Environmental, Social, Governance

As sustainability issues become increasingly pressing, consumers are demanding more responsibility, transparency, and accountability from organizations. By weaving sustainability efforts into the fabric of your everyday goals and situating them at the forefront of value creation, your organization can successfully adapt to this demanding and rapidly changing landscape. This certificate program will prepare you to evaluate your organization’s current sustainability efforts, identify gaps and opportunities, and create unique solutions to drive organizational value. You will gain insights into your organization’s competitive approach by assessing environmental and social sustainability throughout the life cycle of a product or service and leveraging research-based frameworks and methodologies to ideate solutions that turn sustainability problems into market opportunities. You will also explore how aligning stakeholder relationships enhances your ability to achieve profitability and sustainability goals. With these strategies and best practices, you will be uniquely positioned to create a sustainability implementation plan tailored to your organization’s specific needs. For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.

As sustainability becomes a key component of today’s decision-making processes, corporations must respond by developing initiatives and making business decisions that illustrate their commitment to sustainable business activity. This certificate program is designed to help you think about sustainability as a vital part of your business strategy. In this certificate, you will frame this challenge and assess your company’s sustainability practices relative to industry standards. You will use this initial assessment to inform implementation of sustainability initiatives, and develop a future-focused sustainability strategy that capitalizes on market opportunities. To begin, you will critically examine the sustainability-based interactions among corporate entities, their peers, regulators, the public, and other stakeholders in order to identify opportunities for improving the outcomes of these interactions. You will then assess the ways that corporations manage reputational risk by communicating their sustainability efforts and propose initiatives that bolster your organization’s sustainability credentials. Finally, you will focus on building a business case by proposing specific ways your company can capitalize on sustainable opportunities. By the end of this certificate program, you will be well equipped to lead your teams toward sustainable solutions that enable your organization to thrive.

Climate change is one of the most complex challenges facing society today, impacting science, energy, economics, policy, and public decision making. In this certificate program, you will begin by evaluating the evidence behind Earth’s changing climate, including the forces that stabilize and disrupt the climate system, the role of carbon and associated downstream impacts, and the ways scientific consensus is established, challenged, and misrepresented in public discourse. From there, you’ll navigate the uncertainty inherent to climate projections when they are adapted regionally. You’ll then examine how climate science, economic reasoning, and international cooperation interact to guide assessment, mitigation, and coordinated decision making for addressing climate challenges. As the program progresses, you will examine the evolution of energy systems, the challenges of designing energy transitions at scale, and the ways personal, corporate, municipal, and policy-level efforts can mobilize collective climate impact. Across the five courses, this program emphasizes systems thinking, critical evaluation of evidence, and the practical connections among climate science, energy transition, governance, and implementation. By the end of this program, you’ll be able to interpret climate information more confidently, assess climate and energy solutions more critically, and understand how informed, coordinated efforts can support a more resilient and sustainable future.

In an "equitable community," everyone is included in the full benefits of society. Advancing equitable community change depends on understanding racial, social, spatial, economic, and environmental systems and their biases while, at the same time, developing innovative solutions to seemingly intractable social problems. This certificate program delves into the knowledge and skills needed for individuals like you, working in all sectors of society, to manage development and changes in ways that build more equitable, just, and sustainable communities. Ultimately, you will discover the deep structural and cultural roots of today’s pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges then work to counteract them in the communities you serve. Throughout this six-course certificate, you will explore and plan social action research and apply course concepts, data, and information to propose policy initiatives and recruitment plans aimed at bringing diverse people and communities together for equitable change. For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.

