To transform business, we need transformational leaders who are self-aware, emotionally intelligent, and passionate. That means finding personal purpose and aligning it with an organizational mission.

Leaders’ Quest is a social enterprise that works with leaders to create a more equitable and sustainable world. We are pleased to welcome them to BSR17 to deliver an interactive Best Self Leadership workshop. When we as leaders show up as our best selves, we invite others to do the same—and the effect is viral. We will use a simple framework to explore the dimensions of our own worst, normal, and best selves. Founded on deep experience of what makes people tick, this workshop will challenge you to understand yourself better, help colleagues do the same, and step into the best of who you are. Participants will learn the four key dimensions of best self leadership (purpose-centered, other-focused, internally-directed, and externally-open) and will learn how to use and adapt the best self framework in the office. This is a rare opportunity to participate in a self-development Quest. (Breakfast: 8-9 a.m. Training: 9-Noon.)

Who Should Attend

This event is open to all participants. Space is limited. Closed to press.

Sustainability efforts will succeed to the degree that they are clear, strategic, and aligned with core business priorities. This half-day training will introduce the key tools that BSR uses to create and implement sustainability strategy for member companies and examine how they can be applied via a range of interactive exercises. We will consider how to translate external business drivers, key sustainability frameworks, and stakeholder concerns to identify the most important areas for action for your company. We will then explore how to develop an action plan that aligns with core business strategy and addresses material risks and opportunities in a clear and measurable way. (Breakfast: 8-9 a.m. Training: 9-Noon.)

Who Should Attend

Sustainability practitioners tasked with creating sustainability approaches that support business success. This event is open to corporate practitioners only. Consultants must be sponsored by a corporation and represent that corporation to attend. Unsure if these trainings are applicable to you? For questions, please contact us at conference@bsr.org.

Get your hands dirty and help restore the wetlands. Only 10 minutes from the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach, Bolsa Chica Conservancy connects the community through hands-on restoration and education in wetland science, watersheds, coastal ecology, and environmental sustainability. Spend the morning helping to restore native habitats at Bolsa Chica by cleaning up these pristine wetlands by kayak. This is a rare opportunity to get out on the water and help with invasive plant and trash removal from the marsh and dune habitats. Actual kayak time will be one hour and fifteen minutes. The kayak clean-up will include roundtrip transportation and a light breakfast and will conclude with lunch at the Hyatt’s Sunset Grille, featuring specialty dishes from surf destinations around the world. Tour will depart at 9:30 a.m. and return to the Hyatt by approximately 12:30 p.m.

Cost: $125

Who Should Attend

This event is open to all participants. Due to the sensitive nature of the wetlands, space is extremely limited and will be filled on a first come, first served basis. If you register and are no longer able to attend the clean-up, please email BSR2017@meetgreen.com to cancel. We will confirm your participation one week prior to the event. Closed to press.

The Walt Disney Company’s commitment to environmental stewardship and conservation is no better exemplified than at the Disneyland Resort. As the resort has grown over the years from a single park in 1955 to a multiday resort destination that continues to expand, Disney has consistently found innovative ways to reduce waste to landfill, potable water consumption, and emissions. During this 2.5-hour tour through Disney California Adventure park, learn about these specific efforts and how the Disneyland Resort uses “Disney Environmentality”—acting with the environment in mind—to embed environmental stewardship into its daily operations and guest experience. This unique opportunity will include roundtrip transportation, a light breakfast, and a boxed lunch. Tour will depart at 9 a.m. and return to the Hyatt by approximately 2 p.m.

Cost: Free

Who Should Attend

This event is sponsored by The Walt Disney Company and is open to all participants. Space is extremely limited and will be filled on a first come, first served basis. We will confirm your participation and send additional details one week prior to the event. If you register and are no longer able to attend, please email BSR2017@meetgreen.com to cancel. Closed to press.

