The Next Gen CSO: Driving Business Integration and Planning for Uncertainty

October 6, 2026

Authors

Laura Gitman

Chief Impact Officer, BSR
Laura Gitman

Chief Impact Officer, BSR

New York

Laura is a global expert on corporate sustainability, with two decades of experience in strategy consulting and has advised senior executives at global companies across a range of industry sectors and sustainability issues.

As Chief Impact Officer (CIO), the first in the organization’s 30-year history, Laura focuses on maximizing the impact of BSR’s work with its network of over 300 members, both through direct engagement on project work and as a mentor for teams throughout the organization. She also oversees BSR’s Collaborative Initiatives and Membership, and is a recognized thought leader and innovator in strategic business.

She has been an instrumental leader in BSR’s organizational growth and impact. She launched BSR’s financial services practice and New York office, and she served as Chief Operating Officer for five years, leveraging her strengths in strategy, organizational change, and people management. Laura works with leading global companies to develop and enhance their sustainability strategies to maximize value for business and society, and she is sought after to facilitate senior-level strategy workshops and multi-stakeholder collaborations.

She previously worked for Deloitte Consulting, where she acquired extensive strategy experience advising multinational financial services companies. She also worked on several community and economic development projects in Latin America.

Laura holds a MBA from Stanford University and a BS in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. She is an adjunct professor in the Bard MBA in Sustainability program, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and a member of the UN Global Compact Expert Network.

Recent Insights From Laura Gitman

The Next Gen CSO: Driving Business Integration and Planning for Uncertainty / October 6, 2026 / Reports

A More Pragmatic Era for Sustainability: Time to Act / June 25, 2026 / Reports

Responsible AI: A Conversation with Elisa Moscolin, EVP of Sustainability, Sage / May 29, 2026 / Audio

Harnessing AI in Sustainability: Emerging Use Cases / September 17, 2025 / Reports

Beyond the Business Case Debate: Reasserting the Strategic Value of Sustainability / July 30, 2025 / Insights+

Full Bio

Corporate sustainability is entering a new phase. After a decade defined by ambitious commitments, target-setting, disclosure, and rapid expansion of the sustainability agenda, leading companies are shifting attention toward a harder task: turning commitments into business decisions, investments, capabilities, and measurable outcomes.

Interviews with 27 senior sustainability leaders reveal that companies are managing geopolitical risk, economic turbulence, and a shifting regulatory environment by prioritizing sustainability efforts that improve execution, deepen integration, and support long-term business performance.

Key insights suggest:

Companies are moving from aspiration to credible implementation.
Strategic integration is accelerating, with ownership shifting to other functions.
Business value is driving action and becoming more precisely defined.
Compliance is raising the floor while threatening to lower the ceiling.
The CSO role is evolving, with strategic value increasingly tied to seeing across silos, anticipate emerging risks, and keep the organization focused on systemic outcomes that no single function owns.

In this context, the CSO’s strategic value increasingly lies in what other functions are less well positioned to do alone: seeing across organizational silos and longer time horizons, anticipating emerging risks and opportunities, connecting environmental and social change to business choices, and mobilizing action on issues that cut across departments.

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