Historic buildings play an important role in preserving cultural identity and strengthening communities, but they must also meet evolving environmental, economic, and functional demands. Sustainable preservation provides a framework for balancing these priorities, helping professionals extend the life of existing buildings while reducing environmental impact and supporting long-term community goals. In this certificate program, you will build a practical foundation in both historic preservation and sustainability. You'll learn how to evaluate existing buildings through the lens of embodied energy, assess sustainable retrofit strategies, and adapt historic structures to meet changing community needs. Along the way, you'll examine the economic factors that influence preservation projects, evaluate funding and market considerations, and explore how preservation principles can be incorporated into planning policy and practice. By the end of the program, you will be prepared to evaluate preservation opportunities, develop sustainable rehabilitation strategies, and advocate for preservation practices that create lasting environmental, economic, and community value. While this program is valuable for an international audience, it frequently references U.S. laws, regulations, and planning practices related to the built environment. You will have six months to complete the program, with the flexibility to progress at your own pace and finish sooner if your schedule allows.

In today’s volatile world, analyzing and anticipating geopolitical risks is critical for professionals who operate multinational businesses, assess global investments, or do work related to foreign policy. This certificate program will help you hone your analysis skills so that you can more easily navigate the complex dynamics of the current international landscape. The program begins with an introduction to international relations theory to frame your approach to global challenges. You will then have the opportunity to craft compelling policy briefs that can be used to guide decision makers. You will also explore country risk evaluation, gaining the knowledge to synthesize political, economic, and social factors into actionable reports. Finally, you’ll harness the power of strategic foresight to anticipate future scenarios by backcasting. By the program’s conclusion, you’ll possess a unique toolkit of theoretical knowledge, practical analysis skills, and future-oriented thinking, equipping you to provide essential insights to stakeholders. For the best experience in this program, it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.

Policy advocacy is a powerful tool for driving change. In this certificate program, you’ll gain the knowledge and skills needed to promote your causes effectively and create a lasting impact. Throughout the program, you’ll build a comprehensive toolkit for community engagement, including crafting compelling mission statements, conducting in-depth research, and developing actionable advocacy plans. You’ll explore how to analyze stakeholders, tailor messages for various audiences, and navigate the legislative process — from drafting impactful legislation to creating concise fact sheets. You’ll also harness the power of narrative and storytelling to engage with the media and amplify your message. In the final course, you’ll discover the essentials for running a successful political campaign, exploring practical strategies for planning and execution. By the end of this program, you will emerge with the strategic insights and hands-on experience to champion your cause and influence policy at local, state, and national levels. The courses in this certificate program are required to be completed in the order that they appear.

Exploring your personal take on the ethics of business and fostering standards for your organization can improve decision making, fortify team culture, and enable you to avoid potential issues and dysfunctions in various business settings. This certificate program will give you the tools to apply the ethics of business to your organization. Throughout the program, you will break down the role ethics play in society and decision making. By using ethical reasoning, you will be able to anticipate issues that arise in business settings and create plans for avoiding them. You will then determine how to recognize psychological factors in yourself and others that interfere with making good ethical decisions and apply strategies to mitigate them. The program will culminate in the discussion of research-based blockers that negatively affect work culture ethics at the personal and organizational levels. You will examine responsive strategies for the most common social and organizational factors that exacerbate the human tendency to overlook or misapply ethical analysis. By the end of the program, you’ll be prepared to foster the development of a responsible organizational culture and address potential legal and ethical issues, supporting your team in today’s complex and ever-changing business landscape. For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.

An organization is only as good as its culture—and building that culture is not only a role for HR, it’s every manager’s and employee’s responsibility. As today’s headlines prove, an inclusive work environment is not just a nice-to-have, it can make or break a company. You can help make your organization a more supportive and engaging place to work by understanding the perceptual, institutional, and psychological processes that impact the ways people interact with each other. Starting with a look at employee engagement, then identifying interventions surrounding unconscious bias and specific diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies, this program is appropriate for anyone committed to going beyond mere compliance to build a truly aware and inclusive work culture. For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear. This program includes two years of free access to the HR Symposium and Leadership Symposium! These highly interactive virtual events span multiple days and explore today's most pressing topics. Symposium offers exclusive opportunities to engage in real-time discussions with your eCornell community, applying insights from your courses to real-world scenarios. Through reflections and small-group discussions, you'll deepen your learning, broaden your perspective, and expand your professional network. Symposium events are held throughout the year, providing ongoing opportunities to stay engaged, gain fresh perspectives, and strengthen your skills. Once enrolled, you'll receive access to the Symposium networking site and details about upcoming sessions. You can participate in as many as you'd like to make the most of your experience, through attendance is not required to complete your program.

