Hult International Business School Sustainability 2026

• 18 Jul 2026

I’ve just finished teaching my first sustainability course at Hult International Business School in Dubai. And I absolutely loved it.

A few observations:

1. A classroom full of students from different countries, cultures and life experiences makes for a much richer learning environment.
2. Sustainability is still widely misunderstood and, in all honesty, probably needs a rebrand. Throughout the course, I encouraged students to think of it not as an environmental issue, but as one of the biggest economic and leadership challenges of our time. Most of our discussions focused on growth, finance, incentives, systems and the kind of future we are trying to build.
3. Give people a complex challenge and they will often surprise you. The quality of the final team projects was genuinely impressive.

After 25 years working with governments, investors and financial institutions, I am increasingly convinced that education is the most important lever we have for change. The people in these classrooms will soon be making decisions about capital allocation, business strategy, public policy and innovation … and so how they think about those decisions matters.

A huge thank you to the students for making it such an enjoyable experience. (And I hope this is the start of me doing a lot more teaching!)

Thank you also to my fantastic guest speakers Stephanie Asgill Nadia Boumeziout Ravina Mehta who helped bring it all to life with their experience and expertise, demonstrating how change comes about in real life.