A dynamic, moderated roundtable of capital market practitioners and academic thought leaders seeking to bridge the latest academic thinking to the cutting-edge challenges and opportunities that market practitioners face in the area of sustainable finance and management, in partnership with Columbia University. There has been a growing recognition in academic journals, particularly in management and business scholarship, of a divergence of academia and practice and a need for course correction. One of the solutions proposed in the literature to address this divide is a shift in the issues being evaluated to re-focus on “questions worth answering” such as the breadth of issues encompassed within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, market practitioners – including investors, companies, regulatory authorities, and financial service providers – are facing these challenges with limited experience, ever-changing standards and expectations and a limited timeline to course correct their own practices. This roundtable brings together thought leaders from both sides of the coin – academics and practitioners – to evaluate how they can better align their efforts towards a common goal of creating sustainable and transparent capital markets.

Session themes:

• The academia-practitioner divide – how can practitioners and academics collaborate more to achieve the SDGs and improve the sustainability of business practices.
• Data-empowered action – how academics and market probationers can jointly leverage data to grow knowledge as well as action.
• Education and training – Universities and Stock Exchanges are jointly working to educate business and market leaders on rapidly changing standards, regulations, frameworks, and expectations. How can these two key actors leverage their key strengths to multiply efforts?