An organization is only as good as its culture—and building that culture frequently begins with the HR department. Diversity, equity, and inclusion have evolved from a focus on compliance to a strategic-level cultural effort with a demonstrated positive impact on a company’s performance and business results. Today such a culture is much more than a legal or moral requirement; it’s also a competitive advantage. This specialized HR certificate program provides a deep foundation for you to identify, develop, and support HR initiatives for diversity and inclusion that can improve not only your organization’s culture but its success. The program includes four core courses, complemented by your choice of two elective courses, allowing you to tailor your learning to your specific interests and career goals. This program includes two years of free access to the HR Symposium! These highly interactive virtual events span multiple days and explore today’s most pressing topics. Symposium offers exclusive opportunities to engage in real-time discussions with your eCornell community, applying insights from your courses to real-world scenarios. Through reflections and small-group discussions, you’ll deepen your learning, broaden your perspective, and expand your professional network. Symposium events are held throughout the year, providing ongoing opportunities to stay engaged, gain fresh perspectives, and strengthen your skills. Once enrolled, you’ll receive access to the Symposium networking sites and details about upcoming sessions. You can participate in as many as you’d like to make the most of your experience, though attendance is not required to complete your program.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice efforts are becoming increasingly important in every industry and organization. This push toward diversity encompasses more than just creating an inclusive climate for the employees that are already in your workplace; your organization’s hiring process, from recruitment through to retention and employee success, is an opportunity to create a more inclusive and diverse workforce. Approaching hiring with an inclusion-centered framework that mitigates bias can result in hiring more qualified people with marginalized identities across all roles in your organization and ensuring that those potential employees feel like they belong in your organization even before their first day at work. This certificate will explore the three stages of hiring — building talent pools, adopting selection practices, and onboarding for employee engagement — detailing methods of inclusion for each stage. By refocusing your hiring practices on inclusion, you can meet and exceed your organization’s DEI goals then sustain them over time. The courses in this certificate program are required to be completed in the order that they appear. This program includes two years of free access to the HR Symposium and Leadership Symposium! These highly interactive virtual events span multiple days and explore today's most pressing topics. Symposium offers exclusive opportunities to engage in real-time discussions with your eCornell community, applying insights from your courses to real-world scenarios. Through reflections and small-group discussions, you'll deepen your learning, broaden your perspective, and expand your professional network. Symposium events are held throughout the year, providing ongoing opportunities to stay engaged, gain fresh perspectives, and strengthen your skills. Once enrolled, you'll receive access to the Symposium networking site and details about upcoming sessions. You can participate in as many as you'd like to make the most of your experience, through attendance is not required to complete your program.

The nonprofit world is changing fast. While competition for donors and clients heats up, organizations are being asked to focus on results. Because of this, demand is high in the nonprofit sector for financial leadership. The Financial Success for Nonprofits Certificate prepares nonprofit leaders and aspiring leaders to focus on mission while achieving financial sustainability. Whether you're working at a well-established nonprofit or a startup, Professor Grasso’s experience as a nonprofit leader prepares you to use financial statements and ratios, establish board governance and strategic leadership, raise funds and generate alternative revenue sources, and make strategic programmatic changes. For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.

