Sustainable Enterprise Executive Education & Development (SEED)

The Sustainable Enterprise Executive Education and Development Program

 

PROGRAM OVERVIEW


Learn how to maximize resources while designing robust sustainability and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) programs that fuel productivity, innovation and profits within your organization. Discover your personal leadership style and begin your journey to become a transformative leader who ignites sustainable change that aligns with their values. Upon completion of the program, you will come away with tangible tools to drive growth, enhance reputation, reduce risks and cut costs looking through a sustainable enterprise lens. Unlike most executive-level programs of its kind, SEED combines the leadership expertise of faculty from the highly-ranked Villanova School of Business with the technical knowledge of professors in Villanova’s first-of-its-kind Sustainable Engineering program. You will learn from those who see the ESG landscape from all vantage points, providing you with a holistic and strategic advantage to thrive in today’s global environment.

Unlike most executive-level programs of its kind, SEED combines the leadership expertise of faculty from the highly-ranked Villanova School of Business with the technical knowledge of professors in Villanova’s first-of-its-kind Sustainable Engineering program. You will learn from those who see the ESG landscape from all vantage points, providing you with a holistic and strategic advantage to thrive in today’s global environment.

Updated 2/12/2024

WHO SHOULD ENROLL

Business Leaders

This program will benefit executives in significant leadership roles who are looking to enhance awareness and understanding of sustainability issues, and their impact on the organization. Directors, senior managers, and vice presidents with 5-10 years of work experience will come away from each course with insights to develop sustainable strategies.

Technical Professionals  

Mid-level professionals in technical and sustainability-focused roles who wish to strengthen their business acumen around this topic with the goal of creating value for their organization, will benefit from this program. Each course is designed to provide you with tangible takeaways and leadership skills to communicate with purpose in a rapidly changing environment.

Job Functions

Mid-level sustainability professionals and those in leadership positions including:

  • Engineering
  • Finance
  • Marketing
  • Operations
  • Procurement
  • Research and development
  • Strategy
  • Supply chain

KEY PROGRAM TAKEAWAYS

Bring real-world experiences into the course and learn to apply sustainable solutions to address business challenges. With participants across various sectors, the SEED program is designed to be interactive with built-in networking opportunities to connect with peers.

Strengthen Business Strategy

Learn to maximize resources to ensure funding for sustainability projects and ramp up your organization’s ESG programs purposefully. Students who complete the certificate will begin to develop a management action plan template to take back to their organization.

Develop a Sustainable Lens

Gain a competitive advantage by viewing four key business drivers through a sustainable lens: drive growth, enhance brand, cut costs and reduce risks. Develop a whole systems perspective to appreciate the interdependencies of social, technological, economic, environmental and political factors.

Advance your Leadership

Explore your values and how they align with your leadership style and organization’s sustainability strategy. Discover how to be a leader who ignites sustainable change in communities where they work and live.

 

COURSES AND DESCRIPTIONS

Consisting of a five mini-courses, this online program offers the flexibility to complete the entire series and earn a certificate or take courses individually depending on your professional development goals.

This program is non-credit, pass/fail. Upon successful completion of all five mini-courses, participants will receive a Certificate in Sustainable Value Creation and 3.75 CEUs (each individual course is equal to 0.75 CEUs).

Examine sustainability in light of current megatrends, value drivers and their business impacts. Gain insight into ESG strategy development and learn how to strengthen the business case for implementing sustainable practices to create value for your organization.

Gain an understanding of systems thinking tools to tackle key sustainability issues and examine frameworks around sustainable development and the circular economy. Examine the interconnections between sustainability, leadership and business and how to overcome typical blunders with the proven interventions to create opportunities.

Learn to design supply chain management and sourcing systems that utilize circular value chain principles to reduce footprint, improve resource utilization and accelerate a circular economy. Discover best practices for creating resilient value chains and how to apply them to your business to create sustainable value.

