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Business of Sustainability

  • Color photograph of USC Marshall professor Shon Hiatt and another color photograph of a windfarm.

BUSINESS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is arguably the greatest challenge facing humanity today. All business stakeholders -- employees and customers as well as shareholders, not-for-profit watchdogs as well as governments – are holding leaders ever more accountable for their organization’s impact on the climate, the environment and humanity. Instead of being seen as part of the problem, private sector innovation is increasingly viewed as the key to rising to the sustainability challenge, attracting both capital and talent to exciting new business opportunities.

At Marshall, our students are more mission-driven and purpose-oriented than ever before and our faculty are increasingly focusing their teaching and research efforts on sustainability, from social entrepreneurship to ethical leadership, from the transition to renewable energy to ESG accounting. The school is well-placed to help develop the next generation of business leaders who can help ensure a long and bright future for everyone and everything on our planet.

Business of Sustainability

"Identifying scalable solutions and deploying them successfully is not at all easy. Students have to grapple with highly unstructured problems in new contexts and cultures."

— Sriram Dasu, Professor of Data Sciences and Operations

"What makes this field of study even more unique at USC is that we have a university-wide sustainability initiative which keeps sustainability on the top of mind for all of us. Every student, staff and faculty at USC has an opportunity to make a big impact."

— Smrity Randhawa

Assistant Dean Leventhal Undergraduate Programs

Associate Professor of Clinical Accounting

PROGRAMS + COURSES

Marshall offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to understanding and addressing the complex sustainability challenges facing businesses today and the impact of companies on the environment and society. Elective courses provide students with tools and knowledge needed to become leaders in creating a more sustainable future.

  • MS Social Entrepreneurship (MSSE)

    MS Social Entrepreneurship (MSSE)

    The Master of Science in Social Entrepreneurship offers students a unique combination of business entrepreneurship skills delivered within the context of achieving both social and financial missions.

    The courses focus entirely on the business aspects of social entrepreneurship including feasibility, planning, marketing, management, finance and execution. Social, environmental and health issues are integrated into the readings, cases, teaching, guest lectures, exercises and assignments. The program also includes a for-credit practical capstone project in which students have the option to develop a business plan for a new social enterprise.

    MORE MS Social Entrepreneurship (MSSE)
  • Graduate Certificate in Sustainability and Business

    Graduate Certificate in Sustainability and Business

    Business is increasingly involved in social and environmental issues. On the one hand, government and civil society are exerting increasing pressure on the business sector to help address the world’s pressing social and environmental sustainability challenges. On the other hand, a growing number of businesses are seeking to respond proactively to these challenges. This program prepares students to help shape solutions to social and environmental sustainability challenges, both from within and from outside the business sector.

    The program was designed with several audiences in mind: current Marshall graduate students already strong on the business side, current graduate students outside Marshall who may have strength on the sustainability side but want more strength on the business side, and individuals not yet enrolled but eager to deepen their understanding of the field.

    MORE Graduate Certificate in Sustainability and Business
  • USC Sustainability Course Finder
    Experiential + Applied Learning

    USC Sustainability Course Finder

    United Nations Member States developed the 17 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGs) IN 2015. The 17 SDGs are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They address the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice. To help students who want to engage in addressing these challenges, the USC SUSTAINABILITY COURSE FINDER illustrates a mapping between some USC and Marshall courses and SDGs.

CO-CURRICULAR PROGRAMMING

INSIGHT + ANALYSIS

NEWS + EVENTS

FACULTY

  • Paul S. Adler

    Paul S. Adler
    • Harold Quinton Chair of Business Policy
    • Professor of Management and Organization, Sociology, and Environmental Studies

    Paul S. Adler is Professor of Management and Organization, of Sociology, and of Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California. He holds the Marshall Business School's Harold Quinton Chair in Business Policy. He began his education in Australia and moved to France in 1974, where he received his doctorate in Economics and Management while working as a Research Economist for the French government. He came to the USA in 1981, and before arriving at USC in 1991, he was affiliated with the Brookings Institution, Columbia University, Harvard Business School, and Stanford's School of Engineering.

  • Christopher Gerald Bresnahan

    Christopher Gerald Bresnahan
    • Associate Professor of Clinical Management and Organization

    Dr. Christopher Bresnahan is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Management and Organization department at the Marshall School of Business. Dr. Bresnahan teaches at the undergraduate and graduate level. His courses focus on organizational behavior, leadership, and understanding individual differences. His research interests focus on individual differences in the workplace.

  • Tom Chang

    Tom Chang
    • Associate Professor of Finance and Business Economics

    Tom Chang is an associate professor of Finance and Business Economics at the Marshall School of Business and a research fellow at both the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and the Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research. He received a BS in Physics (1998) and a PhD in economics (2009), both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research focuses on better understanding individual decision-making and its implications for firm behavior.

  • Colin Coggins

    Colin Coggins
    • Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship

    Colin has deep experience as a commercial executive leader, best-selling author, and keynote speaker, known for his unique and proven approach to scaling revenue generation by cultivating sales IQ across entire organizations, prioritizing a commercial mindset cross-functionally. He has held senior leadership roles at several emerging technology companies, including Bitium, Mobile Roadie, and more recently as the Chief Commercial Officer at Fabric, and the SVP/GM at Chegg. After Bitium was acquired by Google, Colin took on a Chief Revenue Officer role, while also becoming a sales advisor to startups, an entrepreneur-in-residence at Techstars, and a lead mentor at Pharrell Williams' Black Ambition.