NEW YORK — With anxiety and ambivalence about issues like climate change on the rise, M Booth has launched an offering designed to help equip ESG leaders to do their jobs at full-throttle.

Created in partnership with executive training firm Regenerous, the M Booth ESG Solutions Center initiative centers around a two-day workshop focused on helping participants get past impediments to fully embracing their company’s mission — and adopting a lifestyle that promotes it.

Christian Chamberlin, M Booth’s senior VP of social impact, said the program is in response to a rise in feelings like anxiety, ambivalence, and burnout among sustainability teams, fueled by factors from growing angst about climate change to ESG professionals hitting a wall after five or, say, 10 years of doing this kind of work.

Meantime, ESG teams have also gotten larger, and leaders have moved up the company ranks.  Since 2016, the number of chief sustainability officers holding executive level positions more than tripled (PwC).  The number of direct reports to the CSO has doubled in the last decade from four to eight and companies now average more than 25 team members that have at least 50% of their jobs dedicated to sustainability efforts.

The two-day workshop program includes a range of exercises, analysis and interactive training to create an environment and action plan aimed at closing gaps between the story sustainability leaders are telling and the one they are living, as well as provide participants with the skills to build and sustain momentum necessary to pursue and ultimately attain their goals.

Research shows that wide majorities employees are unaware of their companies ESG claims, not engaged in those efforts and, if they are aware, remain skeptical about their impact — which doesn't bode well for rallying enthusiasm for initiatives related to sustainability.

“We’re searching for a little closer alignment, so these teams feel like they have the support, the messaging, drive to do the work they are doing,” Chamberlin said.

M Booth’s partners in the venture, Regenerous, includes two principals who are specialists in sustainability leadership training.  Chris Gaither brings experience from Apple, where he was a director on the environment, policy and social initiatives team, and at Google, where he oversaw global communications initiatives. Abby Sturges has nearly two decades experience building design teams and product development processes and is a certified professional coach.