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Business leaders must think like sustainability professionals, whatever their title

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.

My students at NYU Stern showed self-restraint in waiting until the second day of class to ask me: “What’s the prognosis for the corporate sustainability profession?”

At the Center for Sustainable Business, conversations with our broad network of alumni and practitioners at global companies and investors point to a clear theme: The profession is changing fast. Artificial intelligence is absorbing reporting work, and political backlash has led many companies to call the work of reducing greenhouse emissions or mitigating environmental impacts something else.

I told my students that job titles are changing, but the systems thinking that underpins sustainability can be their competitive edge in any role. Here are three core skills that make that possible — and they are just as applicable for today’s leaders as tomorrow’s.

Making the financial case

Financial acumen and corporate strategy are no longer optional. Sustainability investments must compete for capital like other investments. But calculating the return on a sustainability initiative is rarely as straightforward as the process for other investments. 

The value may land in someone else’s P&L, be hard to count — like employee or customer retention or brand reputation — or take longer to pay back. Sustainability professionals need to understand how money moves through their company and what the organization’s strategy prioritizes, so they can show where the return accrues and how it arrives. 

An executive at a global investment firm recently told me, “I see a shake-up underway. Sustainability leaders that came from comms, PR or HR are on their way out; people with financial backgrounds are on their way in.” 

Critics say that having to make the business case proves sustainability was never more than good management. I’d respond that translating external impacts and risks into business decisions was always the point. Inside a company, that’s what drives transformation and capital allocation.

When Owens Corning asked the Center for Sustainable Business to model its goal of sending zero waste to landfill from its fiberglass insulation business, the analysis found that diverting waste was not in and of itself a value driver, because landfill space can be relatively cheap in the U.S. right now. 

The value showed up elsewhere: in buying less virgin glass and less outside recycled glass, in cutting emissions now instead of buying offsets later, and in fewer injuries and lower turnover. For one Midwest plant we modeled, the estimated seven-year net present value was equal to about 15 percent of the facility’s annual revenue.

Tracing policy into opportunity

A new policy or rule change is a headline first and a set of business decisions second. When the 2025 budget law shortened the life of wind and solar tax credits, the headline was that the incentives were ending. Developers who anticipated and planned ahead saw opportunity: they were able to accelerate investments in order to beat the pending deadline. Researcher Wood Mackenzie estimates enough utility-scale solar was safe-harbored to cover forecast installations through the end of the decade. 

Policy set the deadline, but financial analysis told them what it was worth to beat it. 

Packaging is the topic unfolding in real time. Seven states have passed extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, and the European Union’s packaging regulation began applying in August, but fee schedules are still moving and lawsuits are pending.

Sonoco tells investors that in Europe and Asia, EPR fees are pushing customers toward its paper and metal packaging, and that it will invest where “regulation and customer programs line up.” The skill is understanding what a policy shift means for your company’s operations and market position in time to adjust.

Outside-in thinking

Every company depends on things it does not own and rarely measures: the water its plants draw, the weather its supply chains encounter, the energy and grid capacity it needs, the raw materials it buys, the communities that permit or block its projects, and the rules that shape trade and costs, from tariffs to carbon pricing. 

Business continuity demands that every company think deeply about its license to operate. As just one example, Data Center Watch estimated that roughly $130 billion of data center projects were blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026 because of community concerns — about as much as for all of 2025.

Google is responding in real time. In 2020, a small team at the company built software to shift computing workloads toward hours when cleaner power was available. Now, that capability is the foundation for important demand response clauses in Google’s energy relationships: The company built 1 gigawatt of demand response into its utility contracts. This helps Google onnect new data centers more rapidly, because utilities have less peak demand to cover and may be able to defer capacity built only for the highest peak hours.

Sustainability professionals should make it their mission to foresee external forces that could move results, in either direction, and turn them into a number someone can act on. 

The energy transition and other sustainability priorities need enormous amounts of capital, and most of it already comes from the private sector. Domestic private actors account for 60 percent of mitigation finance and have driven about 70 percent of its net growth since 2019. Private capital is allocated by its own logic: what an investment returns, what it risks, and when it pays back. Public funding alone won’t get us to the estimated $6 trillion-plus needed in climate finance, and private financing has to compete for capital. Anyone who wants to unlock that capital needs to realize they have to make the case in these terms.

Bottom line

The job title might have changed; the challenges haven’t gone anywhere. Climate change, water access and human rights still shape what companies can make, where they can operate and what they can sell. Someone must translate those conditions for business strategists: making the financial case, translating policy into business opportunity and reading outside-in signals before they show up in the P&L. 

Those are the business skills required for the future, grounded in sustainability and systems thinking. My students will hold titles I can’t predict. If they can do these three things, they’ll have an edge in every one of those roles.

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