ESG Initiative News

Teaching award: innovating business schools push towards a brighter future

A smokestack with smoke billowing into the sky with a green wall in front of it.

(Outlet: Financial Times) By combining hands-on experience with tools such as VR headsets and AI, schools are improving their teaching on sustainability and the climate crisis. Wharton professors Arthur van Benthem and Mirko Heinle’s course “Climate and Financial Markets” has been Highly Commended by the Financial Times Responsible Business Education Awards for Best Innovative Recent Teaching Materials on Sustainability or Climate Change Adaptation with a Special Focus on Finance.…Read More

How One Investment Banker Went from Doing Good to Doing Even Better

Aarthi Sowrirajan poses for a professional headhot, smiling into the camera in a black blouse and grey blazer in front of a grey backdrop.

Aarthi Sowrirajan did everything right. She earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 2005, interned at a leading financial services provider, and got a full-time job in the structured products group at Deutsche Bank in New York City. She was living the dream, but something kept nagging at her deep inside. Read on to learn how her Wharton MBA not only helped open doors, it opened her eyes to the possibility of “doing well by doing good,” the guiding principle of companies operating in the social impact space.…Read More

Meet Wharton’s MBA Class Of 2025

Tiles of headshots with the Poets & Quants logo in the center and a banner that reads "class of 2025"

(Outlet: Poets & Quants) Wharton encourages MBAs to get off the sidelines and tackle big issues like poverty ad climate change using commercial tools. That makes the program all the more exciting for leaders like Nicolaj Siggelkow, Wharton’s vice dean. “There is a realization that the biggest problems that society is facing will not be solved without businesses getting involved,” Siggelkow told P&Q in 2022. “Businesses have to be part of the solution, otherwise, we’re not going to get where we need to be – be it environmental, equity and inclusion, or otherwise. Wharton takes that really seriously and is making it part of our mission: To really create leaders that have a positive impact on the world.”…Read More

Fifth national climate assessment emphasizes mitigation

Oil refinery is shown with a graph line superimposed over it.

(Outlet: Penn Today) The latest National Climate Assessment highlights historic emissions reductions and outlines new guidance for achieving a net-zero emissions pathway. The report includes key contributions by co-author Sanya Carley, now the faculty co-director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Energy Policy and City Planning at Penn—the mitigation chapter authors combined their expertise in earth science, economics, and climate modeling to outline options for greater emissions mitigation.…Read More

Senate committee investigating Florida’s state-backed home insurance company as private insurers flee

An aerial picture taken on September 30, 2022 shows the only access to the Matlacha neighborhood destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida.

(Outlet: CNN Business) The US Senate Budget Committee is launching an investigation into whether Florida’s state-backed home and property insurance company has enough money in the bank to withstand future disasters, as scientists warn warming oceans and sea level rise are making storms more destructive. Fears about a possible federal bailout are not unfounded, Benjamin Keys, a real estate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told CNN. “They absolutely have a reason to be concerned; the exposure is enormous,” Keys said. “1.3 million of the riskiest policies in the riskiest state, full stop. It’s correlated exposure – if a hurricane hits your house, it hits my house.”…Read More