ESG and CSR are evolving to guide sustainable and ethical practices that benefit more stakeholders.

From CSR to ESG, and any future mix of letters to come, the real question isn’t about the acronym but, instead, what these initiatives aim to achieve.

Despite some overlapping areas of focus, an organization’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives traditionally evolved as separate endeavors, each with a different scope. Increasingly, ESG has stolen the spotlight as climate change pressures, regulatory requirements and stakeholder demands have intensified the scrutiny over corporate sustainability.

Then and now

“When we initially discussed ESG topics, it was for an audience of investors and related to assessing risks that may not be disclosed within corporate financial statements,” explained , an adjunct instructor for the Leeds Executive Education Certificate in ESG Strategy.

“These risks had the potential to affect investments, even if they weren’t showing up in the company’s 10-K or other mandatory disclosures,” she said. For example, these could be human rights risks within a company’s supply chain or climate-related risks for sites located in areas prone to flooding as temperatures rise, she explained.

Meanwhile, CSR efforts were most often associated with voluntary activities related to corporate philanthropy, ethical labor practices, community development projects and other employee and community relations efforts.

Having served in several ESG-related roles, most recently at the global technology company Splunk, Forman has witnessed the rapid changes in CSR and ESG firsthand.

“Over the past few years, the terms have been conflated, and ESG expanded to include traditional CSR activities, especially as companies got better at measuring and disclosing social and environmental metrics,” she said.

Kathryn Wendell, the executive director of the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility at Leeds, agrees. “The major difference is that ESG entails consistency and accountability in reporting data that didn’t exist under the CSR framework.” As investors became increasingly aware that climate risk is financial risk, they wanted more accurate information.

“Wall Street investors are paying close attention to the so-called ‘Great Wealth Migration,’ when baby boomers will transfer trillions of dollars of wealth to younger generations who want to invest in more environmentally and socially responsible funds and companies.”

Kathryn Wendell, executive director of the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility

As a result, we have seen the emergence of global ESG frameworks (including SASB, GRI and TCFD), stringent ESG reporting laws in the EU, and the Securities and Exchange Commission rules for disclosing and managing climate-related risks, Wendell noted.

“Wall Street investors are paying close attention to the so-called ‘Great Wealth Migration,’” said Wendell, “when baby boomers will transfer trillions of dollars of wealth to younger generations who want to invest in more environmentally and socially responsible funds and companies.”

ESG backlash

As recently as 2022, we saw the term “ESG” flail amid negative press that became politically charged in the United States, said Forman. At the same time, regulators started cracking down on unsubstantiated corporate “environmentally friendly” claims (known as greenwashing). The upside, Forman believes, is that companies have a heightened focus on transparency and accountability, and they are transitioning to clearer terminology such as “responsible business.”

“The acronym was being tossed around haphazardly and slapped on investment funds to signify adherence to ethical, social and environmentally conscious business practices, but without due diligence,” she said. The pushback has allowed those in the field to refine their goals and priorities and make a clearer case as to how these strategies accelerate long-term growth, providing a strong business case unrelated to politics.

“A key point is that CSR, like ESG, is just good business if it’s planned and implemented strategically,” said Wendell. “By aligning social and environmental initiatives with a business objective, a company can aim to boost profits while contributing to prosperity.”

What comes next

CSR tended to be siloed in a separate department or combined with public policy, legal, or marketing and communications, Wendell noted. “ESG, or sustainability, has become much more integrated into the business.”

“It’s really important to understand how CSR and ESG roll up to the overall business and how CSR/ESG layers into strategy across multiple teams,” said Lauren Roadman, global community relations specialist at Ball Corporation.

“If a company succeeds as a responsible business, ultimately every job will, in some way, be tied to progressing the company’s purpose.”

Jennifer Forman, adjunct instructor for the Leeds Executive Education Certificate in ESG Strategy

The ESG learning landscape

At Leeds, ESG topics are being integrated across the curriculum. For example, Assistant Professor of Accounting Nikki Skinner developed three new ESG reporting classes that “are quite different from traditional accounting classes,” she said. “Because the ESG reporting environment is rapidly evolving, textbooks on the topic would quickly become outdated. So, we spend a lot of time in class discussing current events and the latest research into corporate sustainability.”

Leeds’ Executive Education replaced the CSR in its original program name to its current title of Certificate in ESG Strategy. The program is updated each semester and recently added topics including responsible supply chains, human rights and ethical AI.

