Take your impact efforts further, faster.

The Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator is our eight-week signature program designed to help corporate responsibility, sustainability and social impact professionals become more powerful agents of change. Registration for our Fall 2024 cohort is now closed; join our waitlist to get notified when we open this program again!

Let’s face it: working in sustainable business ain’t easy.

So many of us are teetering on burnout from endless to-do lists and the frustration of constantly swimming upstream.

Why won’t people listen? Why aren’t things changing fast enough? If I just add more facts and figures to the business case, surely something will change?"

If these questions sound familiar, you’re not alone. And we’re here to help.

Our Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator is the culmination of over a decade of experience and research in impact-oriented change management. We’ve dug deep into the literature and spoken with dozens of sustainability practitioners to uncover the 21st-century skills and traits that enable effective leaders to thrive in their roles.

Over eight weeks, you’ll get the opportunity to not just learn these essential change skills and traits, but also apply, discuss and reflect on them within an intimate community of fellow practitioners. Think of it as your juiciest MBA course meets a supportive Mastermind peer coaching group, with Reconsidered’s signature accessibility and #realtalk baked in. You’ll leave each session energized with new insights as well as the resources and tools to apply them to your work.

Who This Course Is For

01

You are responsible for driving corporate responsibility, sustainability or social impact initiatives within an organization and are feeling stuck with your change making efforts.

02

You’re desperate to learn practical skills and techniques to influence without authority and help you navigate the sea of bull**** corporate politics.

03

You’re seeking a supportive community of fellow impact practitioners to learn and grow with.

After taking this course, you’ll have…

✔ Learned our “7 Habits of Highly Effective Change Agents”.

Each module focuses on a different change management skill, with a heavy focus on self-reflection and practical exercises to help you apply those skills in your own work.

✔ Created a practical action plan for taking forward a specific change effort.

We encourage each student to apply their learnings to a specific goal or milestone, which we'll track over the eight weeks of the course.

✔ Found community and kinship with others who are in the same boat.

You'll get a chance to learn from and grow with a safe, supportive community of fellow corporate responsibility practitioners.

✔ Unlocked how to bring greater confidence, joy and ease to your work.

Our focus on both professional and personal development will help you reconnect with your purpose and go from an overworked, spread-too-thin cat herder to a confident, skilled shepherd of sustainable change.

Course Fundamentals

→ 8 Sessions Over 8 Weeks
Our next cohort will run from October 22-December 10, 2024.

→ Live Weekly Zoom Sessions
We’ll come together for weekly one-hour virtual workshops on Tuesdays at 6pm CET / 5pm BT / 12pm ET / 9am PT.

→ Asynchronous Projects & Resources
Our live sessions are complemented with a robust set of pre-work, homework and bonus resources so you can dig deeper into the material on your own time.

→ Peer-To-Peer Learning
Through our online community platform on Circle, you’ll be able to exchange ideas, swap resources and build lasting relationships with your classmates.

Here’s a peek at what the eight weeks will look like…

  • During our first session, you’ll meet your classmates, get familiar with our syllabus and set your intentions for the weeks ahead. We’ll explore some of the fundamentals of change management and you’ll step away with more clarity on how to tackle a specific change challenge you’re grappling with.

  • We’ll walk through the components of a successful business case for corporate responsibility — both the expected and the unexpected — sharing practical how-to’s along with real examples from our toolkit. By the end of the module, you’ll have articulated a compelling and evidence-driven argument for your impact effort.

  • While building a business case is essential, it’s just the beginning. Getting buy-in for your impact effort also means understanding the needs, motivations and desires of your target audience. You will learn techniques for digging below the surface with your key stakeholders and emerge with a clear plan for stronger connections.

  • Power is often seen as a dirty word, but it’s a natural part of human existence. If we learn to play with power, it can be a powerful unlock — but misunderstood or feared, it can be our biggest stumbling block. We’ll do a power mapping of the dynamics surrounding your impact effort and come away with concrete ways to work with them.

  • The easiest way to strangle an impact effort is to keep it siloed within one person or team. Building coalitions is vital — and so is the ability to make participants feel trust, commitment and shared responsibility. This module will explore the art of holding space skillfully, whether that’s in-person, virtually or hybrid.

  • Who should a corporate sustainability practitioner have more in common with — a scientist or a salesman? Trick question: both. We need to be able to sell our impact effort as much as we’re able to explain its intricacies. In this module, we’ll learn practical tips for communicating persuasively to make our impact efforts irresistible.

