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, UPS
- Matt Arnold, Managing Director and Global Head of Sustainable Finance, JPMorgan Chase
- Virginia Covo, Global Director, Supply Chain Sustainability, AB Inbev
- Katherine Neebe, Senior Director, ESG, Trust & Transparency, Walmart
- Mark Webb, Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer, Dominion Energy
- Joanna Price, Sr. Vice President, Public Affairs and Communications, Coca-Cola
- Chrissa Pagitsas, Vice President, Enterprise ESG, Fannie Mae
- Nikhil Da Victoria Lobo, Head Americas, Public Sector Solutions, Managing Director, Swiss Re
This year’s summit has been organized by Darden’s Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which supports the School’s Business Innovation and Climate Change Initiative. The 2020 summit is co-chaired by Rebecca Duff and Erica Herz at UVA.
ClimateCAP is facilitated in partnership with business schools including UVA (Darden), Wharton, Harvard Business School, Duke (Fuqua), Stanford, Yale, MIT (Sloan), London Business School, Michigan (Ross), Cornell (Johnson), Dartmouth (Tuck), Columbia, UNC–Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler), NYU (Stern), Georgia Tech (Scheller), Northwestern (Kellogg), UT-Austin (McCombs), and Georgetown (McDonough).
For additional information, visit the ClimateCAP summit website. Current MBA students interested in attending can also register on the conference website.