Like many, the dean of the Grossman School of Business, Sanjay Sharma, is a renowned figure and scholar around an area of business. 

Dean Sharma came to UVM with a unique background in both the academic and private worlds. He has more than 16 years of senior management experience with international corporations and more than a decade of proven leadership within higher education. Dean Sharma is also an expert on sustainable business practices; his most recent book "Competing for a Sustainable World: Building Capacity for Sustainable Innovation" was was the runner-up for the Best Book on Organizations and the Natural Environment Award at the Academy of Management in 2015. He has also co-edited seven books on corporate environmental management and sustainability. 

Fortunately for our Master of Accountancy Capstone Class, who are finishing the semester with a four-week module on sustainability reporting, he still enjoys joining a class and teaching on the subject of business sustainability, and when the students were frustrated that sustainability reports were often glossy documents filled with positive narrative, but contained few to no actual metrics, he stepped in to speak to the class.

His presentation provided many examples of how innovative business practices are beneficial to both a firm’s profitability and the environment. Dean Sharma was clear that the results of sustainability initiatives are measurable and that the financial impact, positive or negative, can be found in some company reports. 

With the number of sustainable business initiatives by companies around the world rapidly increasing, the rise of quantifying sustainable business efforts is a facet many accounting/finance departments are now wrestling with, we are lucky that Dean Sharma is happy to step into the classroom to shed light on this fast-moving and increasingly important aspect of business.