Sponsored by The Walt Disney Company

The Healthy Business Coalition is a collaboration among BSR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and leading companies to reimagine how business can invest in health and well-being along the value chain. Member companies can participate in this free collaboration to learn from peer companies and access the range of member resources and tools designed to help companies improve health outcomes via workplace practices, community partners, and products and services. This year’s convening will focus on building shared metrics for companies’ community health initiatives. We will share research findings, present a preliminary framework, and conduct a workshop to create alignment as we define the scope of the 2018 collaboration.

Who Should Attend.

Sustainability practitioners tasked with advancing the health and well-being of employees and communities. This event is open to corporate practitioners only. To register email egrande@bsr.org.

Companies are facing an increasingly uncertain external environment, where the media, government, civil society, and the general public are expressing concern about business ethics, values, and strategic direction. The rise of hyper-transparency necessitates stakeholder engagement approaches that are dynamic, responsive, and interactive. This half-day training will explore how an effective stakeholder engagement strategy can help companies manage risk, build trust, and identify and develop new opportunities. Participants will learn how to deploy BSR’s stakeholder engagement approach and explore the full potential of stakeholder engagement via interactive examples based on real-life case studies. (Lunch: Noon-1 p.m. Training: 1-4 p.m.)

Who Should Attend

Sustainability practitioners tasked with creating sustainability approaches that support business success. This event is open to corporate practitioners only. Consultants must be sponsored by a corporation and represent that corporation to attend. Unsure if these trainings are applicable to you? For questions, please contact us at conference@bsr.org.

Significant changes are underway in the world of sustainability reporting. Companies are grappling with an increasingly wide range of international disclosure standards and requirements, while still trying to report in ways that are resource-efficient and improve sustainability performance. This half-day interactive training will demonstrate how to evolve your sustainability reporting approach through insights on three themes that underpin successful reporting strategies: standards, comparability, and measurement. We will explore how various frameworks governing non-financial reporting complement each other and overlap, and we will review case studies that illustrate both the lessons learned over the past 25 years and the best practices for the future. Participants will take away a solid overview of sustainability reporting trends as well as practical insights to implement back at the office. (Lunch: Noon-1 p.m. Training: 1-4 p.m.)

Who Should Attend

Experienced practitioners seeking to evolve and invigorate their existing sustainability initiatives, while anticipating and responding to future trends. This event is open to corporate practitioners only. Consultants must be sponsored by a corporation and represent that corporation to attend. Unsure if these trainings are applicable to you? For questions, please contact us at conference@bsr.org.

In June, the U.S. administration announced its intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, which envisions a resilient world with warming held well below 2°C. Yet U.S. states, cities, and businesses are setting and implementing their own science-based emission reduction targets, and leading through collaboration and supply chain engagement to build a resilient, low-carbon economy following the Paris vision. Their climate action will have an opportunity to shine at the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit hosted by California Governor Brown. What about you? Are you still in?

Companies have a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable workers in their supply chains: migrants. Migrant workers are the most susceptible to poor working conditions and to exploitative and forced labor, among other infringements on human rights. The challenge of protecting their rights is compounded by the differing nature of migration across regions, from the internal migrants of Asia to the refugees and displaced persons of the Middle East. Companies must grapple with the issue at all levels of employment. This informative session will help participants tackle challenges to responsible practices around recruitment, good housing conditions, protection from violence and local backlash, education, and other timely matters.

The nature of work is changing very rapidly. Old models of lifelong employment via business and a predictable safety net provided by government are no longer assured in a new demographic, economic, and political environment. We see these trends most clearly in the rise of the “gig economy,” in which contingent workers (freelancers, independent contractors, consultants, or other outsourced and non-permanent workers) are hired on a temporary or part-time basis. These workers make up more than 90 percent of new job creation in European countries, and by 2020, it is estimated that more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce will be in contingent jobs. This candid discussion will explore how business is responding to these changes, looking to balance the benefits of more flexible working arrangements with certainty and protections for workers in this new world of work.

For the past half-century, the approach to transportation infrastructure—rail, road, air, and sea—has remained essentially the same. However, the convergence of technological innovation and an increase in needed infrastructure investment have created a unique opportunity to think differently. Our traditional road, rail, and airline systems could be replaced with something straight out of a science fiction movie. This cutting-edge conversation will explore how alternative high speed rail, driverless cars, the commercialization of space travel, drone delivery of packages, and other innovations could fundamentally change transportation and logistics as we know it, and the resulting sustainability impacts and benefits that could come with the systemic shift.

