The highlights of the illuminem Leader's Cohort in 2026

🏆 Find out more about the Sustainability Leaders Cohort here

Most of what Chief Sustainability Officers know, they don’t say publicly. The true insights – what it actually takes to get a CFO to put a number on reputational risk, how you keep a circularity programme alive when the board calls it cannibalisation, what to do with a nature mandate and no budget to execute it – stays in private conversations behind closed doors.

illuminem's Sustainability Leaders Cohort brings those conversations into a structured setting: a carefully curated, invite-only peer group bringing together sustainability leaders on a journey to help each other succeed, through closed-door best-practice sharing, insights, and meaningful connections. Welcoming the CSOs of Carlsberg, Disney, Lego, Kering, Nestlè, Siemens, Walmart, and many more, the sessions are chaired by Gregg Meyer, CSO of Steve Madden, along with with one keynote expert supporting the discussion.

The sessions documented below cover the ground that has dominated the function in 2026: making the internal financial case for sustainability investment to your CEO and the Board, how to navigate a regulatory environment that has grown simultaneously more demanding and less predictable, and getting to grips with nature and biodiversity as the next frontier CSOs are being asked to own. Don't find yourself absent from the room where the most critical conversations in the industry happen.

Our sustainability leaders

• Antoine Kunsch (Director of Sustainability, Red Bull)
• Breanna Lujan (Head of Sustainability, The Body Shop)
• Cara Williams (Senior Partner & Head of Sustainability and ESG, Mercer)
• Davide Triacca (Director of Sustainability, Ferragamo)
• Deanna Bratter (Chief Sustainability Officer, Crocs)
• Eleen Ooi (Head of Sustainability, FrieslandCampina)
• Elena Dimichino (Chief Sustainability Officer, EssilorLuxottica)
• Emma Reid (Director of Sustainability, Sleep Country)
• Emma Keller (Head of Sustainability, Nestlé UK & Ireland)
• Facundo Armas (Sustainable Business Director, Globant)
• Giovanna Melandri (Independent Director, Kering)
• Gregg Meyer (Chief Sustainability Officer, Steve Madden)
• Jamie Richards (Director of ESG, Bansk Beauty)
• Jessica Weninger (Director of Sustainability, Reynolds Consumer Products)
• Julie Verdugo (Head of Sustainability and Social Impact, URBN)
• Karine Hillaireau (Director of Sustainable Transformation, Grant Thornton)
• Kate Wright (Director of Sustainability, DFS)
• Lamé Verre (Director of Net Zero, Crown Estate)
• Leonie Brühlmann (Head of Group Sustainability, Lindt & Sprüngli)
• Mario Abreu (Head of Group CSR and Sustainability, Ferrero)
• Maurizio Rigolio (Environmental Sustainability Head of Department, MAIRE)
• Monica López Ortuño (Head of ESG, EPAM)
• Jennifer Motles (Chief Sustainability Officer, Philip Morris International)
• Pablo Merino (ESG Manager, Denis Asia Pacific)
• Philine Kriependorf (Director of Sustainability, Kvadrat)
• Rachael Sherman (Director of Global Sustainability, Estée Lauder)
• Sam Bower (Head of Sustainability, Balfour Beatty)
• Sebastian Kaczynski (Chief Sustainability Officer, SAP Switzerland)
• Shimei Fan (Chief Sustainability Officer, Coty)
• Stefanie Cohen (Head of Sustainability, Swarovski)
• Subhagata Mukherjee (Global Head of Sustainability, Nokia)
• Tanguy Moulin-Fournier (Group Head of Procurement Sustainability, ENGIE)

Our upcoming Cohort keynote speakers

• 29 Oct. 15:00 CET | Erik Solheim, fmr. Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme
What is actually working in the environmental transition, and why there is still real reason for optimism? You will receive lessons from the intersection of business, policy and environmental action, in a candid, Chatham House-style discussion on what creates momentum and how to turn ambition into credible action. Expect takeaways you can apply inside your own organisation the following week.

• 1 Dec. 14:30 CET | Paul Polman, fmr. CEO of Unilever and mastermind of the Sustainable Living Plan
Why do companies that give more than they take outperform those that don't? The leader who doubled Unilever's revenues while halving its environmental footprint, and delivered a 290% return to shareholders, opens with an exclusive keynote. The session covers what net positive leadership demands of a CSO today, and how to make that case to a board.

• Date TBC | David Blood, fmr. CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management
How does capital actually think about sustainability? David spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs before co-founding one of the world's most respected sustainable investment firms, Generation Investment Management, and he brings the investor's view of what moves valuations and where long-term value is created. The session is a practical guide to speaking the language of CFOs and investors, and to turning sustainability performance into a case that finance teams will fund.

•  Date TBC | Marco Lambertini, fmr. Director General of WWF International
Nature is landing on the CSOs' desks, often with a mandate and little budget. Marco Lambertini walks through what "nature positive" means in operational terms: how to set credible targets, which metrics matter for an effective strategy and communications, and where to start when your supply chain touches dozens of ecosystems. Expect a clear roadmap from someone who has shaped the global nature agenda from the inside.

•  Date TBC | Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International
How do you give the "S" in your ESG strategy the same rigour as the "E"? From the helm of the world's largest homebuilding non-profit, Jonathan Reckford shares exclusively in this session how you can mobilise employees and partners at scale, measure social outcomes credibly, and build partnerships that strengthen your licence to operate.