This certificate program is designed for management and union representatives new to labor relations who need to learn the basics. The program focuses on two key aspects of labor relations: negotiating an agreement (collective bargaining) and operating within an agreement (contract administration). Throughout the courses, you will have the opportunity to practice and apply key skills to your own organization’s issues and dynamics. You will focus on establishing a foundation in collective bargaining within the union environment and then take a close look at contract negotiation, including how to cost out a contract during tense and fast-moving negotiations. The last two courses provide a time-tested, comprehensive method to address workplace conflict, from the grievance through arbitration. The courses in this certificate program are required to be completed in the order that they appear. This program includes two full years of free access to the HR Symposium! These highly interactive virtual events span multiple days and explore today’s most pressing topics. Symposium offers exclusive opportunities to engage in real-time discussions with your eCornell community, applying insights from your courses to real-world scenarios. Through reflections and small-group discussions, you’ll deepen your learning, broaden your perspective, and expand your professional network. Symposium events are held throughout the year, providing ongoing opportunities to stay engaged, gain fresh perspectives, and strengthen your skills. Once enrolled, you’ll receive access to the Symposium networking site and details about upcoming sessions. You can participate in as many as you’d like to make the most of your experience, though attendance is not required to complete your program.

Organizations and their leaders have diverse obligations: business, social, and moral obligations to customers, suppliers, employees, investors, regulators, and the public. To live up to these obligations, leaders need systems that cascade responsibility throughout the organization and hold everyone accountable. In this certificate program, you will discover how to diagnose common accountability problems and lead deliberations to best address them. You will focus on improving several different facets of performance, from improving margins, capacity investment and use, efficiency, coordination, and motivation to the increasingly important obligations that organizations owe to their employees, their communities, and the environment. You’ll have the chance to discuss the new opportunities and challenges that come with the burgeoning “Fourth Industrial Revolution”: engaging employees, assigning obligations to artificially intelligent agents while holding them accountable, and accountability with independent contractors and remote employees. Overall, you will gain understanding through a comprehensive framework that allows you to utilize the power of accountability systems wherever your organization is falling short of their obligations. To be successful in this program, you will need to be familiar with the basics of financial accounting (applying credits and debits to appropriate accounts) and have fundamental Excel skills (writing simple formulas and creating basic graphs). The courses in this certificate program are required to be completed in the order that they appear.

What is a leader? We often think of a leader as someone who is in charge of people, products, or processes. But what about the person on the team who everyone looks to when the boss is gone or when advice is needed? That person is a leader too. Leaders can have formal power or responsibilities, or they can simply be a person of influence. Regardless of role, research indicates that effective, successful leaders are those with strong character and the ability to lead with courage, humility, and compassion. Fortunately, character is not something we are just “born with.” Character is something that can be developed over time. In this program, you will have the opportunity to explore seven dimensions of leadership that are associated with strong character through case studies and examples. You will also complete self-reflection exercises, assessments, and activities to initiate and continue the work of developing these character dimensions. In addition to developing your leadership character, this certificate provides you with skills needed to enhance your credibility as a leader and consider the power of both perception and experience as you build a culture of service leadership. Ultimately, you will take the first steps on a lifetime journey of developing the character that will enable you to be the best leader you can be. This program includes two years of free access to Symposium! These events feature several days of live, highly participatory virtual Zoom sessions with Cornell faculty and experts to explore the most pressing leadership topics. Symposium events are held several times throughout the year. Once enrolled in your program, you will receive information about upcoming events. Throughout the year, you may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete the certificate program. NOTE: This program includes a copy of Amy Newman's ebook, Building Leadership Character (California: Sage, 2019). You will receive instructions about how to access the ebook when you join the course. If you prefer to purchase a hard copy of the book we suggest you do so before the start of the course. The book is available for purchase online or at other retailers. The courses in this certificate program are required to be completed in the order that they appear.

This five-course certificate program examines the issues facing women in leadership positions and offers strategies for handling them. Professor Deborah Streeter balances academic research regarding social norms and expectations with practical strategies for operating effectively within the workplace. She discusses how to outmaneuver the "double bind" dilemma, showing strong leadership qualities without being penalized for it. Professor Streeter discusses how women can best negotiate in the workplace, ways to effectively provide both positive and negative feedback and how they can strengthen their emotional intelligence to stand out as a leader among both men and women. This certificate positions women who are in leadership positions to recognize when there is a gender dimension at work and how they can outstrategize gender bias and their own habits to achieve better results. For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear. This program includes two years of free access to Symposium! These events feature several days of live, highly participatory virtual Zoom sessions with Cornell faculty and experts to explore the most pressing leadership topics. Symposium events are held several times throughout the year. Once enrolled in your program, you will receive information about upcoming events. Throughout the year, you may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete the certificate program. The content of this certificate program is focused on developing and supporting women in leadership. This program is open to students of all sexes and gender identities.

