In this episode, Kaitlyn Allen talks with Emmanuelle Palikuca, Senior Sustainability Advisor, Special Projects Team with ISS Corporate Solutions (ICS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). ICS provides industry standard solutions in corporate governance, executive compensation, and sustainability.  Emmanuelle works with corporate issuers across industries to develop their ESG strategies and improve sustainability-related disclosures and programs. She provides insight and guidance on alignment with ESG ratings, global frameworks and standards and is the lead Materiality Assessments advisor on the ICS team. Emmanuelle holds an M.S. in Sustainability Management from American University’s Kogod School of Business.
Kaitlyn and Emmanuelle discuss the challenges that many companies face in determining which ratings and rankings best support their ESG goals, and matter to their investors.  From a practical perspective, ratings for any industry should provide a consistent measure as to how a company is performing against certain standards.  In the ESG space, this is not always that that clear cut.   As such, there is a call for increasing transparency surrounding the various rating structures, with greater clarity on what they are designed to measure.  This allows for companies to make more informed decisions around which constructs work best for them.
Emmanuelle’s expertise brings clarity to the utility of some of the different ratings related to sustainability performance, and we are reminded that ESG ratings serve as signals to investors…they are not the end all, be all for their decision making.  Conversely, to a company, an ESG rating is not just a score, it should serve to guide implementation of solutions that support sustainability goals.
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Episode Resource Boost:
MIT Sloane Sustainability Initiative, The Aggregate Confusion Project
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/sustainability-initiative/aggregate-confusion-project