• Date TBC | Doris Honold, Director of UniCredit
Sustainability is increasingly a question of risk. Having managed risk at the top of global banks for over 25 years, Doris Honold brings an insider's view of how the world of finance assesses climate exposure, what makes a green label credible, and how to position your company for better access to sustainable finance. Join for a rare chance to see your organisation the way financial markets do, and return to your board with a lender's-eye view of your own climate risk.

Our past sessions

Rethinking the future of corporate sustainability

To discuss the latest trends in corporate sustainability, the Sustainability Leaders Cohort welcomed none other than Georg Kell, Founder of the UN Global Compact - the initiative that today guides more than 20,000 companies worldwide on responsible business. The room welcomed 35+ top CSOs from Bosch, Capital One, Colgate-Palmolive, Disney, LEGO, Nestlé, Siemens, The Crown Estate, Walmart, and many more. Behind closed doors, one message stood out: the business case for sustainability remains, but the profession has lost the economic narrative needed to win over CEOs, CFOs and boards.

Georg Kell opened with one of the session’s most striking ideas that no CSO should afford to miss: the post-2030 sustainability architecture may look far less like an extension of the SDGs than many companies expect, with the next UN leadership potentially set to move in a different direction. For CSOs still embedding the SDGs into long-term targets, reporting and strategy, the more important question is no longer whether the framework changes, but how radically the rules of reference could change with it.

That shift also changes where CSOs should look for the next signal. Georg Kell argued that investors and markets could move before politics does, meaning regulation may no longer be the best indicator of where pressure will emerge next. The implication was sharp: do not wait for the next rule. Watch where capital, insurance, input costs and investor expectations are already repricing risk. Those signals may reveal tomorrow’s sustainability priorities before regulators do.

And once the focus moves from compliance to material business risk, or even business opportunities, the role of data changes too. Georg pointed to using data to test portfolio materiality and identifying where exposure is genuinely significant. For a CSO, the question becomes: which five indicators would I actually put in front of my CEO? Peer benchmarks across emissions, energy, water, biodiversity, controversies and transition readiness, all metrics available across illuminem Data Hub’s 300+ KPIs, help turn sustainability data from a reporting exercise into a management tool.

The business case for sustainability

The dominant shift observed by our CSOs was that boards have stopped treating sustainability spend as self-justifying. The ask now is the same as any other capital allocation: show the maths. For most CSOs, that is a skills gap as much as a communications problem, because the return on even the hardest initiatives is a risk avoided rather than a revenue line.

The most useful reframe that emerged was to stop positioning sustainability as a values argument and start positioning it as risk intelligence. The framing that landed with one CEO – "be the firefighter, let us help you think about building the kitchen up again" – worked because it shifted the CSO from moral advocate to strategic partner.

On the subject of deadstock, our CSOs discussed the internal resistance to circularity over fears of cannibalisation. What incited action in one case was reframing deadstock as reputational exposure: "we are in trouble if the media picks up on this." In that case, the deadstock was donated to design students, leading to overall greater PR value.

On sustainable products, an A/B study shared in the session found 10% higher purchase intent for a sustainable variant at the same price point. The moment prices diverge, the advantage disappears, but at parity the preference is measurable and consistent.

The session's closing line, from a fashion CSO: "You can't convince everyone and you shouldn't." Knowing which stakeholders to deprioritise is itself a strategic decision.

Navigating regulatory fragmentation

In a deep dive pervaded by the themes of regulation uncertainty and fragmentation, our CSOs expressed how delays, rollbacks and uneven timelines from CSRD, ESPR, UK SRS, California rules have created planning ambiguity and risk of duplicated work across regions. The result, as one CSO put it, is duplicated work across regions and genuine uncertainty about where to invest compliance resources. One practical response that gained traction: pick the strictest applicable standard (in several cases, CSRD) and use it as a single global baseline. It reduces governance overhead and makes supplier requests consistent.

The Cohort also discussed the how reporting is consuming resources that used to go into actual decarbonisation work. One CSO noted a peer organisation with 200 people working on reporting rather than on the mission. The session's practical answer was to treat regulatory delays as a preparation window and use the time to get systems ready so implementation is cheaper when enforcement arrives.

On the topic of opening doors in getting CEOs to embrace CSR, two reframes worked for some of our CSOs: position sustainability as modernisation and operational resilience rather than ideology; and treat Digital Product Passports as a commerce and consumer engagement opportunity, which brought marketing and e-commerce teams into the funding conversation.

Operationalising nature and biodiversity

Nature and biodiversity have arrived on the CSO agenda faster than most organisations have been able to build the internal capacity to act on them. This session was largely about closing that gap practically.

The starting point most found useful: materiality mapping – identifying where in operations and supply chain the actual dependencies and exposures sit, using geospatial tools to prioritise the highest-risk sites. Staged targets (near-term site actions, medium-term supply chain interventions, longer-term nature-positive outcomes) give the work a structure that boards can track.

On metrics, illuminem's Nature100 study proved a valuable point of reference. Drawing on 100,000 business nature datapoints, it suggests eight comparable KPIs that can function as corporate benchmarks: land use change, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, waste generation, and four pollutant emissions categories, each quantified by their potential contribution to global species loss.

The note of caution that closed the session: biodiversity credits are attracting significant attention but should be treated as part of a broader strategy, not a substitute for direct action. The organisations that have moved furthest are those that secured board understanding early, defined internal ownership clearly, and allocated budget incrementally rather than waiting for a comprehensive mandate.