BY SHANNON POTTER
The message from NIRI’s virtual Sustainability Summit was clear: sustainability has matured into a permanent strategic pillar for evaluating corporate risk and long-term valuation.
Recognizing the ongoing importance of sustainability amid a changing regulatory environment and evolving investor perceptions, NIRI held a virtual Sustainability Summit in December 2025. Featuring three panels of experts from the standard-setting, corporate, and investment communities, the summit explored how investor relations (IR) professionals can move beyond a compliance-only mindset to position sustainability as a permanent component of a comprehensive investor relations program.
Thanks to Broadridge for their sponsorship of the program.
Aaron Rudd, Vice President of Sustainability & Corporate Governance Products at Broadridge, set the stage for the summit by characterizing 2025 as a year of refinement rather than retreat. He observed that while the acronym “ESG” (environmental, social, and governance) has faced political pushback in the United States, the underlying concepts are maturing through deeper integration into operations and governance rather than remaining in siloed functions.
Rudd described the current environment as one of whiplash, where IR professionals must navigate volatile headlines while recognizing that sustainability remains a permanent, central lens for evaluating corporate risk and long-term value creation. This evolution requires enhanced internal collaboration across legal, finance, and IR teams to operationalize non-financial data into a “single source of truth.”
The Evolving Disclosure Landscape
The summit’s first session, “Sustainability Disclosure in Transition,” addressed the complex web of standards now facing U.S. companies.
Neil Stewart, Director of Corporate Outreach at the IFRS Foundation, highlighted the rapid global adoption of ISSB Standards (IFRS S1 and S2), which are now being built into the rules of nearly 40 jurisdictions, including major markets such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and Brazil.
These standards, which incorporate SASB and TCFD, act as a “global passport” designed to reduce reporting friction by establishing a consistent baseline of high-quality disclosures for capital markets. By speaking this common “global language,” companies can reduce internal compliance costs, streamline data collection and verification, and open doors to new markets.
However, U.S. companies face a complex “Venn diagram” of overlapping mandates, according to legal expert Betty M. Huber of Latham & Watkins. Many companies are currently grappling with state-level mandates in California (SB 253 and 261) and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which introduces the concept of “double materiality.”
This requires reporting on financial risks to the business, as well as the business’s broader impact on society and the environment—a significant change management shift for traditional SEC filers.
Kristen Sullivan, Audit and Assurance Partner at Deloitte, emphasized that the acceleration of the “professionalization” of sustainability data requires IR professionals to move beyond a compliance-only mindset. She urged IR professionals to prioritize “assurance readiness,” treating non-financial data with the same rigor, internal controls, and governance as traditional financial reporting.
Investors increasingly demand reliable, assurable data to price risk effectively and evaluate the long-term resilience of a company’s strategy.
Ultimately, the panel advised IR professionals to control their narrative and ensure they have robust data management and reporting systems in place.
Stewart noted that if a company fails to disclose granular, accurate data, third-party research providers will often fill in the gaps with extrapolated industry averages, which may misrepresent the company’s actual performance.
Huber and Rudd suggested companies deploy an “omni-channel strategy” and consider tailored reports for different stakeholders: one for regulators (such as California), another for investors, and perhaps a more narrative version for employees and customers.
Sullivan advised companies not to be “led by regulation” but to leverage standards to underpin their own strategic choices.
Strategic Sustainability as a Competitive Advantage
In the next session, “From ESG to Strategic Sustainability,” moderator Mike Wallace, Strategic Advisor at Persefoni, joined Raven Adams, Director of Sustainability at Granite Construction, and Suzanne Fallender, Vice President of Global Impact & Sustainability at Prologis, to explore the transition of sustainability from a siloed reporting exercise to a core driver of business value and competitive advantage.
Wallace set the tone by explaining how customers increasingly score sustainability performance directly in procurement processes. He pointed to a precedent-setting move by the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, which asks suppliers to submit verified carbon footprints as part of their submission on formal requests for proposals (RFPs).
In the United Kingdom, sustainability is increasingly becoming a gatekeeper for market access.
Adams demonstrated how Granite Construction turned sustainability into a differentiator. Embedding the “Sustainability Value Add” strategy into the company’s overarching strategic plan has been critical for demonstrating the value proposition of sustainability.
