ESG Initiative News Archives

ESG Pioneer Suzanne Biegel Wants Impact Investors to ‘Get Off the Sidelines’

Wharton graduate Suzanne Biegel is a global leader in gender-smart investing who has influenced billions of dollars in capital. Biegel, 60, was recently diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and has been candid about her health. She said her illness has brought even sharper focus to her lifelong mission of gender equality and solutions to the climate crisis. This year, she and her husband, Daniel Maskit, invested $1 million to launch an endowment toward those goals. Biegel, a New Yorker who currently lives in London and has dual citizenship, spoke by phone to a reporter for the Wharton School about her career, her association with the school, and what she hopes will be a lasting legacy of change.…Read More

Leveraging ESG to Drive Health Impacts

Teodora and other students involved in the ESG Initiative posing smiling in business attire at the inaugural convening of the ESG Initiative.

Turner ESG Fellow and WIVA Investment Associate Teadora Dragic, C’25, explores how businesses can invest in the social determinants of health and the communities they operate in.…Read More

The Power of Shared Ownership: How Employee-Owned Businesses Achieve ESG Goals

Turner ESG Fellow Kristin Tingle, W ’23 C’23, researches how employee-owned businesses perform against environmental, social, governance, and financial metrics.…Read More

The Future of Food is Floating… So How do we Sell it?

The vertical farms at the Philadelphia Zoo, white shelving with green plants growing indoors

Turner ESG Fellow Marielle Kang, C’24, investigates how climate adaptive agricultural technologies can solve for some of our most complex environmental and social issues.…Read More

Research finds pensions struggle to determine metrics for ESG goals

A red watering can pours water on a stack of coins, a small green sprout, and a mount of dirt, in front of a green background.

(Outlet: Benefits Canada) There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for pension funds looking to use an environmental, social and governance lens in their investment approach, according to a new publication from the pension research council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.…Read More

Why we all need to think like Floridians Now

An orange outline of Florida is atop a black and white photo of silhouettes of people and trees, set on top of a blue blackground, with scratches over the top of the image.

(Outlet: The Washington Post) Climate disasters are only going to become more frequent, intense and expensive even with massive investments in adaptation. Insurers are now waking up to — and attempting to price in — these risks: “Climate risk is driving insurer decisions like never before,” writes Benjamin Keys, a professor of finance and real estate at the Wharton School.…Read More

New Majors and Concentrations at Wharton

Illustration of a bar graph on a yellow background, with five blue columns, a green column reading ESG and an orange column reading DEI.

(Outlet: The Pennsylvania Gazette) To better prepare business students entering or returning to a transforming workplace, the Wharton School announced the introduction of two new curricula designations to debut this fall semester. …Read More

ESG Investors Have Ethical Motives. They Also Expect to Outperform the Market.

Yellow flowers dot a field with wind turbines in the background in front of a cloudy blue sky.

(Outlet: The Wall Street Journal) Those with sizable stakes in ESG investments aren’t in it just to feel good about themselves, a study finds. A paper co-authored by researchers at the Wharton School suggests that many investors who own ESG stakes expect those investments to outperform the U.S. stock market.…Read More

CEOs Sharpen ESG Positions as Conservative Backlash Intensifies

Black and white photos of Nick Clegg, Glen Fogel, Michael Miebach, and Ted Decker in front of a blue semi circle with white letters in the center that say ESG.

(Outlet: Bloomberg Law) CEOs at Home Depot Inc, Booking Holdings Inc. and other executives found themselves clashing with investors this proxy season as companies faced an unprecedented level of pushback on ESG policies. Executives should be ready to prove the business case for their ESG policies, corporate governance experts say. “Start connecting the dots for the investors and that’s going to help everyone, and then it’s not a red or blue issue,” said Witold Henisz, vice dean and faculty director of the ESG Initiative at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Be prepared for these questions and always link it back to the business case, because that’s going to be less politically polarizing.”…Read More

Pension Funds and Sustainable Investment: Challenges and Opportunities

(Outlet: Plan Sponsor) A new book from the Pension Research Council is for anyone interested in understanding the historical context, current practices and future prospects of ESG investing in the pension industry, reports Olivia S. Mitchell, the executive director, Pension Research Council Director, Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.…Read More