In this report: “The Chief Sustainability Officer, 10 Years Later,” sustainability recruiting firm, Weinreb Group, provides benchmarking around the public company Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) position, which has increased multi-fold from 29 CSOs in 2011 to 95 CSOs in 2021 (listed in the report), 31 of whom became the company’s first CSO in 2020. Women represent more than half of the public company CSOs at 54%.
A slight majority (52%) of these CSOs have multiple titles, as shown here:
Of those, nearly 25% also hold the title of corporate, government, environmental, or community affairs; 16% hold a legal position; 14% have “foundation” in their title; and 4% also serve as corporate secretary.
Most CSOs (55%) report to someone who reports to the CEO; 21% report to the CEO directly. A plurality of CSOs meet with their CEOs monthly; 30% meet weekly; 21% meet quarterly; and about 6% meet annually. The report, which also addresses staffing of the sustainability function, includes two sample job descriptions in the Appendix.
See the release and GreenBiz’s State of the Profession.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!