Gain a better understanding of assessing all ESG factors - environmental, social and governance - to map opportunities and risks, and to track performance using various reporting frameworks that are most widely implemented. Learn common approaches to management and communication of key strategic ESG indicators and how the investor community views are formed on company performance.

Connect your values and personal leadership style with how to effectively drive engagement with sustainability across your enterprise. Discover tangible tools and takeaways to influence sustainable change, integrate with all functional areas in your organization and create shared value. Understand how to persuasively communicate your sustainability story to all stakeholders, including your employees.

HOW IT WORKS

Each mini-course in the five-part series meets three times over a period of two weeks for two and a half hours per session. Sessions are held on Wednesday evenings at 6:00 PM EST. Participants will invest approximately 2-5 hours per week outside of class sessions on pre-readings and active reflections.

Format Online

Format

100% Online

model

Model

Live, Instructor Led

Cost

Cost per course

$999

FLEXIBLE COURSE OPTIONS

Individual Courses

Take courses in the series individually depending on your professional development areas of focus

$999 per course

OR

Earn a Certificate

Complete all five mini-courses in the series and earn a certificate in “Sustainable Value Creation”

$4495 per package (10% Discount)

Custom Programs
Interested in developing a custom program for your organization, contact Program Director, Victoria Minerva, for more information. Check out an article on our latest custom program with Boeing.

PROGRAM REGISTRATION

Price per course is $999. Attendees who wish to register for the entire series in advance will receive a package rate of $4495 (a savings of $500 over registering for each individual course) and earn a certificate in Sustainable Value Creation. Each session is held from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM EST. Upcoming Spring 2024 courses dates can be found below and Fall 2024 dates will be announced soon.

DATES AND DEADLINES

Course

Understanding Sustainability & Making its Business Case

Spring 2024 Series

Session Dates: 3/13, 3/20, 3/27
Registration Deadline: 3/1

Course

Tackling Sustainability Frameworks with a Systems Mindset

Spring 2024 Series

Session Dates: 4/3, 4/10, 4/17
Registration Deadline: 3/27

Course

Designing Resilient Value Chains

Spring 2024 Series

Session Dates: 4/24, 5/1, 5/8
Registration Deadline: 4/17

Course

Developing ESG Metrics and Reporting & Influencing the Investor

Spring 2024 Series

Session Dates: 5/15, 5/22, 5/29
Registration Deadline: 5/8

Course

Leaders as Drivers for Sustainability Engagement & Enterprise Transformation

Spring 2024 Series

Session Dates: 6/5, 6/12, 6/18*
Registration Deadline: 5/29
(*Observance of Juneteenth)

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVES

 Brian Bentrim, VP, Process Innovation at PennEngineering

“I came into the program without a lot of background on sustainability, so it has been very helpful for me in providing some groundwork and baseline knowledge of these important topics.” - Brian Bentrim, VP, Process Innovation at PennEngineering

Sheila Remes, Vice President of Environmental Sustainability at The Boeing Company

“The program elevated our cohort of cross-functional leaders’ knowledge around sustainability so they could apply these learnings back to their daily work.”
- Sheila Remes, Vice President of Environmental Sustainability at The Boeing Company

 

Mike Brawley, President & CEO at Kingsbury, Inc.

“A valuable aspect of this program is interacting with peer companies. Despite the differences in our products and services, we have similar business challenges and opportunities when it comes to sustainability.”  - Mike Brawley, President & CEO at Kingsbury, Inc.

MEET OUR FACULTY

Karl Schmidt

Karl Schmidt, MS – Faculty Lead

Expertise: Resilient Value Chain & Strategic Reporting

Schmidt develops and teaches graduate sustainability courses for the College of Engineering and Villanova School of Business’ MBA Program. He also serves as the director of the RISE Forum, which helps to advance member companies’ sustainability efforts through applied research and graduate student team projects. Prior to joining Villanova, Schmidt spent 28 years as an executive in environmental affairs, process excellence and global supply chain management at Johnson & Johnson..

