TASS Principals' Breakfast with Lisa Sachs

Sustainability can be taught as a design question: what do we want the world we live in to be like, and what would it take to build it?

Students can start by imagining what they want a system to do, whether that means how people get around, where power and food come from, or what makes a city good to live in. From there, they can explore the technologies that could get them there and work out how the parts fit together. Many of these technologies, in energy, transport, communications and more, make things possible today that were not possible ten years ago.

Join Lisa Sachs of Columbia University for an exploration of how sustainability can be taught as the design of our future world, helping students see the systems around them as things people have built and can build differently, and draw on knowledge from every subject they study to do it.

About Our Keynote Speaker

Lisa Sachs is the Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and an Associate Professor at Columbia Climate School, where she also directs the M.S. in Climate Finance programme.

An internationally recognised expert in sustainable development, climate finance and sustainable investment, Lisa's work explores how policies, institutions and investment can support the transition to a more sustainable future.

Since joining CCSI in 2008, she has worked with governments, multilateral development banks, UN agencies, businesses and civil society organisations around the world to translate research into practical policy and investment reforms. Her work spans the energy transition, sustainable industrial policy, corporate climate action and natural resource governance.