Dame Polly Courtice is the Founder Director of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL); a globally influential Institute which has, for 30 years, developed leadership and solutions for a sustainable economy. CISL’s global leadership network of more than 9,000 individuals is now driving change on every continent. As well as being made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire ‘for her tremendous contribution to global sustainability leadership,’ Polly has also received numerous awards for her work including: the Stanford Bright Award in 2015 for her significant contributions to global sustainability; a Lifetime Achievement Award from Ethical Corporation’s annual Responsible Business Awards in 2016; and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Business Green for her work building a community of sustainability leaders over 30 years. Polly first began to engage seriously with the ideas behind sustainability and sustainable development in the late 80s/early 90s, around the time of the Brundtland Report and the first Earth Summit in Rio. She found that more and more companies were struggling to deal with public pressures to be more accountable for their environmental and social actions and impacts, ranging from human rights to climate change. The chance to tackle these issues in a more systematic way came in 1993 when the Prince of Wales invited the University of Cambridge to set up his Business & Sustainability Programme (BSP). The intention was to help the most senior leaders from business and government explore how to find a convergence between profitability and sustainability and integrate environmental and social considerations into their decision-making processes. The BSP, under Polly’s leadership, has just run its 100th seminar, and has expanded into many regions of the world, with a global alumni network of almost 3000 senior leaders. Alongside the BSP, CISL now runs more than 70 executive programmes around the world each year, as well as graduate programmes that attract thousands of executive learners each year from all over the world. In 2005 Polly worked with HRH the Prince of Wales to set up the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, which played an important role providing a private sector voice in support of climate policy – in particular supporting the UK government in delivering the world’s first Climate Change Act. The Group continues to work today in the UK and in the EU, calling for ambitious targets, regulations and frameworks that will enable business to play their part in the 2050 net zero journey. The model has since been replicated, with the support of CISL, in countries across the world from Chile to Japan. Since 2005 CISL has worked with groups of companies on other complex challenges like sustainable finance, plastic packaging and natural capital, leading to the creation of influential leadership groups: the Banking Environment Initiative, ClimateWise for the insurance sector, the Investment Leaders Group and the Natural Capital Impact Group. The complexity and interconnectedness of today’s global challenges requires new ways of working and thinking about solutions. CISL’s pioneering model of engaging business, finance and government, at the leadership level – all towards the goal of societal sustainability and over a sustained period, has shown how the abstract goal of systems change can be pursued and achieved in practice. Polly’s unwavering vision, leadership and commitment is the foundation for CISL’s work with business, government and finance sector to accelerate the transformation to a sustainable economy. Polly said: ‘Real, lasting and fundamental change in the way society operates and in the way we run our economies is the only way forward. Not a superficial, cosmetic change, but transformation at the system-level. More of the same simply isn’t enough. The science demands more. Society expects more. And our children and grandchildren have a right to expect us to do more.’