“This certificate covers a broader range of topics than the more singularly focused credentials,” Forman said. “We have a comprehensive curriculum that goes beyond environmental sustainability and social impact. It also looks at human rights, policy influence, impact finance, AI ethics and ESG reporting.”

“Sustainability and ESG are such important cross-functional themes that I think we will see more relevant courses and degrees moving forward,” said Wendell.

The future of ESG

“We know now that people want to work for and buy from ethical companies—or at least companies that do as little harm as possible in their pursuit of profit,” said Forman. She noted that according to Forbes, by 2030, 58% of the global workforce will be millennials and Gen Z. “These generations have high expectations. Embedding purpose into a business model becomes a strong competitive advantage as companies compete for talent.”

“Sustainability is now a compliance requirement, whether that’s at the state, federal or international level,” said Rachel Bigby, the senior sustainability manager of U.S. operations at Frutura Produce and former co-lead, with Lauren Roadman, of a Certificate in ESG Strategy alumni group.

“We’re seeing a monumental global shift. Integration with financial reporting and added assurance requirements, coupled with the consolidation of ESG standards happening simultaneously, make for both a disruptive and hugely impactful moment for our field,” she added.

As regulatory oversight increases, Forman cautions there is a downside—“greenhushing”—the reverse of greenwashing. Fines and potential reputational damage are prompting some businesses to avoid publicly releasing sustainability initiatives. “There are certainly more lawyers involved when deciding how companies will share their ESG goals and progress,” Forman said. No matter what, she believes, transparency is crucial.

Kyle Copp, the operations and sustainability manager for the nonprofit Project Angel Heart, completed the ESG Strategy program to gain insights into creating a materiality assessment.

While Copp believes large corporations must lead the way in environmental efforts, he said nonprofits often demonstrate innovation and creativity in getting funding for ESG. “We don’t allow lack of funding to stop us from trying to find grants and making changes to the organization to make us as sustainable as possible. There is always something more you can be doing. Showing that commitment to sustainability shows your commitment to the community.”

How ESG + CSR
Equals Responsible Business

ESG

Environmental, social and governance initiatives measure, manage and report quantitative data to demonstrate that a company is meeting sustainability commitments and complying with regulatory standards. ESG emphasizes long-term financial value to investors and other stakeholders through such criteria as resource management, carbon emissions, responsible supply chains and corporate governance.

CSR

Rooted in philanthropy, corporate social responsibility initiatives have traditionally been voluntary, with qualitative measurements. CSR guides ethical business practices and policies related to corporate culture, mission and purpose. Focus areas include charitable donations, equity and inclusion, employee volunteering and community engagement.

Responsible business

ESG+CSR goals combine to foster environmental sustainability, ethical business and labor practices, and transparent stakeholder relations that align the business with positive societal outcomes.

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The winning team behind Foodwise uses data-driven insights to tackle the massive problem of restaurant food waste.

Byron Patten (�Ѳ�����’24), Hashirr Lukmahn (��dz��賧����’25), Emma Bonerb (Mgmt’24) and Jennifer Bundrant (Mgmt’23) (pictured above from left to right) made headlines when they won the New Venture Challenge’s first prize of $100,000 for Foodwise, an innovative software platform to help restaurants reduce food waste and operate more sustainably and profitably. Business at Leeds asked them to tell us more about Foodwise and what they’re cooking up next as they prep plans to launch their AI-based app at .

(A condensed version of this article appeared in the fall 2024 issue of Business at Leeds.)

What is Foodwise and the problem it aims to solve?

Jennifer: Foodwise takes the guesswork out of food planning and preparation with a unique restaurant management system powered by machine learning. Since restaurants prepare fresh, perishable food, much of it gets thrown away if it isn’t used. Our research shows that 45% of food waste* is due to inefficient food prep practices. Therefore, we developed an innovative solution that enhances both environmental sustainability and restaurant profitability. With Foodwise, restaurants can eliminate up to 1,000 pounds of waste per month and save over $2,300 in monthly food waste and labor costs.

Restaurants can easily access our software through a downloadable mobile application. The app connects with the restaurant’s POS system, and our machine learning algorithm analyzes and predicts daily sales demand by tracking trends and patterns around the restaurant’s location, such as weather, local events and holidays. This provides efficient and accurate prep plans. By tracking and analyzing trends over time, we help restaurants make more accurate decisions and improve operational efficiency. This allows restaurants to focus more on cooking and service, and most importantly, create less waste.

