Strategic ESG Solutions!
The sustainability industry has become a critical focus for businesses worldwide as organizations increasingly recognize the need to incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into their operations. This shift is driven by the growing understanding that sustainable practices can address global challenges like climate change and resource depletion and create new opportunities for innovation, market differentiation, and long-term resilience. As the industry grows, there is a greater focus on embedding sustainability into core business strategies, ensuring that these efforts are peripheral and integrated into decision-making processes that drive impact and profitability.
Lee Stewart, CEO and Principal of ESG Strategy has emerged as a leading figure in this transformation. With a focus on instilling ESG goals into everyday operations, Lee’s leadership has guided numerous organizations in aligning their sustainability goals with long-term business strategies. His approach is characterized by a deep commitment to building strong engagement across all levels of an organization, ensuring that sustainable practices are not just directives from the top but embraced and acted upon by every team member. Lee’s ability to inspire, challenge the status quo, and communicate the value of sustainability has been important in helping businesses see ESG as a responsibility and a competitive advantage.
ESG Strategy, the firm led by Lee, is helping organizations embed sustainability into their business models. By offering tailored sustainability strategies and practical tools, ESG Strategy empowers companies to address material ESG risks and seize opportunities that align with their operational goals. The firm’s holistic approach ensures that sustainability is an add-on and a core element of corporate strategy, driving meaningful impact and enhancing overall business performance. With its innovative solutions, ESG Strategy has become a trusted partner for organizations striving to integrate ESG into their long-term vision.
Let’s delve into Lee’s innovative leadership journey in sustainability:
Embedding ESG Goals in Operations
Over the 20 years, Lee’s approach to driving sustainable change has evolved from focusing primarily on technical efficiencies to adopting a more integrated, strategic perspective. While improving energy use and reducing waste are important, Lee has found that the best results come when sustainability is fully embedded into business strategy and operations. This alignment ensures that ESG goals become part of everyday decision-making, driving meaningful and lasting impact.
Building Engagement Across All Levels
As the CEO and Principal of ESG Strategy, his key responsibilities include guiding clients in developing tailored sustainability strategies, identifying material ESG risks and opportunities, and ensuring alignment with their long-term business goals. Lee works closely with leadership teams to integrate these strategies into their core operations and decision-making processes.
To ensure effective implementation, Lee focuses on building strong engagement across all levels of the organization, providing practical tools and frameworks, and tracking progress through clear metrics and targets that keep clients accountable and motivated toward achieving their sustainability goals.
Inspiring Sustainable Practices
In the context of sustainability, Lee believes leadership means inspiring and guiding others to embed sustainable practices into the heart of an organization, driving environmental, social, and business value.
Essential qualities include a clear vision, the ability to align sustainability with business strategy, and the courage to challenge the status quo. Equally important are strong communication skills to engage stakeholders, resilience to steer setbacks, and a collaborative mindset that empowers teams to take ownership of sustainability goals.
Customer-centric Sustainability Strategies
According to Lee, monetizing sustainability efforts involves identifying where sustainable practices create financial value, such as operational efficiencies, cost savings, risk mitigation, and access to new markets or capital. When developing a sustainability strategy, he also pays close attention to where the money comes in—understanding who the key clients are, what their sustainability challenges and needs look like, and how the organization can support them.
Being customer-centric in shaping the strategy is essential, as this alignment ensures relevance and stronger engagement, which Lee has seen yield excellent results. This approach demonstrates that sustainability isn’t just a responsibility but a competitive advantage that drives both impact and business success.
Aligning CSR with Core Values
Lee approaches corporate social responsibility (CSR) by helping companies align their social initiatives with their core values and business strategy, ensuring that CSR efforts are authentic, impactful, and measurable. It’s important for companies to integrate CSR into their business models because it builds trust with stakeholders, enhances brand reputation, and creates value by addressing social and environmental challenges that matter to their customers, employees, and communities. When CSR becomes part of how a company operates, it strengthens long-term resilience and positions the business as a positive force in society.
Setting Priorities and Delegating
Lee believes balancing various roles, such as business owner, best-selling author, sustainability specialist, keynote speaker, and mentor, requires a mix of careful planning, setting clear priorities, and knowing when to delegate. He makes a point of aligning activities so they complement each other—for example, insights from client work often inspire speaking engagements or writing projects.
It’s also essential to establish boundaries, carve out time for personal well-being, and stay grounded through habits like exercise and reflection. Ultimately, Lee has learned that maintaining balance isn’t about doing everything at once but about being present and intentional in each role when it matters most.
Continuous Learning in Sustainability
In Lee’s view, staying ahead in sustainability requires continuous learning and engagement with industry developments, whether through research, networking with peers, attending conferences, or collaborating with thought leaders. Lee also pays close attention to emerging regulations, market shifts, and innovations that impact ESG practices.
Regularly working with diverse clients across industries helps Lee understand real-time challenges and opportunities, ensuring that the strategies developed remain relevant, practical, and aligned with both current trends and future demands.
Creating Collaborative Environments
Being trained by Al Gore deeply shaped Lee’s perspective on the power of storytelling and the importance of connecting climate action with both data and emotion. Mentoring has reinforced the value of empowering others to take ownership of sustainability challenges, showing that real change happens when individuals feel inspired and equipped to lead.
He passes on this knowledge by creating open, collaborative environments, sharing practical insights through workshops and talks, and guiding others to align their personal values with professional goals, helping them become effective sustainability leaders.
Communicating Sustainability’s Value
He advises aspiring sustainability leaders to focus on building both technical expertise and strong interpersonal skills. He highlights, “To drive change at the corporate level, it is essential to align sustainability with business objectives, communicate its value in ways that resonate with decision-makers, and engage teams across the organization.”
“Patience and persistence are important since meaningful change takes time, but staying curious, collaborative, and adaptable will help steer challenges and seize new opportunities as they arise,” he quoted.
Streamlining Research with Specialized AI Tools
Lee’s future goals for ESG Strategy include expanding offerings by developing more tailored tools and frameworks to meet the needs of clients across various industries. Lee has built a strong model, supported by the book “How to Build Sustainability into Your Business Strategy,” where Lee serves as a fractional Chief Sustainability Officer for several diverse companies.
This is a more collaborative approach, often becoming part of the team, using “we” instead of “you should,” which creates deeper engagement. Over time, once sustainability is embedded with clear targets, policies, and a robust governance framework, Lee assists in recruiting, training, and mentoring an in-house sustainability professional. This model reduces both costs and risks associated with sustainability, especially for organizations new to the field or those without established internal teams.
In addition, Lee has developed specialized AI tools to streamline research, significantly reducing the time required and allowing a focus on delivering greater value to clients. To meet growing demand, he is expanding his team with the addition of two highly experienced directors, bringing decades of expertise. Their appointment enhances the team’s capacity to support more clients with innovative and effective solutions.
Assessing Impact Beyond Profit
“A key question I like to ask executives and board members is, ‘If your business didn’t exist, would the environment or society be better or worse off?’ This question often prompts silence and puzzled looks, but their response reveals a great deal about the organization, often highlighting its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities—or sometimes all three.”
