Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator
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Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator
Cohort-based Course
An MBA-Meets-Mastermind designed to help corporate sustainability & social impact professionals become more powerful agents of change
Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator
Cohort-based Course
An MBA-Meets-Mastermind designed to help corporate sustainability & social impact professionals become more powerful agents of change
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Hosted by
Jessica Marati Radparvar
Founder, Reconsidered. Ex-ESG Strategy & Comms Exec. Princeton BA/NYU Stern MBA.
Jessica Marati Radparvar
Founder, Reconsidered. Ex-ESG Strategy & Comms Exec. Princeton BA/NYU Stern MBA.
Course overview
Take your corporate responsibility efforts further, faster
The rules have changed for corporate responsibility professionals. It’s no longer enough to make a strong business case for sustainability & social impact — now you need to transform not just minds, but also hearts. You need to be a powerful agent of change. We can help.
This course is for you if...
01
You're responsible for driving ESG, sustainability or social impact initiatives forward within your company or organization.
02
You’re desperate to learn practical skills and techniques to help you navigate the sea of bull**** corporate politics.
03
You’re seeking a supportive community of fellow corporate responsibility practitioners to learn and grow with.
After taking this course, you’ll have…
Learned our “7 habits of highly effective change agents”.
Each module focuses on a different change management skill, with a heavy focus on self-reflection and practical exercises to help you apply those skills in your own work.
Created a practical action plan for taking forward a specific change effort.
We encourage each student to apply their learnings to a specific goal or milestone, which we'll track over the eight weeks of the course.
Found community and kinship with others who are in the same boat.
You'll get a chance to learn from and grow with a safe, supportive community of fellow corporate responsibility practitioners.
Unlocked how to bring greater joy and ease to your work.
Our focus on both professional and personal development will help you reconnect with your purpose and go from an overworked, spread-too-thin cat herder to a confident, skilled shepherd of sustainable change.
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Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator
Meet Your Instructor
Jessica Marati Radparvar
Founder & Lead Impact Strategist, Reconsidered
Working in corporate responsibility can be incredibly fulfilling. It can also be profoundly difficult.
Having worked with hundreds of impact professionals over the years — and been in their shoes myself — I’ve seen so many of us veer toward burnout from the frustration and exhaustion of constantly swimming upstream.
Why won’t people listen? Why aren’t things changing fast enough? If I just add more facts and figures to the business case, surely something will change? If these questions sound familiar, you’re not alone.
Over the past decade, I have approached the sustainable business space from a number of different perspectives — as an ESG strategy and communications lead at a Fortune 300 company, as an academic, as a journalist and now as a consultant and entrepreneur. I understand the banging-your-head-against-the wall feeling that comes with trying to navigate bull*** corporate politics and competing interests in order to drive the change that so urgently needs to happen.
Through this experience, I’ve come to believe that we need to go beyond articulating the business case to change minds about the social and environmental issues of our time. We also need to build an emotional case, to facilitate the “aha” moments that can shift hearts and lead to real, lasting, sustainable change. Strong communications and community building play a role in this, but so does a connection with your own unique change agent capabilities and a strong understanding of what makes change “stick”.
During this course, I'll share what I’ve learned about impact-focused change management from interviews with dozens of corporate responsibility professionals, as well as over a decade of experience supporting the sustainable change efforts of organizations including Etsy, EILEEN FISHER, Mailchimp, Sir Kensington's (Unilever), C&A, Tommy Hilfiger (PVH), BESTSELLER, JACK & JONES, J.Crew, Fashion for Good, Textile Exchange and the UN Development Programme.
By the end of the course, I hope we can all be showing up in our work with more confidence, ease and joy, so we can accelerate the important work of driving bigger, bolder, more sustainable change within our organizations.
Let's do this! 💪
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Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator
In This Course We Will...
01
Get oriented.
In our two-hour orientation, you’ll meet your classmates, get familiar with our syllabus and set your intentions. We’ll explore some of the fundamentals of change management and you’ll step away with a concrete plan for a specific impact effort you’re feeling stuck on.
02
Build a business case.
We’ll walk through the components of a successful business case — both the expected and the unexpected. By the end of this module, you’ll have articulated a compelling business case for your impact effort.
03
Build an emotional case.
Building a strong business case is important, but we also need to build an emotional case for our impact efforts — one that speaks to not just minds but also hearts. This module will help you understand the needs, motivations and desires of your target audience, resulting in a plan for stronger connections with your key stakeholders.
04
Play with power.
Many people think power is a dirty word. But actually, it’s a natural part of human existence. If we learn to play with power, it can be a powerful unlock — but misunderstood or feared, it can be our biggest stumbling block. We’ll do a power mapping of the dynamics surrounding your impact effort and come away with concrete ways to work with them.
05
Hold space.
The easiest way to strangle an impact effort is to keep it siloed within one person or team. Building coalitions is vital — and so is the ability to make participants feel trust, commitment and shared responsibility. This module will explore the art of holding space skillfully, pulling from a range of methods.
06
Sell our ideas.
Who should a corporate sustainability practitioner have more in common with — a scientist or a salesman? Trick question: both. We need to be able to sell our impact effort as much as we’re able to explain its intricacies. In this module, we’ll learn practical tips for communicating persuasively to make our impact effort irresistible.
07
Build our resilience.
Behind the CVs of your corporate responsibility heroes are loads of ideas that never got funding and pilots that failed to launch. Setbacks are inevitable in this space, making grit, tenacity and resilience essential skills. In this module, we’ll learn to build our resilience muscle and turn our (perceived) failures into rocket fuel.
08
Celebrate wins.
All impact efforts benefit from a moment to reflect on progress and toast to successes — this course included! In this final module, we’ll recap our lessons learned, hear report-outs from our classmates and share how we can work together to take the course learnings even further.
Course Schedule
2-4 hours per week
🍂 Runs from October 5-November 23
8 Sessions Over 8 Weeks
Our first fall cohort will benefit from all that "back-to-school" energy.
👩🏻🏫 Live Zoom sessions every Wednesday
5-6:30pm CET/11am-12:30pm ET/8-9:30am PT
Each session is one hour, followed by 30 minutes of student "hot seat" challenge brainstorms and Q&A.
📚 Asynchronous projects and resources
1-3 hours per week
Our live sessions are complemented with a robust set of pre-work, homework and "extra credit" assignments so you can dig deeper on your own time.
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Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to work in corporate responsibility to participate?
Do I need to have a certain amount of experience?
Can I expense this course to my company?
Do you offer scholarships or other financial aid?
Is the application process competitive?
What does the application process involve?
What is the time commitment?
What happens if I can’t make a live session?
I'm especially interested in the community component of this course. What opportunities will I have to engage with my classmates?
Is this the only course you offer?
What’s the refund policy?
I still have more questions!
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Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator
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