ESG certificate training at Leuphana University Lüneburg

From March to May 2025, I completed the academic certificate program “ESG Professional” – an intensive program developed by the Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM) at Leuphana University Lüneburg in cooperation with the dfv Mediengruppe (GREEN.WORKS Academy). Over the course of seven modules, we delved into the fundamentals, strategies, and future perspectives of sustainable business. The program kicked off with two in-person days on the Leuphana campus in Lüneburg – and they were a real highlight. The face-to-face exchange with other participants and lecturers on site gave the program a special dynamic right from the start. The remaining modules then took place as online seminars.

The people behind the program

The academic director was Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Stefan Schaltegger, founder of the CSM and one of the world’s most frequently cited researchers in the field of sustainability management. As early as 2003, he initiated the world’s first MBA program in Sustainability Management. His lectures on the fundamentals of sustainability management, Business Cases for Sustainability, and radical business model transformation ran as a common thread throughout the program – theoretically well-founded, but always with an eye on business practice.

On behalf of the many dedicated lecturers, I would like to highlight a few: Prof. Dr. Nathali Jänicke (Jade Hochschule / Leuphana) guided us through the Environmental Fundamentals with a focus on environmental and energy management systems. Dr. Tinusch Jalilvand made human rights tangible as a strategic ESG topic. Axel Franck deepened CSRD and the double materiality analysis. Stefan Behringer led the governance module with compliance, risk management, and white-collar crime. And at the Best Practice Day, practitioners such as Juliane Michel (Stadtwerke Neumünster), Linda Pulver (HEYHO), Constanze Klotz (Bridge & Tunnel), and Jannis Meseke (Voelkel) shared their experiences from sustainability transformation.

What I took away

The program comprised 125 learning hours and seven thematic modules:

The Fundamentals laid the foundation – from the Brundtland definition and planetary boundaries through to regulatory requirements such as CSRD, the EU Taxonomy, and CSDDD. The Environmental, Social, and Governance Fundamentals modules then deepened each ESG pillar: climate accounting and biodiversity management, human rights and corporate citizenship, compliance systems and anti-corruption.

In the SDG workshop, we worked through the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals at target level and translated them into concrete corporate practices. The Best Practice Day impressively showed how differently sustainability is lived in practice – from an energy supplier’s climate strategy to the upcycling business model of a social manufacturing enterprise.

The final module “Beyond ESG" was the highlight for me: here, it went beyond compliance to true transformation – sustainable business model innovation, circularity, the role of change agents, and the question of how to not only argue the business case for sustainability, but embody it.

My conclusion

Sustainability is not an add-on and not a reporting compliance program – it is a leadership responsibility and a driver of transformation. The ESG Professional Program gave me the necessary tools for this: theoretically well-founded, up-to-date in terms of regulation, and practice-oriented. For anyone who doesn’t just want to administer sustainability in their company but actively shape it, I can fully recommend this training.

A heartfelt thank-you goes to the entire team at the Centre for Sustainability Management for an all-round successful and enriching event!