  • Behind the CVs of your corporate responsibility heroes are loads of ideas that never got funding and pilots that failed to launch. Setbacks are inevitable in this space, making grit, tenacity and resilience essential skills. In this module, we’ll learn to build our resilience muscle and turn our (perceived) failures into rocket fuel.

  • All impact efforts benefit from a moment to reflect on progress and toast to successes — this course included! In this final module, we’ll recap our lessons learned, hear report-outs from our classmates and raise a glass to the journey to come.

Meet Your Instructor

Jessica Marati Radparvar
Founder & Lead Impact Strategist, Reconsidered

Over the past decade and a half, I have approached the sustainable business space from a number of different perspectives — as an ESG strategy and communications lead at a Fortune 300 company, as an academic, as a journalist and now as a consultant and entrepreneur. I understand the banging-your-head-against-the wall feeling that comes with trying to navigate bull*** corporate politics and competing interests in order to drive the change that so urgently needs to happen.

Through this experience, I’ve come to believe that we need to go beyond articulating the business case to change minds about the social and environmental issues of our time. We also need to build an emotional case, to facilitate the “aha” moments that can shift hearts and lead to real, lasting, sustainable change. Strong communications and community building play a role in this, but so does a connection with your own unique change agent capabilities and a strong understanding of what makes change “stick”. 

During this course, I'll share what I’ve learned about impact-oriented change management from interviews with dozens of corporate responsibility professionals, as well as over a decade of experience supporting the sustainable change efforts of organizations including Etsy, EILEEN FISHER, Mailchimp, Sir Kensington's, C&A, Tommy Hilfiger, H&M, J.Crew, Madewell, BESTSELLER, JACK & JONES, Fashion for Good, Textile Exchange and the UN Development Programme.

By the end of the course, I hope we can all be showing up in our work with more confidence, ease and joy, so we can accelerate the important work of driving bigger, bolder, more sustainable change within our organizations.

Let's do this! 💪

But don’t just take it from us…

  • "This course has delivered so much more than I could have asked for. I can't speak highly enough of the thoughtfulness of the Reconsidered team, who run a course that is equal parts people-centered and action-oriented. The course has pushed me in my high-level strategic thinking and interpersonal skills and has reinforced for me the power and necessity of community in true transformational work."

    Jacqueline L., Sustainability Engagement + Integration, Parfums Christian Dior

  • "I am so glad I took this course, it was thoughtfully developed and a perfect fit for industry professionals like myself looking for the structure and direction needed to lead change within an organization. I highly recommend this to anyone starting a new role, pivoting their careers, or looking to lead larger cross-functional teams."

    Tara S., Senior Director of Sustainability, Moose Knuckles Canada

  • "Before taking this course I struggled with strategically moving programs and initiatives within my organization for full buy in and success. This course really helped to equip me with new tools and a framework to be more intentional within my role and in my organization. It also offered a remarkable network of like minded individuals to challenge, encourage and support me through my course challenge and beyond."

    Melanie C., Director of Strategic Philanthropy, Fashion Institute of Technology

  • "This course has enabled me to develop the core skills required to lead change in this ever-developing industry. The timeline enables one to zoom out of a current role, evolve perspectives on core elements of change and develop the hard and soft skills necessary to be a successful change-maker. As someone who is fairly new to the sustainability space, I now feel confident I can effectively drive considered action in my respective field."

    Hollie S., Innovation Analyst, Fashion for Good

  • "The materials were so thoroughly constructed and valuable that I didn't rush through. I saved all course materials and applied them directly to my internal work. The materials are truly valuable and a great resource to lean back on as I move forward. I especially liked the extra reading provided, they really drive the concepts home!"

    Jessica D., Sustainability Manager for Materials, Product and Traceability, Tory Burch

  • "The sessions, the resources, and the community built through this course were much needed and so inspiring. If you're looking to grow, challenge yourself, and learn about leading change, I cannot recommend this course enough! Thank you for your thoughtful leadership."

    Lacey G., VP Content & Learning, Association of Corporate Citizenship Professionals

  • "Before taking this course, I had a tendency to second-guess my skills, experience and right to take up space. Now, I am much more confident in my ability to sell ideas and navigate challenging conversations, projects or meetings - both because of the new skills and resources I got through the program, but also because of the amazing community building me up."

    Meg M., Freelance Strategist and Project Manager

  • "I loved tuning into the Change Accelerator class every week. Reconsidered built very thoughtful, engaging and useful content for us, and I also met a great community of like-minded women in the process. I would HIGHLY recommend anyone in sustainability and social impact that wants to work on their soft skills for driving change to take this course!"

