6 Reasons To Study A Graduate Degree In Sustainability Transformation

 

If you’re looking for a graduate degree that will help you create change and play an active role in integrating sustainability in business, an MSc in Sustainability Transformation might be the programme for you. 

A graduate degree in sustainability transformation will equip you with the knowledge, tools and network to make a valuable sustainable impact towards the way business is done.  

At ESSEC Business School in France, students can study an MSc in Sustainability Transformation which places a focus on social, economic, and environmental transformation. This new programme fits in with ESSEC’s institution-wide focus on sustainability. 

ESSEC’s programme places a focus on education by experiences – combining knowledge with the development of useful professional and life skills, practised on various learning expeditions and hands-on projects. This prepares students to make a positive impact in the business world and immerses them in real-life examples of how sustainability innovations can impact the community. 

Here are six exciting reasons you should consider pursuing a degree in sustainability transformation. 

Learn useful management skills with a sustainability focus  

Management skills are essential in any business environment, and the MSc in Sustainability Transformation will help you develop these key skills with an added focus on sustainability. 

In ESSEC Business School’s one-year programme, students will start off their sustainability transformation graduate degree learning about the fundamentals of management through a sustainability perspective, while gaining a better understanding of today’s social and environmental issues. This provides students with a strong foundation for approaching sustainability transformation as a whole. 

Students will learn through experience, taking on team building and leadership activities and participating in ESSEC’s Climate Days. During Climate Days, students from different degrees work in groups to come up with creative and sustainable business solutions for participating partner companies. They will be introduced to data-related, decision and management practices, negotiation and will learn the principles of management in today’s global environment. 

Apply knowledge and skills in real-world scenarios 

In line with ESSEC’s learning-by-doing approach, throughout the MSc in Sustainability Transformation degree, there is a strong focus on learning through doing.  

At ESSEC Business School, each element of the course gives students the opportunity to apply what they have learnt through in real-world scenarios. This makes the course entirely immersive and will help students pick up additional skills, such as teamwork, leadership and problem-solving.  

Through business cases, projects, learning expeditions, internships and team-building competitions, students will work alongside corporations, entrepreneurs and their classmates to solve problems sustainably and apply the skills and knowledge they have learnt throughout the programme.  

An example of this is ESSEC Business School’s Digital Week Competition, where students will work as teams of consultants for real companies.  

Transform organisations towards a more sustainable world 

This increasing global focus on environmental issues means companies need graduates who can understand the complexity of these issues, act as a bridge between stakeholders, and enable the company to actively contribute towards the implementation of sustainable business practices. 

The MSc in Sustainability Transformation aims to train such graduates, equipping these future business leaders or “Sustainability Transformers” with the knowledge and skills needed to make a strong and positive impact in the organisations which they will join. Students will develop the creativity to imagine, promote and implement fresh solutions for today’s sustainability challenges. 

Alexis de La Tour du Pin, Executive Director of the programme at ESSEC Business School, said: “Sustainability is no longer an afterthought; it is moving to the core of every conversation, every political platform, every corporate plan strategy. 

“It’s the perfect time to reflect and dig deeper into the roots of issues, but also past solutions, frameworks, measurement tools, successes and failures, and to accelerate and imagine more transformative solutions that strive to remain compatible with our existing systems.” 

Sustainability is therefore becoming essential in every career path and will be something students should have a strong grounding in, regardless of their career aspirations.  

The programme aims to impart the right mix and depth of hard skills, e.g. on impact measurement, triple capital accounting, usage of data for good or sustainability communication frameworks. The objective is not to train future experts with absolute mastery of all these skills, but to inspire future sustainability transformers. 

Through the programme, students will also develop a specific set of sustainability soft skills: diplomacy, resilience and agility. Diplomacy in order to convince, resilience to persevere in the face of sustainability crisis and agility so as to adapt constantly to a changing social, environmental and economical context. 

Prepare for a wide range of careers  

The broad nature of the sustainability transformation programme means that it doesn’t prepare you for any one specific career, but instead equips students for a growing array of generalist, semi-technical roles on sustainability. 

