Corporate Knights ranks the UBC Sauder MBA program amongst the world’s best for sustainability education

Corporate Knights business magazine has released the 2023 Better World MBA ranking, their annual ranking of business schools with the most sustainability-focused MBA programs, and UBC Sauder has ranked 16th in the world, representing the school’s highest placement in the coveted ranking since 2016.

UBC Sauder's full-time MBA program curriculum, offered through the Robert H. Lee Graduate School, exemplifies the school’s core principle of a global reputation for excellence in innovation and social impact. The program reinforces sustainability, ethics and responsible leadership, and the faculty encourage students to incorporate these pillars as key components of the business decision-making process.

“We are really excited about the momentum the school has around sustainability and climate,” says Dr. Kate White, Senior Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Sustainability. “We have created an MBA Career Track, launched a new Centre for Climate and Business Solutions, created a new Tenure Track Faculty position in Business and Climate Change, and included the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in our graduate and undergraduate course syllabi. The Corporate Knights placement is a really nice recognition of our work in sustainability.”

Key examples of UBC Sauder’s commitment to sustainability education can be found with the school’s many climate-centric business resources and programs:

• The recently launched MBA Climate Career Track: with climate-focused courses and future-minded career-development opportunities, UBC Sauder's new MBA Climate Career Track will give future leaders the tools to understand, report on, and reduce climate impacts, and drive positive change in the world.
• Also newly launched is UBC Sauder’s Centre for Climate and Business Solutions (CCBS), a dynamic hub of research, innovation, and collaboration to catalyze a new era of climate-conscious business practices. The CCBS is where sustainable ambition meets pragmatic action, ground-breaking ideas are transformed into tangible results, global leaders unite to shape a better tomorrow, and emerging talents discover purpose in advancing solutions for a climate-positive future.
• UBC Sauder’s Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) also houses CDL Climate, a not-for-profit incubator that pairs visionary founders with established business leaders. The CDL Climate Stream provides high impact contributions to climate challenges by unlocking the potential of cutting-edge research and accelerating its path to commercialization.

To determine the ranking, Corporate Knights evaluated 209 global MBAs, including all of the 2023 Financial Times top 100 Global MBA programs, and every program that made the 2021 Top 40 in the Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking. The full methodology for the rankings can be viewed here.  

• For more on the MBA Climate Career Track and the leader of its creation Dr. Justin Bull, read the UBC Today story here.
• For more on the Centre for Climate and Business Solutions and its new Executive Director Kookai Chaimahawong, read the feature story here.
• For more on UBC Sauder’s focus on climate literacy as a whole, with insights from Dr. Kate White, Senior Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Sustainability and Dr. Justin Bull, Academic Director of the Centre for Climate and Business Solutions, read the feature story here.