There is tremendous focus today on sustainable and impact investing and on the firms developing the analytics and making the investment decisions. But the real drivers behind the move toward more sustainable investing are the “asset owners”—those who actually own the money. Pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments are the owners of the vast majority of the world’s money. Therefore, these groups have become the hidden sustainability leaders. Participants in this session will get a deeper look into the quiet role these asset owners play, and how they can drive the sustainability agenda.

There is a wide range of research that shows brands can capture consumers’ hearts and minds in an incredibly powerful way. It’s also through brands that businesses can connect with their consumers around what they care about in their daily lives as well as drive brand loyalty or behaviors like healthy eating or recycling. But companies still struggling to fully integrate corporate sustainability into product development and marketing strategies are asking: What are some of the approaches and tools we can use? What lessons can we learn from other consumer companies? Join this session to get a first-hand look at BSR’s framework for integrating brands and sustainability and learn the do’s and don’ts of this rapidly emerging territory.

Violence against women is one of the world’s greatest social, economic, and public health problems, pervading the home, workplace, and community. Working to stop it is not only the right thing to do from a human and labor rights perspective—it is also the smart thing to do for workplace efficiency and profitability. This session will take an in-depth look at how businesses have responded to this complex challenge through preventive and remedial measures. Participants will also gain a greater understanding of what multistakeholder collaboration can do to move the needle on ending gender-based violence.

Rapid developments in artificial intelligence, big data analytics, blockchain, and the internet of things have the potential—and have already started—to have significant impact, both positive and negative, on human rights. The international human rights regime was designed for a very different world, and the speed, complexity, and extensive reach of these disruptive technologies present new challenges for companies wanting to meet their responsibility to respect human rights. Participants in this lively discussion will explore how to integrate human rights into the development and design of new technologies and whether new “human rights by design” approaches should be deployed.

The Paris Agreement set the world in motion for net-zero emissions by 2050 and its 188 climate plans all include this ground-breaking milestone. The emissions curve is already starting to bend, with global emissions holding steady over the past three years, even as economic growth increases—the challenge now is to accelerate this transition, which will require deep transformations. For the private sector, achieving net-zero emissions will challenge current modes of production, manufacturing, consumption, product design, and financing tools. Participants will leave this session with a better understanding of the risks they will face and opportunities to find innovative ways to be a leader in a low-carbon economy.

Will the global sustainability agenda survive in a “post-fact” world, where popular sentiment belies factual evidence of growing inequality and climate change? At a time when public trust in business, government, and the media lies at an all-time low, companies must find new ways to communicate about their most critical sustainability challenges. Participants in this candid dialogue will discover solutions to that challenge and will uncover the risks and opportunities for companies who are prepared to make the move toward transparency.

Boards should be regularly engaged in a company’s sustainability strategy and performance, but in practice, this can be challenging. This session will look into key dilemmas and questions, such as how to decide which sustainability issues are material enough to justify boardroom attention, how to integrate sustainability issues into the work of board committees, and how to ensure board members have the right expertise to evaluate important non-financial topics like climate change, human rights, and diversity. Participants will hear multiple perspectives on how to increase board engagement with your sustainability strategy.

Supply chains are digitizing, and the pace is accelerating. Companies are increasingly using new technologies to make their supply chains more efficient and cost effective, to cut out inventory and lead times, and to respond directly to consumer demands. But what about sustainability? In this session, we’ll explore the tech trends shaping supply chains and discuss how to ensure that sustainability doesn’t get left behind, along with what priorities and topics these technologies are best suited to impact and where there is a need for innovation. Participants will glean insights on opportunities to digitize sustainability information, how to use machine learning to gain more visibility into supply chains, and how to work with supply chain architects to incorporate sustainability into design, along with the internet of things and automation.