Build a culture that positions your team and organization to deliver customer service excellence, every time.

In many organizations, men hold more executive positions and board seats than similarly qualified women. Even organizations that bring on women and men at the same rate still demonstrate a gender imbalance at the highest levels of leadership because the power structures and gender dynamics in place often favor and reward the contributions of men over women. In this environment, even the most experienced and capable women struggle against gender bias and established power dynamics on their way to the top. In this certificate, you will learn strategies and techniques to skillfully level the playing field as you work to attain higher levels of leadership. You’ll begin with an evaluation of the gender bias and power dynamics present in your organizations and develop strategies to overcome their limiting effects. Next, you will assess and refine the way you present yourself as an executive. Leaders often have to negotiate on behalf of themselves, their teams, and their institutions, so students will explore ways to prepare for the challenges women face in negotiations and adapt their negotiation style to the context of a given situation. Given that strong professional networks are often required to advance careers to the highest level, you will create a plan to fully develop your own networks while navigating the potential traps of gender and power dynamics. Finally, you will peek behind the boardroom door to identify the key competencies needed for board membership and explore the various - and sometimes unlikely - pathways women follow to the boardroom. This program includes two years of free access to Symposium! These events feature several days of live, highly participatory virtual Zoom sessions with Cornell faculty and experts to explore the most pressing leadership topics. Symposium events are held several times throughout the year. Once enrolled in your program, you will receive information about upcoming events. Throughout the year, you may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete the certificate program. For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear. The content of this certificate program is focused on developing and supporting women in leadership. This program is open to students of all sexes and gender identities.

From the hiring process to privacy and compensation, employment law is a critical component of the relationship between organizations and workers. Contrary to popular belief, however, the law does not have all the answers to today’s tricky business situations. This certificate program draws attention both to the aspects of the law that involve specific legal protections and constraints, as well as to the zones of discretion within which employers and employees can act. You will start in the first course by developing a solid foundation in U.S. employment law: what you need to know and what you need to keep in mind in your business in order to avoid litigation. Subsequent courses cover specific areas of interest in the workplace, such as employee privacy, wages and benefits, anti-discrimination policies, and intellectual property rights. In each of these courses, you will begin with the basic outlines of the most important laws that relate to the topic under discussion. After you gain a baseline understanding, you’ll go beyond it to explore the discretionary areas within the law. This program gives you the opportunity to study real-world cases which challenged and in some cases divided the courts. You’ll read the cases, compare your assessments with those of your peers, then read the judges’ decisions. Throughout the program, projects will give you the opportunity to explore how each topic area relates to your own workplace. The courses in this certificate program are required to be completed in the order that they appear. The information provided in this course should not be used as a substitute for legal advice.

The device you are using to read this page was created by people in the global workforce. Do you know from which country it originated? Or which international labor agreements, if any, affect the workers who made it? What about the company that sells the product; does it promise fair treatment of those workers? In this certificate program, you will examine labor practices in the global supply chain and consider how those practices vary and evolve. First, you’ll examine the regulatory framework for global labor relations, including the impact of national treaties on workers. To accomplish this, you’ll explore labor models in your own country as well as other relevant countries, including where your organization does business. You will then explore industry self-regulation, such as Nike’s Labor Standards, and consider the realities of auditing overseas partners. You’ll also identify the risks of and barriers to transparency along with the ways that reliable data can be made available to consumers and industry partners. You’ll have six months to complete the required elements for this certificate program, but this flexible approach allows you to finish sooner based on your schedule.