Katie Iacocca

Kathleen Iacocca, PhD

Expertise: Supply Chain & Business Analytics

Dr. Iacocca is an Associate Professor of Management and Operations at the Villanova School of Business with her PhD in supply chain management. She has taught courses such as Introduction to Business Analytics, Advanced Analytics, Supply Chain Management, Operations Management and Management Science. Her research includes applications of these topics in the healthcare industry and optimization across the supply chain. Dr. Iacocca’s work has been featured in many notable business publications including the International Journal of Production Research and Socio-Economic Planning Sciences.

Kelsea Ballantyne

Kelsea Ballantyne, MBA, MS

Expertise: Sustainability, Manufacturing and Operations Management, Transformational Leadership, Social and Environmental Intraprenuership and Entrepreneurship, Design Thinking

Ballantyne draws on her diverse experiences running Social Enterprises in Kolkata, India, coordinating Africa's representation at CoP 17 - 18, and leading corporate-wide culture change across The Boeing Company. Throughout these experiences she has leaned on her passion to recognize and bring out the light and wholeness in all people, situations, and organizations. She has 20 years of experience leading organizations small and large through behavior change and transformation to make the world a more sustainable place.

Bill Lorenz

William Lorenz, MBA

Expertise: Sustainability Business & Leadership

Lorenz has more than 45 years of experience in the field of sustainable engineering. Currently he serves as the Director of the Sustainable Engineering Masters Program as well as a Professor of Practice. He previously worked for the Sun Oil Company, first in the refineries and then at the corporate level. During his tenure, he established new air, water, hazardous waste and audit programs that coincided with the development and implementation of the nation’s first sets of federal legislation. In 1984, Lorenz cofounded Environmental Resources Management and established the company's management consulting practice.

Therese DeVries Narzikul

Therese DeVries Narzikul, ’04 MBA, MSN, CRNP, EdD

Expertise: Systems Thinking & Transformational Systems Thinking & Transformational Leadership

Narzikul is a Professor of Practice at the College of Professional Studies teaching courses in systems thinking and leadership. She is also CEO of APN Strategies, a healthcare consulting and executive coaching company, where she helps clients use complexity to their advantage. She has more than 20 years as a strategic leader in both the payer and provider sectors of healthcare systems as well as in the non-profit, social enterprise space. In the governmental sector, Narzikul has worked to design new approaches that expose interdependencies with a commitment to improving outcomes.

Graham Sinclair, MBA

Graham Sinclair, ‘04 MBA

Expertise: ESG Investing & Sustainable Finance

Sinclair [@esgarchitect] is senior responsible investment strategist at Parametric. Previously he ran an ESG advisory boutique designing sustainable investment theses at the intersection of investment, strategy and sustainability. Client engagements in the global institutional investment ecosystem included AIG Global Investors Group, the UN Environment Programme for the Principles for Responsible Investment, the Gates Foundation, International Finance Corporation, Istanbul Stock Exchange, the China Africa Development Fund, and The John Templeton Foundation. Sinclair has professional certifications in investment and sustainability, teaches at Harvard Extension School and hosts the ESG and Coffee podcast.

Dave Stangis, MBA, MS

Dave Stangis, MBA, MS

Expertise: Corporate Responsibility Strategy & ESG Leadership

Stangis most recently served as Chief Sustainability Officer and VP Corporate Responsibility/Public Affairs at Campbell Soup Company. He currently advises leading companies on ESG, technology and reputation and resiliency strategies. Over the course of 20 years, Stangis led two very different Fortune 500 corporations—Intel and Campbell—from a standing start to clear and consistent world-class leadership in ESG, sustainability and social responsibility.

 

CONTACT PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Victoria Minerva

Victoria Minerva, ’13 MSSE, ’17 MBA

Director, Sustainable Enterprise Executive Education & Development (SEED) program

Passionate about making an impact in the field of sustainability , Minerva is excited to manage the SEED program which will help experienced professionals create value in their organizations by designing and incorporating sustainability practices into their business environments.

For more information or questions, please contact: victoria.minerva@villanova.edu

SEED UPDATES