    Amy B., Sustainability Product and Materials Specialist, Mecho

  • "Thank you for pulling together such a thoughtfully curated course and a wonderful group of professionals seeking to create change."

    Jenny R.
    Director of Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility, AT&T

  • "A big big thank-you to Reconsidered for offering such a thoughtful, applicable and engaging course that left me feeling inspired and energized after each session. Highly recommend participating in this course!"

    Abbie S., Environmental Sustainability Waste Lead, UnitedHealth Group

  • "So grateful for this experience, as an academic and as a budding practitioner! Thank you to the entire Reconsidered team for the opportunity to learn and grow with this inaugural class of awesome changemakers."

    Paige T., Chief of Communications, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Ready to change your approach to change?

Registration for our Fall 2024 cohort is now closed; join our waitlist to get notified when we open this program again!

If the investment is a barrier…

We believe that learning and development is one of the best investments you can make in yourself, both personally and professionally, and we feel confident that our pricing aligns with the value you’ll get from this program (and then some!). If the tuition fee remains a barrier for you, here are a few options for getting support:

USE OUR TOOLKIT TO REQUEST EMPLOYER FUNDING. Many employers offer funding for employee learning and development from their team or HR budgets. Use our handy set of templates and tips to tap into it.

APPLY FOR A SCHOLARSHIP. To further our mission of increasing diversity in the sustainability profession, we are offering a limited number of 50% scholarships for applicants from BIPOC or other underrepresented backgrounds.

You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers…

  • Ideally, yes. We’ve designed this course to help professionals accelerate change within companies or organizations — whether they sit on a CSR/ESG/sustainability/DEIB team or are driving impact efforts from their role on another team. To fully benefit from the course content, you should be working in this capacity.

  • This course is suitable for all levels, from early career to Chief Sustainability Officer. Throughout the course, we’ll explore the skills you need to be an effective change agent, focusing on self-reflection and practical tools to help you harness these skills in your own work. In our view, the sooner you can upskill, the better!

  • If your company offers a learning and development budget, or sets aside budget for training and conferences, you should be able to apply for funding to cover the cost of this course. To help, we've created a printer-friendly overview of the course contents to help make the case for funding, which will be made available when the next cohort launches.

  • To advance diversity in the corporate responsibility profession, we offer a limited number of scholarships for applicants from BIPOC and other underrepresented backgrounds. Interested applicants should complete the scholarship form that will be made available when registration is open.

  • Nope! We ask all prospective students to fill out a brief application form to ensure the course is a good fit for your needs, but it is not a competitive application process where you are competing against other applicants for a space. Sign-ups are first-come, first-served until we fill up.

  • Beyond basic information like role and location, we ask you what you hope to get from the course and where you found out about it. And that's it! If you're applying for a scholarship, we ask you to complete a separate form and share more about your situation. All applications shouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes to complete.

  • Prepare to commit at least 3-5 hours per week for 8 weeks. It’ll be time well spent!

    Each week, that's:

    • 1 hour of live virtual workshops

    • 2-4 hours of (fun!) pre-work and homework

  • You won’t want to miss our live group sessions, where you’ll work collaboratively during breakouts and group discussions with your fellow classmates. But we understand that life happens, so in case that you need to skip a week, you’ll be able to access the class recording and slides via Circle.

  • We believe in the magic of people coming together! Each live class will feature various opportunities for you to work on exercises, share experiences and brainstorm around challenges in small groups and as a whole class. We'll also have an online community on Circle for conversations and resource-sharing.

  • No! We've also created The New Rules of Sustainability Communications, a self-paced online training designed to help sustainability professionals and communicators understand emerging green claims regulations and share sustainability initiatives with confidence.

    We also have a few more programs in the works. Sign up to our newsletter to get notified when new offerings go live.

  • If you realize early on that the course is not for you, you can apply for a refund within 48 hours of the first orientation session. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer refunds beyond this point.

  • Happy to help! Shoot us an email at team[at]reconsidered[dot]co and we'll get right back to you.

Want to bring the Sustainability Change Agent Accelerator to your company?

We’ve adapted this course into an eight-week virtual training program designed to help corporate responsibility teams and cross-functional working groups accelerate their initiatives and become more powerful agents of internal change. Not only will the program help upskill team members on essential change management skills, it will also bring your coalition closer together and provide a practical framework for driving projects forward with more confidence, joy and ease.