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Damian Starek was already working in sales and strategy at Google after he completed his bachelor’s degree, but he wanted more for the world. He took a sustainability-related elective during an exchange semester in college, kicking off an interest in climate change. Later on, deep into his career, he would find that desire to combat climate change still present. He found an urge to tuck the experience he’s had at Google at the forefront of his mind, and transition to a new path.
That’s what led him to apply to the Full-Time MBA programme at Copenhagen Business School.
“The programme has highlighted the multifaceted and complex nature of sustainability in the context of business,” Starek says. “[It] integrates sustainability-related aspects into its curriculum and is based in a country known for its many climate-focused companies.”
The Copenhagen MBA is ranked in the Top 100 Global MBA Programmes 2024 by the Financial Times, and eighth in the world for “international mobility” — a testament to the talented, global community of students and leaders who come to CBS with the goal to improve sustainability in business.
It’s a one-year programme filled with intensive teaching and research. You can take a week-long pre-MBA course to get a glimpse into the course subjects. You’ll plunge right into sustainability as a core business practice through the Copenhagen MBA, and it’s only right that you’re taking notes and theoretical practices from one of the most eco-friendly cities in the world.
Copenhagen’s chock-full of beauty. It has canals streaming through the landscape, colourful houses lining the sidewalks and supermarkets by the water. But it’s so much more than what a picturesque photograph shows. There are 239 miles of bike lanes for the locals to travel through, in addition to a comprehensive public transport system. The city’s developing electric buses, and the people are serious about recycling. They’ve got the highest happiness and quality of life ratings. As reported by The Telegraph, Denmark was voted the most climate-friendly nation on earth by the UN.
This culture of sustainable practice flows into businesses based in the country. CBS provides an MBA programme that mirrors that, and strives for better. They aim to build responsible management, organisational structures that are equal in male and female leadership, pursuing sustainability as a priority, and getting rid of present greenwashing.
“The most important tool is ethics, which is part of our sustainability courses. Students need a moral compass to navigate the sustainability landscape and avoid over-communicating achievements and spinning them in the wrong way,” says Andreas Rasche, professor of sustainability and the associate dean of the Full-Time MBA. “We also teach some legislation that has emerged around sustainability, such as the new Green Claims Directive which students need to know when it comes to managing against greenwashing.”
This comes with the development of critical thinking skills, where you’re learning real problems in sustainability, and finding a solution to fix them. You’re working with world-class lecturers who have authored and co-authored plenty of academic journals and books — they’re no. 38 in the world for research in the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking — and business experts to examine the scene.
Starek himself pursued an internship with European Energy, where he incorporated the skills he garnered in the classroom to a professional setting. He explored the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive during his MBA, and used that knowledge to conduct an assessment on the company. He took his learnings from economics, corporate finance, and tragedy to analyse the countries where his internship operates in, and their attractiveness.
“The CBS MBA explored examples where Denmark is lacking in sustainability-related considerations, such as natural resource use or gender equality at work, despite the country’s very green external image,” Starek says. “I also learned how corporations can resort to vague or irrelevant claims to project an image of being sustainable.”
The courses in the Copenhagen MBA stretch a broad spectrum of concepts — whether it’s corporate social responsibility, business sustainability and the wider landscape of corruption, labour, and human rights. One of the standout courses for him however, was the Managing Sustainable Corporations course. It’s a five-part course that looks at how leadership and sustainability intertwines, using in-depth insights into current firms and how they manage corporate sustainability. And that’s one course among plenty. The school takes on a cross-disciplinary approach to learning, combining a more informal learning environment with smaller class sizes.
“We deliberately keep it small. We do not take more than 50 students a year, as we want to know the students on a personal level and create a strong cohort character,” Rasche says. “We can teach sustainability in an authentic way.”
One of the unique frames to the Copenhagen MBA is the ability to personalise the programme to your needs. In their fourth and final term, students get to choose between four concentrations: Digitalisation, Entrepreneurship, Finance, or Governance and Sustainability. You’d choose your concentration to best fit your career goals, and build a network within. The Governance and Sustainability concentration looks at risk management and corporate sustainability as an entity that exists in tandem with governance, as opposed to separate from one another. It exists in four parts: corporate governance, sustainability corporate governance, sustainable operations, and sustainable finance.
The Copenhagen MBA also features the unique Leadership Discovery Process, which takes place alongside other modules during your MBA. It’s run by an external consulting firm which focuses on global leadership training. You’ll work through leadership topics both independently and in teams. You’ll attend a multi-day leadership simulator, solve real-world problems and exercises, and interact with executives from Scandinavian firms through their personalised mentorship programme.
To learn more about the Copenhagen MBA, connect with the Copenhagen MBA team here.