A sustainability transformation degree can lead graduates to a range of exciting, dynamic career options, including: 

• Consultant in specialised consultancies or within new sustainable practices of generalist strategy consultancies 

• CSR manager within international or local businesses, NGOs, social enterprises or public administration 

• Specialised project manager on topics such as carbon emissions, circular economy or the design or eco-products 

• More traditional management roles, like marketing manager or financial analyst, with a focus on sustainability 

• Social or green entrepreneurship 

At ESSEC Business School, career preparation plays a large part in the curriculum. 

In the final term of their Sustainability Transformation degree, students can choose to complete either a four-to-six-month internship or an academic thesis. Those who choose the internship will be able to apply what they’ve learnt throughout the programme in a professional setting. 

Students will receive ongoing personalised career support throughout the programme to help them find relevant careers and capitalise on their skills and experience.  This may include individual counselling, workshops, both general and sustainability-focused careers fairs, mock interviews, conferences and the opportunity to meet industry leaders. 

Explore your interests 

A sustainability transformation degree allows you to explore your interests around various aspects of sustainability.  

At ESSEC Business School, students can specialise in one of six majors, all exploring different aspects of sustainability. Within these majors, you will get to learn about your chosen subject in more detail, deepening your knowledge: 

• Circular economy 

• Food transition 

• Inclusiveness and diversity 

• Sustainable finance 

• Climate and biodiversity 

• Social innovation and impact entrepreneurship 

These majors are developed and managed in close collaboration with industry partners, and students will get access to an extensive network of industry professionals and recruiters, boosting career prospects and preparing students to make an impact in the world of business.  

This article was originally published in

https://www.topuniversities.com/courses/sustainable-development/6-reasons-study-graduate-degree-sustainability-transformation December 2021 .

 Business Ideas For Women in 2022

Let's talk about the best business ideas for women! It’s so important for our world to have women in business. After all, we’re half the population—that’s billions of women with unique ideas, skillsets, and visions for the future.

Female business owners employ nearly 9 million people and generate 1.7 trillion dollars in sales per year. They help keep the economy running while improving their own lives and innovating new ways to make the world better.

While any woman can start any type of business she has the knowledge and experience for, here are some of our favorite and best business ideas for women!

1. Educational services

About 77% of public school teachers in the U.S. are female. You’ve heard of male-dominated industries—education is definitely more of a female-dominated industry.

If you love absorbing and sharing knowledge, an education-oriented business could be a great fit. Often, these are flexible businesses where you can choose your own hours, work from anywhere, and keep it as a one-woman operation or scale it to employ others.

Tutoring in-person or online

Women with academic skills can use them to help students succeed in their subject of choice. You can offer tutoring for elementary school students, high-schoolers, college students, or even adults. Learn more about starting a tutoring business here.

Teaching English online

Since English is a global language, there's plenty of demand from adults who want to learn it and parents who want their children to grow up bilingual. There are already plenty of companies like VIPKID and Qkids where teachers can offer their services, but you can also start your own private teaching business if you have the marketing chops or connections.

Starting an online course

If you're an expert on a certain subject, building your own courses can be a highly efficient way to teach it to others. It's a lot of work up front, but once you've written the materials or recorded the videos, the bulk of the job is done. There are a variety of online course platforms where you can build and sell courses.

Teaching music

This can be a great home business for women skilled in an instrument. Advertise locally and have students come to you for lessons in piano, violin, guitar, or whatever your specialty is. You can even teach virtually. There are requirements to teach music in schools, but anyone can give private lessons.

College prep

Due to competitive college admissions, many high-school students need extra help to set themselves up for success.

With a college prep small business, you can offer SAT tutoring, help them write practice admissions essays, give advice on applying for scholarships, help them brush up on the subjects they're likely to face their first semester, etc.

2. Design businesses

Women unquestionably have an edge in the design industry. We quite literally have an “eye” for it: research shows that women are able to distinguish shades of color that look identical to men. Depending on your other professional skills, this can spark several types of small business ideas for women.