(*From the , based on a study analyzing commercial kitchens across the UK.)

How did you evolve your business plan to win the New Venture Challenge (NVC)?

Emma: We did not participate in the New Venture Class, we actually competed independently. Byron, Jennifer and I came up with our concept at the weeklong 2023 Sustainability Hackathon, hosted by our professor and mentor, Matt Brady. After winning first place there, we were highly encouraged to compete in the 2024 NVC. We laid down the initial foundation for our company during the hackathon, and this initial push really helped us catch the attention of mentors and other people who wanted to help us succeed in the NVC.

Byron: Even though we did not participate in the New Venture Launch class, professors and students from the course reached out to us to offer us support, and they even gave us the space to present our pitch leading up to the event for feedback and to shake off some of the nerves of presenting to such a large audience. We appreciated this support so much going into the event.

What are your plans for the winnings?

Hashirr: The current plan for the team is to use the funds to accelerate the development of the software by hiring data scientists and purchasing application programming interface product subscriptions, such as AWS, for hosting and database operations. Working with four pilot customers, once we have built a predictive model with viable accuracy, we’ll target other full-service restaurants in the Boulder and Denver areas.

How will you differentiate Foodwise from competitors?

Jennifer: An automated food preparation software has been quite novel in the restaurant industry. Typically, restaurants rely on minimal technology for creating food preparation lists, often depending on knowledge, experience and a whiteboard to outline the day’s prep. At best, some may use an Excel spreadsheet to forecast prep, which falls short of accounting for external sales demand and it lacks automation. As of now, the only food preparation software on the market is ClearCOGS. We plan to differentiate ourselves through strategic partnerships, cost-effective pricing and our application-based software that provides real-time reports.

What are some of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make so far?

Emma: The whole process has been a learning experience thus far, full of decisions with ambiguous outcomes. I would say some of the toughest decisions we made had to do with our final pitch at the Boulder Theater. In the few days leading up to the event, we received a lot of feedback from our mentors and other experienced individuals. Although all of the feedback was useful, a lot of it conflicted with other advice we were receiving. This got to be really overwhelming for us, and we were questioning everything about our planned pitch. As a team, we had to decide what we wanted to glean from each piece of feedback; we really had to trust our own intuition and follow what we believed was right for us. This was especially difficult for us because we were so new to the venture and startup world. But it ultimately paid off in the end.

Jennifer: I’m thrilled about Foodwise’s future. We are now becoming the real deal by establishing our company name and launching development. Soon, we will be able to test Foodwise with our pilot customers, gathering real, actionable data. This will provide the credibility needed to expand our customer network and achieve our goal of enhancing sustainability and profitability for restaurants.

Byron: I would also add that for the most part, our team never anticipated being business owners. We weren’t entrepreneur students or familiar with the startup world. On my end, I expected to jump straight into the marketing industry, which is what I studied. I never imagined myself being able to be an entrepreneur, like some of my fellow peers at CU Boulder. I just thought certain people were born with that ability.

This process has challenged us significantly to trust in our capabilities and knowledge to move forward versus looking to others to direct us. Overcoming that hurdle was huge, but it provided us with so much confidence to continue forward and navigate this entirely new world.

Foodwise’s Recipe for Success

It all started at the Sustainability Hackathon, where the Foodwise co-founders conceived and first pitched their idea. They never thought it would rocket them to compete in the New Venture Challenge (NVC), but when they started brainstorming about a company to mitigate food waste in restaurant inventory and distribution, a lightbulb went off. They realized the problem wasn’t only about inventory going bad, it had more to do with overprepping ingredients and the lack of an automated solution.

The team gained support from their mentor and professor Matt Brady, who founded the hackathon in 2021 to “create more opportunities for students to hone their entrepreneurial skills.”

Brady is an assistant teaching professor of organizational leadership and information analytics at Leeds. Although the hackathon is a technical competition, Brady noted that “the ultimate goal is to encourage students to bet on themselves and bring to the world what only they can.” The Foodwise project incorporated practical experience from two of Brady’s courses—Low-Code for Citizen Developers and Customer Success with Salesforce CRM. His classes emphasize agile development and a human-centered approach. He sees ethics and empathy as essential ingredients in business design and innovation.

Foodwise was among five finalists in the 2023 hackathon’s pool of 100 students, spanning five schools at CU. Competing in the NVC meant the Foodwise team had only four months to “transform their innovative platform into a full-fledged business plan with market research, a robust financial model, a fundraising plan and a go-to-market strategy,” said Brady.

