Experience Stern | Faculty & Research

If sustainability has gone the way of rom-com movies, my undergraduate students at New York University’s Stern School of Business haven’t gotten the memo. This spring, my sustainability strategy elective was significantly oversubscribed, and the class excelled — delivering thoughtful materiality assessments and strategic advice for 10 companies across diverse sectors, while continually questioning and improving the status quo.

Yet, the job and internship markets remain challenging, and media headlines warn of entry-level roles for all fields vanishing into the jaws of artificial intelligence. Advising students to pursue sustainability reporting feels fraught amid political volatility, regulatory uncertainty and backsliding. Sustainability communication roles aren’t much easier, as companies anxiously comb disclosures for risky acronyms and loaded terms, worried about both greenwashing and greenhushing.

It’s also not lost on me that most of my students in my class are women, surrounded on campus by peers aiming for the well-trodden paths of investment banking and consulting. I want to offer them a different vision of work and success — but one that doesn’t consign talented young people to being underpaid or sidelined.

Read the full Trellis article.

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Alison Taylor is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU Stern.