Interior design

Help people create attractive and functional spaces in their homes. Note that in some states, starting an interior design business requires that you have specific licensing.

Graphic design

Use your art skills and graphic design software to make logos, infographics, advertisements, web banners, and more.

This is a great small business idea for women who've already worked in a similar industry and are ready to strike out on their own. Learn some dos and don'ts of starting a graphic design business here.

Web design

It's common to see self-taught professionals in the tech industry, so you can easily find resources to teach yourself web design and start seeking clients.

There are several different tech skills under this umbrella, including visual design, UX (user experience) design, and sometimes basic coding like HTML. Your goal is to make websites attractive and easy to navigate.

3. Skincare & beauty

Despite women comprising the bulk of consumers in the beauty industry, only 29% of executives and board members at top beauty brands are women. In the top 100 beauty companies, only 10 had a female CEO. But since these products are primarily used by women, it makes sense for them to be created by women as well, right?

To help inspire beauty business ideas for women, here are 17 female-owned beauty brands spanning lotions, cleansers, skincare for women of color, makeup, and more.

A small Etsy shop or farmer's market stall can be the perfect jumping-off point in this small business idea for women. Hone your craft with artisan soaps, dry shampoo, body butters/scrubs, or other natural beauty products you can make at home.

Also, consider sensitive and minimalist skincare product ideas since there are fewer of those around.

4. Home, life, & financial organization

It’s not just a stereotype that women are more organized. Research shows that women are more organized under pressure and better at multitasking. This makes them perfect candidates to run businesses where these skills are paramount.

Virtual assistance

For many fellow men and women business owners, virtual assistants are their lifeline—the ones behind the scenes who keep everything running.

They typically perform a variety of administrative tasks like answering emails, organizing calendars, doing research or data entry, etc. You can work on them on your own as a side hustle, or scale up and hire other virtual assistants so you can take on more clients.

Professional home organization

Remember when everyone was talking about Marie Kondo? It illuminated the fact that many people aren't happy with the amount of clutter in their homes.

However, sometimes it takes an un-emotionally attached third party to manage the purging process. With a home organization business, you can charge an hourly fee to declutter a home and restructure rooms in a better way.

Bookkeeping and accounting

If you liked math in school and have a knack for numbers, you might make a great bookkeeper. Bookkeeping is a great small business idea for women because you can easily find free bookkeeping courses to get trained in the right skills.

You can often find flexible online work doing bookkeeping for small businesses, so it's a business you can have on the side or take full-time.

Accounting requires more training but you can start by bookkeeping while you take your accounting classes.

5. Event planning

Tying into the ideas above, event planning is another industry that involves a ton of multitasking and coordinating details. You can start a wedding planning business to help brides and grooms coordinate flowers, catering, DJs, photographers, and everything else that goes into the day.

Or, you can focus on other types of events: corporate events, business grand openings, product launches, children's parties, etc. Learn more about starting an event planning business.

6. App development

Coding skills are easy to learn for free online and have a wide variety of useful applications (no pun intended). If you want to use them to work for yourself and build projects, you might enjoy focusing on app development programming languages.

You can build any kind of app you want, but if you want to add a female-centric twist, there are plenty of helpful apps built by women, for women. Think about the small problems you encounter each day as a woman and how an app could solve them. You could build one related to personal safety, making new female friends, personalizing skincare based on data, etc.

7. Caring for animals or children

Do you love animals or kids? Get paid for it! Over 92% of childcare workers are women since moms usually prefer to leave their kids with female caregivers. Starting a home daycare can be an excellent business idea for women.

You'll need to obtain the proper licensing for your state, set up a welcoming care space, and consider how you'll handle the thousand things that kids can need.

Animal lovers also have plenty of ways to turn furry friends into furry clients. Consider starting a business where you offer your services for pet sitting, dog walking, or grooming.

8. Food service/catering

Got talent in the kitchen? Want to exercise your cake decorating chops more often than the occasional birthday? Start a food-centered business!