In the face of an estimated US$2.5 trillion annual funding gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN and a broad range of public- and private-sector actors are pursuing innovative financing solutions to social and environmental challenges. What are some of the innovative financing strategies that companies are employing to increase social impact and business value? This discussion will showcase examples to give participants the knowledge to deliver impact.

Building sustainability considerations into enterprise risk management frameworks can help integrate sustainability into core business strategy and operations, but traditional risk approaches are often poorly equipped to deal with the longer term and more indirect challenges presented by issues such as climate change, human rights, and inclusive business. They can also give the impression that sustainability is only about reducing harm and not driving positive change. This conversation will explore key debates around the best way to integrate, understand, and measure the core environmental, social, and governance issues facing companies today. Participants will leave knowing how companies can better understand and incorporate their sustainability efforts and what the role of risk management looks like.

From decreased cocoa production in West Africa, to reduced cotton production from drought in South Asia, to concerns over coffee yields from fluctuating weather patterns globally, key agricultural commodities are under stress due to climate change. Many companies understand how commodity supply availability impacts their ability to create products. However, many fail to realize how climate resilience can help mitigate risks, help maintain business success, and positively impact local communities. This discussion will take an in-depth look at how leading brands are implementing climate resilience strategies into their key-commodity supply chains.

Human trafficking and modern day slavery have become central issues on the business radar in recent years, not least with recent legislation in the U.K. and United States on the subject. These issues affect more than 100 million people each year and undermine human rights ranging from bodily security to freedom of movement and livelihood. Companies have a key role to play in tackling human trafficking, including a responsibility to ensure trafficking and slave-like conditions don’t exist within their own operations or supply chain. Participants in this important conversation will gain insight into the growing legal requirements around human trafficking; best practice in identifying, managing and remediating risk across operations; and examples of industrywide efforts to tackle root causes.

BSR has been unpacking the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since its 2014 Conference: from contributing to shaping the goals, to providing insights after their launch, to taking stock of achievements on the one-year anniversary of their arrival. This year, this impactful discourse will go one step further and take a deeper look into how to avoid “SDG-washing” by demonstrating positive societal benefits. Participants will hear how and why investors are focusing on the goals, learn best practices for monitoring and evaluation, and walk away with insights from companies setting their business targets to align with the SDGs.

Blockchain technology offers a powerful, exciting digital tool to fix sustainability problems in myriad fields such as supply chain traceability, migrant labor, and financial inclusion. At the same time, successful implementation of blockchain innovations will require companies and stakeholders to discover solutions to overcome some of the oldest barriers to advancing sustainability—collaboration, governance, standards-setting, and funding models, among others. In this interactive session, participants will learn about the potential for blockchain to transform sustainability, conduct mini-workshops to apply what they learn, and explore how technologists and sustainability leaders can collaborate to bring these solutions to life.

Climate change impacts, disruptive new business models, the combinatorial technology explosion, and a fraying social contract are just some of the changes profoundly reshaping the landscape for business and sustainability. In the face of such rapid and complex change, futures thinking offers a powerful tool to challenge current assumptions and create more resilient strategies. This highly interactive futures session will have participants explore the implications of some of the most disruptive trends while imagining how companies might turn sustainability challenges into business opportunities.

Business integrator, impact officer, or futurist? The role of the Chief Sustainability Officer can vary enormously, not least during a time of great change. More and more, CSOs are being asked to work across regions and functions to drive fundamental change in corporate strategy, value creation, and organizational culture. The CSO also has the potential to be a source of generating innovation that creates revenue and business opportunities. What skills and qualifications does the CSO of the future need? Is the ultimate goal of the CSO to work herself out of a job, or will there always be a need for the distinct form of leadership? This panel will explore the changing job description for the CSO and the many ways the CSO can drive transformational change that delivers business value and social impact.

Women’s empowerment is widely recognized as a critical pillar of sustainable global development, and evidence is mounting that investing in women can also improve business performance. In this session, we will outline how companies can credibly commit to the gender equality agenda, assess their current performance against the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), and build a robust women’s empowerment strategy. Participants will leave this session knowing how to identify how their company can leverage its full value chain, peers, and strategic partners to make the greatest contribution to women’s progress.

