# The Sustainability Profession Has Been Given a Mulligan. Let’s Take It.

1 Opinion April 8, 2026By Amy Skoczlas Cole

Trellis ![Amy Skoczlas Cole headshot](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/2026-05/asc_low_res_2024_1.jpg?itok=UG1gQARq)Corporate sustainability spent decades building the case that doing good and doing well aren’t in conflict. It largely won the argument and then fumbled the implementation. Now, sustainability is under fire. But with AI, economic volatility and geopolitics rewriting the rules of business all at once, we have a rare mulligan.

While sustainability is being sidelined and attacked, the underlying business imperatives have never been stronger. There’s a window of opportunity to re-imagine what corporate sustainability is, how it ought to be deployed across a company, what investors should be looking for, and how we integrate it into business school curriculums.

In practice, the discipline of corporate sustainability became focused on providing transparency and measurement of societal, human and ecological impacts of business activities. Because these metrics sat outside typical business KPIs and were framed in environmental (and sometimes, but not often enough) social impact measures rather than financial terms, sustainability remained niche. It hasn’t fulfilled the promise it holds to tap the transformative speed and scale of markets.

Read the full [*Trellis* article](https://trellis.net/article/the-sustainability-profession-has-been-given-a-mulligan-lets-take-it/).
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*Amy Skoczlas Cole is a Clinical Professor of Business and Society and Director of the Center for Sustainable Business.*

## More from Amy Skoczlas Cole

- [3 Things Sustainability Professionals Can’t Afford to Outsource to AI.](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/experience-stern/faculty-research/opinion/3-things-sustainability-professionals-cant-afford-outsource-ai)