Just keep in mind that with any food business, you'll be governed by your state's applicable requirements on food safety. You might have to rent a commercial kitchen or get your home kitchen inspected before you can start making sales.

Baking business

Make cakes for special occasions, take orders for cookies and cupcakes, bake fresh loaves of bread, etc. This business for women can take several forms.

You could get a physical storefront and start an official bakery, or offer made-to-order baked goods for pickup or delivery, or even sell them online if you're confident they'll ship intact.

Catering

You can also start a home-based catering business to prepare appetizers and meals for various types of events. If you can occupy a niche that's rare in your area (e.g. gluten-free or vegan catering), you'll be more likely to get attention as a new business.

Food truck

Take your recipes on the road by investing in a mobile kitchen—a food truck! These can be costly to start up, so it might be wise to test your recipes and local demand on a smaller scale first. Of course, they're still much cheaper than a full-fledged restaurant and can give you more freedom with the business.

9. Photography

Circling back to the eye for design and color, those are both involved with composing a great photograph. The money in photography is mostly in events like weddings, and it can be a difficult industry to enter.

But it also makes a great side business idea for women, since you can schedule wedding or portrait sessions on weekends and still keep your Monday-Friday job. Learn more about starting a photography business.

10. Running an online store

With an online store, you have lots of flexibility and low overhead costs as opposed to a brick-and-mortar retail storefront. You can run your business through an established e-commerce site like Etsy, Amazon, or eBay, or build your own website on a platform like Shopify.

11. Opening a bed and breakfast

This idea combines a real estate investment (your B&B building itself) with the hospitality industry (offering rooms, meals, and hotel-style amenities). Usually, you can charge a decent rate per night for this kind of boutique experience.

It's much easier to find a building for a small B&B than it would be to open a full-fledged inn or motel. If you'd prefer to skip the “breakfast” part, you can also host short-term rentals through a platform like Airbnb.

A short-term rental business can help you cover the mortgage and taxes on a property and turn a profit, but they can also be risky during periods of travel uncertainty. Build a solid plan and don't over-leverage yourself. Your bills for the property will still be due even if no guests stay that month!

12. Writing/blogging

Did you always get an A on your college essays? You might have a talent for the written word! Use it to start a freelance writing business or run and monetize your own blog on a topic you’re passionate about. This is my career, so I won't be biased: it can be a hard business to start.

For every great client, you might encounter 10 who want to pay a penny per word. You might get your start writing ultra-glamorous content about water filters and whether asphalt or concrete is better for driveways. It's all part of the journey!

If you go the blogging route, it takes time to get established in your niche, start appearing in search results and turn it into a source of revenue. Learn about ways to monetize a blog here.

13. Anything that fits your skills and passions

Don’t force yourself to fit the mold of what you think women in business should do or be. If you want to start a business in construction, manufacturing, or another classically male-dominated space, and you have the knowledge to make it work—go for it.

You may face more of an uphill battle and encounter people who underestimate you, but someone has to change the women-in-business statistics. These business ideas for women are just a guide and can help you generate even more ideas!

Try out one of these best business ideas for women!

To start your woman-owned business off on the right foot, see our tips for managing your business finances, and take our free business courses on creating a solid brand and marketing strategy.

There's no better than time now to take action on the above-listed business ideas for women and beyond!

Source: https://www.clevergirlfinance.com/blog/best-business-ideas-for-women/

Save yourself from this corrupt generation

 Acts 2:37-47

Peter, in Acts 2:40, urges the people who listen to him: ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation’

How could he say that? How can you call any generation corrupt?

It is very simple. Peter is speaking to a generation which has crucified the Son of God.

Some people here may be landlords. I don’t know whether you ever have any problems getting rent. If you do, God knows what it is like!

