When Erika Karp started her MBA in 1989, the term “sustainable development” had barely entered the corporate lexicon — let alone the business school curriculum.
But even today, with sustainability at the top of the commercial agenda, Karp — who went on to found the impact investment group Cornerstone Capital — thinks business schools must do more to integrate social and environmental topics into their courses.
She says one part of her Columbia Business School MBA was highly relevant to her work in sustainable finance, even back then. “One of the best courses was called managing innovation,” recalls Karp, who now works as chief impact officer at Pathstone, the US family office that this year acquired her firm. “The term the professor used was ‘frame-breaking change’. And what I saw in the world of sustainability and impact investing was potentially frame-breaking change.”