This session will explore why and how companies are incorporating inclusivity into the product design process to improve access and usability for underserved consumers, such as people living with disabilities and low-income customers in emerging markets. During this interactive dialogue, session participants will glean tactics on making the case internally for integrating inclusive design into core business practices and hear about lessons learned from industry practitioners who have successfully developed and launched inclusive design initiatives at their companies.

With seismic shifts occurring in American, European, and other global politics in varying ways, companies are trying to navigate how to engage with policy in order to lead on sustainability issues at a time of profound change. From public opposition to government policies, both in the media and in courts, to quieter efforts in influence and collaboration, there seems to be a multitude of options, but no clear roadmap. This timely discourse will provide guidance for participants to help them make decisions about where and how they can engage in the policy arena, both as individual companies and in collaboration with partners, to raise the voice of business on the crucial sustainability challenges of our time.

Agriculture accounts for more than 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the sectors that will be most profoundly altered by climate change. Some companies are setting significant goals and engaging their supply chains to help mitigate impacts, transition to resiliency, and drive climate-smart agriculture, and there’s a wave of innovation happening to minimize the impact of food production and rethink agriculture overall. This conversation will “dig in” to company approaches to row crops and livestock and offer opportunities to scale impacts.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to fundamentally change the way we work and live as algorithms begin to make more fundamental decisions for us. Like many new technologies, AI is the source of tremendous opportunities to support the public good, but also brings risks and new challenges. How do we build ethical, moral, and human values into the future of AI? What governance mechanisms must be in place to minimize AI’s potential harm and maximize its benefits? This intriguing discussion will explore how companies can incorporate ethics, inclusion, and transparency to protect against perpetuating biases or circumventing ethics in financial transactions, law enforcement, monopolizing behavior, and more.

This interactive session will explore how companies can refine their focus on climate change in challenging times, drawing on lessons from the automotive industry. In the face of regulatory uncertainty and rapidly-changing technology, the industry continues to evolve its approach to climate change. Industry manufacturers are increasingly committing to energy efficiency and renewable energy, advanced vehicle technology and alternative use models ranging from extended-range electric cars to autonomous ride-sharing. What are these companies’ strategies for dealing with climate change in times of change, and what can others learn from this experience?

Good health is a source of competitive advantage and a catalyst for innovation. Companies are increasingly viewing employee and community health and well-being as a strategic priority, and they are developing cross-sector partnerships to achieve health goals. In this dynamic discussion, participants will learn from leading companies how to make the business case for investing in employee and community health and what actions to take to benefit populations. Participants will also leave knowing the metrics that are most relevant and important to their programs.

The GRI Guidelines are now Standards. The SASB Provisional Standards are on their way to being Codified. The EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive is being implemented. The Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures has provided recommendations for how climate-related financial information should be included in mainstream financial filings. These developments raise the stakes when it comes to the quality and robustness of sustainability disclosures, and the importance of rigorous reporting processes. Is the sustainability profession up to the job? Participants in this conversation will learn what they can do to ensure that sustainability disclosures achieve the same level of accuracy, reliability, and quality as financial disclosures.

Companies need to be agile to stay competitive in today’s fast-changing world. Whether adopting automation, shifting to clean energy, or managing their global footprint, companies frequently have to make substantial adjustments to the size, skills, and geographic location of their workforce. Yet these transitions frequently come at a high cost to workers and to small communities who are left behind, as they struggle to find a secure economic future when their jobs disappear. Join this conversation to learn about how business can lead a just transition process in partnership with labor, local governments, and nonprofits that both helps build a more prosperous future for workers and communities affected by the change and bolsters the viability of businesses going forward.

The sustainability community has made tremendous progress over the past 25 years. But in many ways, it has also done itself a disservice. Business leaders lament the competing standards and frameworks, the goals of collecting data rather than creating impact, and the focus on perfection rather than performance improvement. As we look to build business leadership and drive greater change over the next 25 years and beyond, this interactive and introspective session will help participants examine the mistakes made and learn how the sustainability community can work together to support even more substantial progress moving forward.