Pursuit teams have leveraged sustainability as a differentiator to help win large construction contracts. When sustainability directly supports revenue, Adams said, internal teams engage more deeply because they see its commercial impact.
Fallender shared an example of how Prologis leverages sustainability to generate new revenue streams. She described how the company created its Energy Solutions business offering on-premise power, onsite solar, battery energy storage, fleet electrification, and sustainable building solutions on top of its global logistics real estate portfolio.
Prologis now helps more than 6,500 customers meet their own decarbonization goals while generating incremental, recurring revenue and protecting asset values.
For Fallender, managing Scope 3 (supply chain) emissions emerged as a critical challenge. She explained that her team works closely with development and procurement to introduce recycled steel, low-carbon concrete, and other innovations.
Adams added that when operations teams see how sustainability initiatives help them win work, they view it less as compliance and start treating it as a strategic advantage.
Wallace and the panelists also emphasized governance and inter-departmental alignment. Adams and Fallender both urged companies to create cross-functional sustainability councils that include legal, finance, operations, and IR.
These forums can build a “single source of truth” and ensure leaders embed sustainability into capital allocation and long-term planning.
The takeaway for IR is powerful. Rather than separating ESG from the core story, IR can be the conduit that shows how sustainability drives revenue, margins, and resilience.
IR professionals who connect these initiatives to financial outcomes and bring investor insight back into strategic discussions can help shape the story.
Inside the Investor Lens: Granular Data Over Broad Ratings
The final session, “Inside the Investor Lens,” provided a candid look at how the buy side evaluates sustainability, governance, and emerging risks, and underscored the importance of demonstrating long-term business resilience and performance.
Moderator Malin Clark, Partner at Third Economy, framed the session with the observation that a significant shift has occurred over the past few years. While transparency and the mere act of disclosure used to provide credibility, investors now focus on what those disclosures reveal about a company’s actual performance and improvement.
Yusuf George, Head of Equities Portfolio Specialists at TCW, noted that they don’t use third-party ESG ratings but prefer to build their own internal research frameworks.
“We need to be really granular in our approach,” George explained, noting that TCW conducts independent risk and opportunity assessments and incorporates raw third-party and publicly available data.
Robert Dornau, Senior Director and Head of Corporate Engagement, Sustainable1, S&P Global Energy Horizons, emphasized that investors want to see the specific data points that impact a company’s unique value drivers.
He highlighted S&P Global’s Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) as a tool for companies to benchmark performance against industry peers and noted a trend toward investors drilling down into specific data points, such as human rights policies or gender pay gap targets, rather than relying on a single blended score.
The discussion touched on several other key themes.
Turning to governance, George noted, “You can’t have the E or the S without the G,” placing artificial intelligence (AI) governance as a top priority for 2026.
He warned that simply having a board member assigned to AI oversight is not enough; investors expect companies to be nimble and transparent about how they manage the unique risks and stakeholder impacts of this emerging technology.
The panel discussed supply chain oversight and the linkage to a company’s reputation and financial success.
Dornau explained that “sustainability in the supply chain is not just about being green, it’s now directly tied to business success.”
He also highlighted that publicly disclosed pledges are significantly more likely to be fulfilled than non-public ones, making transparency a key indicator of management reliability, thus carrying more weight with investors.
Finally, George noted the role engagement can play in value creation.
“We really try hard to find the opportunities and to work with companies themselves, with IR teams and CFOs, to identify ways that we can drive added value and support the investment underwriting process, because it’s critical for companies and for us as investors.”
The IR Professional’s Sustainability Mandate for 2026
NIRI’s Sustainability Summit underscored that sustainability is now embedded in how investors assess corporate risk, strategy, and long-term value.
Panelists consistently emphasized that sustainability can no longer be viewed as a separate reporting exercise. Instead, it is becoming an integrated part of how companies communicate performance, resilience, and accountability to investors and other stakeholders.
For today’s IR professionals, the opportunity is to lead.
As sustainability continues to mature as a core component of corporate strategy, IR professionals are well positioned to help their organizations navigate this complexity with credibility, consistency, and a long-term perspective.
Shannon Potter is Senior Vice President, Programs at NIRI; spotter@niri.org.