“It was a high bar, but they were up to the challenge. Foodwise beat out 90 teams, including other finalist teams consisting of CU graduate students, CU professors and even seasoned executives,” added Brady.

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More students are launching purpose-driven startups than ever before—inspired by the networking connections, funding opportunities and experiential learning they’ve found at Leeds.

Tanner Nott (Mktg’24) planned to work in finance after graduation. But everything changed when she enrolled in Assistant Teaching Professor Brad Werner’s New Venture Creation class.

“A year ago, I totally thought I knew what I wanted to do,” she said. “Once I got in the startup space and had Brad as a professor, it completely changed my outlook and made me realize I had skills that I had never really been encouraged to put to use before.”

Nott decided to pursue an entrepreneurship certificate. Since graduating, she has continued working on Solii, the health food company she created in Werner’s class.

Like Nott, many recent college graduates have become entrepreneurs instead of pursuing nine-to-five jobs. A 2022 Intelligent.com survey of new college graduates found that 17% of respondents already ran their own businesses. An additional 16% of respondents “definitely” planned to start a business after graduation.

Founding a startup is becoming increasingly popular, and at Leeds, abundant resources empower students to launch their ideas.

Werner, who teaches in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Operations Division, said CU places a larger focus on entrepreneurship than when he started seven years ago.

“Bottom line is for our students, all you want to do is create options, give them the options to live whatever life they live,” he said. “I believe that developing this type of thinking helps them create more options.”

Both Leeds’ Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and CU’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative support budding entrepreneurs. The Deming Center hosts the Startups & Sandwiches lecture series, which allows students to network with professionals like the CEO of We Are Social and the founder of Illegal Pete’s. Meanwhile, the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative’s student-run Get Seed Funding program awards founders micro-grants of up to $500.

Winning opportunities

Another exciting opportunity is the New Venture Challenge (NVC), a campuswide competition that allows participants to pitch their ventures at the Boulder Theater. Stan Hickory, director of NVC and the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, noted that in 2024,  a sponsorship from venture capital investor Kickstart resulted in larger-than-ever prizes—$100,000 for first place and $30,000 for second place. (A team composed mostly of Leeds students won first place for their startup, Foodwise.)

Lissette Reynoso (MBA’25) created Mind- surf, an AI-driven teletherapy platform, in her home country of Mexico before enrolling at CU. Taking the New Venture Launch class helped her incorporate Mindsurf in the U.S. She later pitched it at NVC, and although she didn’t win funding, the experience was invaluable.

“It was great because I learned from them, and I got very interesting feedback, and I also got some connections,” she said. “All of that contributes to ... taking a step forward in your venture.”

One of those connections was Karen Crofton, who runs the College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Catalyze CU accelerator, where she gained supporters and funding for her business.

Like Reynoso, Jamie Saunders (MBA’24) found her way to the NVC through the New Venture Launch class. Coming from a career as an architect, she had the idea for a real estate venture that provides housing in the $200,000 to $300,000 price range. The class helped her and her team practice pitching their venture, AFFIX Communities, both to more conservative real estate investors and to more risk-tolerant venture capital investors.

“You’re talking to two very different mindsets, which was new to me, and I definitely needed a lot of practice to be able to speak both languages,” she said.

Their efforts paid off. AFFIX Communities placed fifth in the 2024 NVC, winning funds to purchase land for their prototype unit.

Seeds for a sustainable future

While student founders are finding new ways to forge a career, they are also finding new ways to effect change. Nott, for example, aims to use locally sourced and sustainable ingredients for Solii products. CU students can compete in the Sustainability Hackathon, developing and pitching solutions to sustainability issues. The 2023 Hackathon winner and 2024 NVC’s first-place winner, Foodwise, for example, conceived of an AI platform to curb restaurants’ food waste. Hickory calls this attention to sustainability a core tenet of CU—and Boulder more broadly.

“It’s part of the fabric of our whole system,” he said. “So therefore, when you’re thinking about starting a business, in the back of your mind is always that sustainability component. It’s just part of our ethos.”

Werner agrees that the entrepreneurship opportunities at CU Boulder and Leeds foster this ethos and enable students to shape the future.

“It’s in our students’ DNA to want to make a difference in the world,” Werner said. “And as an entrepreneur and a professor, that makes me feel great about the generation that’s moving in to take over.”

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As AI enters the classroom, Leeds faculty balance ethics with innovation.