Jesus tells a story about a vineyard. The owner gave it to some people. He said to them, ‘Look after it for me. Care for it, enjoy it. All I ask is that you remember that it belongs to me, that it is my gift to you, and give me what is mine when I send my messengers to you for the rent. The owner goes away. Some time later he sends a messenger. The tenants beat up the messenger and send him away with nothing. The owner sends another messenger. The tenants do the same thing to him. Finally the owner says, ‘I will send my own son. He will come with my full authority. They will respect him’. But when the tenants see the heir they say, ‘The owner is a long way away, and the owner is powerless. This is the owner’s heir. Let’s kill him. If we kill the heir, then the vineyard will come to us.’ And so they kill the son.

The people kill Jesus because they prefer a God who is distant and powerless; they prefer a God who started the whole show off in the beginning, but who is now so old and frail that he is irrelevant. They think that if they ignore the messengers of God and kill the Son of God, then God will go away.

It is the greatest act of forgetfulness, rebellion, self-centred pride, evil and stupidity that any person could commit: to kill the Son of God.

And Peter says to the people he is speaking to. “What do you think you were playing at? This Jesus, who you crucified, God has raised from the dead - and has made him Lord and Christ: the ruler of this world”. And he urges them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation’.

Why? It was corrupt. It was God-hating and God-denying, and it was facing the dreadful judgement of God.

That of course was then.

Peter would never say today, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation’. This is billboard, religious nutcase stuff. After all it was not us who crucified the Son of God.

I wonder ..

Yes, many people may say that today’s generation is a corrupt generation. People speak of broken Britain. Look at how money rules everything, at the rates of family breakdown, binge drinking, at the social injustice when we have so much and others have so little, at the rape of the environment, at the neglect of the vulnerable elderly (particularly those who have no money), at child abuse, at the sexual licence which has lost all sense of the dignity of the human body as created by God.

Usually when people talk about this generation being corrupt, the emphasis is on the ‘this’. ‘Of course, when we were brought up it was much better....!’

But Peter’s call for people to save themselves from a corrupt generation is a call to all people at all times. He is telling us to save ourselves from a generation which is in rebellion against God; to save ourselves from a God denying and God killing generation.

We were not there when Jesus was crucified. But if we had been, I suspect we would have been with the people: with the crowd calling for his crucifixion or with the leaders demanding his execution, or with the soldiers carrying out their orders and the sentence of death. Or maybe you think you would have been one of the disciples - but they were betraying him, denying him or tripping over one other in their haste to leg it to safety when he was arrested.

We are as much the tenants in the vineyard who kill the son and heir as that generation or any other generation.

In his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recalled the words he heard as a child, when his elders sought to explain the ruinous upheavals in Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” He added, “If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: ‘men have forgotten God.’”

• we live in a world which has chosen to forget God

• we live in a world in which everything has to begin with me and my experience, and we say that because we cannot see God there is no God.

• we think that without God we are the creators, masters and mistresses of all this. We claim to be able to turn on life or turn off life. That is a bit of a joke. If one medium sized rock hit this planet from outer space and ushered in a new ice age, it would probably be the end for our race.

• we think that without God we can do what we like when we like. We usually add some proviso, ‘providing we do not hurt anyone else’. But actually if hurting someone else means that I get on in life, then so be it. You only need to watch the Apprentice to see that, or to speak with those whose lives have been shattered because someone has chosen to betray that trust, or to listen to people saying that they will go on strike because their pay or pension is threatened.

• we justify our denial of God by saying that belief in God causes conflict. 71% of Britons agreed with a statement that said that religious beliefs ‘promote intolerance, exacerbate ethnic divisions and impede social progress’. But it is tribalism which causes conflict and the answer to tribalism is not less God but more of the living God.

But belief in the living God is not an optional extra.

And a people who reject the living God put themselves in exactly the same place as the generation which crucified the Son of God.

What no generation, tribe or family can cope with is someone who claims to be the Son of God, who claims that this world and all the people in it belong to him, that he speaks the very words of God, that his life is what life is all about and that one day he will judge the world and its rulers and its ways.

Of course, if there were any grounds for believing that he is mad, then we will laugh at him, lock him up and feel much more comfortable. ‘He’s only a harmless idiot’.