From Google search results to social media, artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere—and it is here to stay. AI is the Wild West of technology, with few regulations and seemingly limitless applications.

“Since its release in November 2022, ChatGPT and similar language models have transformed nearly every aspect of business,” said Shannon Blankenship (Econ’98), Leeds Advisory Board member and principal at Deloitte Tax. “The technology has dramatically accelerated interest and investment in digital transformation from nearly every industry, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the internet became mainstream in the late 1990s.”

Like any new technology, AI has the potential to revolutionize the way we teach students in higher education, but there are also legitimate concerns about its accuracy and its ethicality. Still, preparing students for a world with AI means equipping them to use it, and at Leeds, faculty and staff are forging ahead to make this happen experientially and ethically.

“It’s going to change things dramatically,” said Dan Zhang, associate dean for research and academics. “I think people, once they realize the potential, are going to be so excited about it.”

Meghan Van Portfliet, teaching assistant professor in the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Division, plans to let students in her fall 2024 World of Business courses use ChatGPT for an in-class debate. Split into two teams, students will craft prompts for ChatGPT. Then, once the students feel they have created a prompt strong enough to generate a robust argument, ChatGPT will debate itself using the responses generated by the students’ prompts.

“Because it’s hands-on in the classroom, it’s really transparent about what they’re doing, and it gets them to engage with it in a way that’s not risky from a standpoint of ‘Are we assessing what we want to assess?’” Van Portfliet said.

Jeremiah Contreras, teaching assistant professor in accounting, received the 2024 David B. Balkin, Rosalind, and Chester Barnow Endowed Innovative Teaching Award in part due to his adoption of AI technology in the classroom. In his Ethics in Accounting class, he uses ChatGPT to create a custom chatbot based on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which students can then use to learn about the law. He has also used ChatGPT to help students create team contracts. The result is a more immersive approach to learning.

Zhang and David Kohnke, senior IT director at Leeds, are collaborating on an initiative to incorporate AI into not only the Leeds curriculum but also operations and research. One major aspect of this initiative is the implementation of an AI grant proposal process, which will award faculty stipends for implementing AI tools in their courses. On the research side, Zhang plans to organize training workshops and information exchange sessions so faculty can learn how others are using AI in research. He stressed that the goal of the initiative is to organize all areas of Leeds.

“The trick here is not to do this just in one class or as one person, but rather the charge is really to mobilize our faculty and staff,” Zhang said.

As head of the initiative’s education committee, Contreras is working to incorporate AI into the Business Core curriculum. Contreras is also developing training seminars to help other faculty integrate this new technology into their lessons. The goal, he says, is for all Business Core classes to teach students how AI is being used in industry and how to use it ethically.

“It’d be irresponsible not to address it,” Contreras says. “It would be like not showing students about Word and Excel when those first came into play.”

There are reasons for caution when using generative AI in education. As a spring 2023 report from Cornell University explains, introducing generative AI tools without setting guidelines can prevent students from developing foundational skills. If a student is asking ChatGPT to draft their essays, they are not practicing necessary critical thinking skills. To Contreras, this is one reason AI skills should be taught. He emphasizes that “generative AI is most effective as a partner” and that we should teach students that even when leveraging AI, final decisions and outcomes should remain our responsibilities.

An April report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology also notes that AI models can reproduce systemic and individual biases, particularly when the datasets used to train these models are themselves biased, lacking data from marginalized groups, for example.

But Van Portfliet, whose research centers on ethical business practices, notes that bias is not an issue limited to AI. “The issue of bias within AI is not any more dangerous or risky than the bias in what material we select,” she says. “Bias is everywhere, and it’s something we have to be conscious of and try to overcome.”

She added that when using AI, questioning AI output and being more intentional in the prompts used can counteract the bias in the technology.

When it comes to other ethical issues surrounding AI use in the classroom, such as students using ChatGPT to plagiarize, Van Portfliet believes students should be encouraged to use AI as a tool rather than a replacement for critical thinking. In some cases, instructors might need to rethink methods of assessment, such as essays, which can be fully completed by generative AI.

Overall, Contreras and Van Portfliet believe AI should be discussed openly with students, not demonized.

“There are right ways to use AI, and there are wrong ways to use AI,” Van Portfliet says. “It’s important to acknowledge that they both exist, but it’s not a black and white issue. It’s not right or wrong to use AI on assignments full stop. It’s right or wrong to use it on a specific assignment or in a specific way.”

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