But if you can’t do that: if people look at the way he lives and say, ‘I can’t fault that’; if he speaks in a way that has such authority and does things that are - to say the least - astonishing, and if people start to listen to him and follow him, then we have a choice. Either he is who claims to be, the Son of God, or he is not and he has to go.

I like to think that if Jesus was living among us today we would not crucify him. I like to think that we would never do that to anyone. We might arrange for him to have his head kicked in. We might put a petrol bomb through the door of the place where he was sleeping. We might arrest him, and just happen to find him hanging from one of the beams in his cell. But we wouldn’t crucify him.

The offence of the corrupt generation was not the actual act of the crucifixion of Jesus.

The offence of the corrupt generation is that it rejects God; it tells God: ‘We do not need you or want you’. It grabs the gifts that God give us, but shuts out the giver. [Peter as a child shutting door in face of person bringing present].

The offence of the corrupt generation is that it looks in the face of the one who is absolute love and beauty and light and completeness and power and truth, and it spits in that face.

This is the generation of which you are a part. You’ve been born into it. You’ve drank from its values all your life; you’ve accepted its assumptions as your assumptions. You are completely and totally part of it. And you need to save yourself from it. Because otherwise you face a dreadful judgement.

I hate being a non-conformist. I hate standing out. But here I have no option. Peter is calling you and me to become different. If we go along with the crowd, we are lost. We have to make a personal decision.

So Peter calls people to repentance: a change of heart and mind; to stop being controlled by the assumptions of this world and to stop living for this world; and to start living for God in obedience to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

He calls people to be baptised: The New Testament teaches us that baptism is an act of obedience, and also an act of identification with Jesus and his people.

Because he was baptised, when we are baptised we are united to him.

And so the old way of life is washed away, and we are united with Jesus. In the Orthodox church, when a person is baptised they are given a new name. It is a picture that we become, in baptism, completely new people. ‘If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation. The old has gone; the new has come’ (2 Corinthians 5:17)

And Peter promises that the person who repents and who is baptised will receive the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of the living God, the Spirit that was in Jesus, will come and live in them.

Making that choice to receive Jesus as the Son of God and as your Lord and ruler is one of the bravest decisions that you will ever have to make. You are choosing to opt out of our God denying, me-centred society, and choosing to opt-in to the God-centred society. You are saying that you are not prepared to put your experience at the centre of your life - and you are going to put Jesus Christ there instead. You are saying that you choose not to put the God-denying assumptions of our society or our generation at the centre of your life; you are not prepared to put your own comfort at the centre of your life; but that you will put God at the centre of your life. You are saying that you will still live as a member of this society, under its laws - where they are right and honest - but you are going to be different.

Did you notice how, having urged people to save themselves from a corrupt generation, the new community of the church is described? It is grounded on the apostles teaching, it is a community where people deny themselves for the sake of the other, where they remember Jesus death and practice hospitality, and in which they put worship, praise and prayer at the centre.

So with Peter, I urge you to save yourself from a corrupt generation.

Repent: Change your mind. It is a conscious decision. Change the direction of your life.

If you haven’t been baptised, be baptised - as an act of obedience; and as an act of saying that your old life has been washed away, and that you now intend to live as a new person alive to Jesus. And if you were baptised as a baby or as an adult, but now realise what it is all about - Rejoice. But begin to live your baptism. Live as someone who is dead to the things of this world; and live as someone who is alive to God.

And you will be forgiven; and you will receive the Holy Spirit, the life of God to come and live in you. Instead of being a God-denying person, you will become a God-filled person.

How does this happen?

Through prayer. My personal prayer: ‘God, make me a Christian’;

I will pray a prayer and invite you to say ‘Amen’. But then please come and speak to me. Tell me, ‘I want to be baptised; I want to be confirmed; or I have already been baptised and confirmed, but I wish to make a public reaffirmation of faith’.

The story of the vineyard which Jesus told does not end with the son being killed. It ends instead with Jesus saying, ‘What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others’.

The judgement on this God forsaking, God denying, God killing generation is coming. It will be dreadful. For the love of God, by the love of God, save yourself from this corrupt generation.

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