CEF Member Benefits

CEF Leaders Retreat

The CEF Leaders Retreat

June 9-12, 2024 | Spruce Peak Lodge, Stowe, VT

The annual CEF Retreat is an invitation-only, not-for-attribution meeting for approximately 150 influential executives from CEF’s diverse membership, designed to inspire breakthrough thinking, deepen trusted relationships, and generate actionable insights to accelerate sustainable business problem solving and innovation. Important background:

• A retreat, not a conference
• Attendees dictate the agenda following extensive consultation
• No sponsorships or selling
• No PowerPoints
• An open, candid, and transparent atmosphere 
• “Everyone’s a speaker”

Who Can Attend?

• The executive sponsor from each member company determines whom to invite from within their organization.
• Each CEF member company's delegation may include 3 senior executives-- usually the Chief Sustainability Officer or equivalent, plus other influential leaders on their team or from other functional areas at the VP and senior director level. At their discretion, sponsors may wish to invite a younger high-potential "rising star" to join the delegation. 
  

Agenda

Members drive the agenda through a highly iterative process, via input by surveys and phone calls throughout the year. Sponsors and those who commit to attend will receive a detailed registration form with the preliminary draft agenda in March inviting input to shape the meeting agenda.  Executives who commit to attend early have the greatest influence on the agenda. See 2023 retreat agenda retreat agenda for an illustrative example.

For questions, please contact CEF Executive Director, Amy O'Meara

Periodic Member-Hosted Meetings

CEF occasionally organizes small, focused meetings on topics of shared interest to a portion of the membership. In 2019, McDonald’s hosted a small meeting in March on “Aligning Brands for Action on Plastics” and in April and May, Google and Microsoft hosted meetings to brainstorm collaborative solutions for consumer e-waste collection. For information on past meetings, or to suggest a future one, contact CEF Executive Director, Amy O’Meara. 

CSO Huddles

• Private, high-trust space for peer-to-peer dialogue on topics unique to the CSO role.
• Exclusively for the CSO-level peer set (the top-ranking sustainability or environmental executive) at each member company.

Customized Executive Roundtables

• Carefully curated, small-group dialogues around topics prioritized by members.
• Designed to foster synthesis of best practices, knowledge sharing, collaboration, and catalytic action.
• Safe space for highly candid dialogue.
• Varying formats depending on the nature of the topic.
• Pre-arranged breakout rooms and discussions limited in size to enable dynamic, highly interactive conversations.

Ad Hoc Meetings

• ”Behind the Scenes" Sessions to learn from fellow members who have offered to candidly delve into case studies and share practical lessons learned.
• Briefings on topics of broad interest to the entire member community.
• Special in-person meetings to go deeper on topics of shared interest and explore action ideas.
• Meetings with thought leaders who excel at assessing trends and intersections among them (societal, science and technological, regulatory, economic, geopolitical, security).

CEF Weekly Briefing

Top sustainability news and resources for sustainability leaders

• A crisp memo delivered Monday morning at 6:00am ET
• Uncluttered, easy-to-skim format
• Covers the most notable news: major corporate sustainability announcements, success stories, technology innovations, policy updates, NGO news, and new tools and research
• No advertising to maintain editorial integrity
• Members may publicize sustainability job openings
• Sign up here

CEF Monthly Research Digest

An executive briefing on new and notable sustainability reports

• Bullet-pointed summaries of noteworthy publications
• Emailed to CEF executive sponsors and anyone else at member companies who request it
• Back issues available in the CEF Member Center
• Sign up here and back issues available here

In-Network "Asks and Offers"

CEF compiles and shares “asks” and “offers” privately within the membership via emails, sent to each member’s executive sponsor(s) about once a month. These typically include the following:



• Ask peers for trusted advice or recommendations
• Find others who share an interest in troubleshooting a specific area
• Notify members about opportunities to collaborate
• Notify peers about a notable event where members can connect and advance dialogue or explore collaboration
• Anything other requests, notices or offers along these lines

To include an item in “Asks & Offers”, contact Mike Rama: mike@corporateecoforum.com

Ad Hoc Research

To support outstanding meetings and collaborative action, CEF also works as needed to synthesize current corporate practices and trends in areas where analysis is lacking and to conduct landscape analyses of important action initiatives in areas members prioritize.  Contact Mike Rama, mike@corporateecoforum.com, with ideas and needs.

CEF Member Center

• Private, password-protected members-only hub featuring a carefully curated trove of resources on corporate sustainability
• Member profiles with executive bios, sustainability goals, notable achievements, and news
• Curated news, research and resources by topic area
• Upcoming meetings information
• Archive of CEF in-network research and meeting summaries
• Available to any executive with valid email address at a member company

--> To invite your colleagues to access the Member Center, simply instruct them to:

1. Visit cefmembercenter.com
2. Click "First Time User" button
3. Enter their work email address - valid email addresses from CEF member companies will be approved automatically
4. You can also share this PDF with instructions.

 Questions or need help, contact Mike Rama: mike@corporateecoforum.com 

Trusted Introductions

CEF regularly works behind the scenes to proactively facilitate private one-on-one or small-group conversations among practitioners who offer valuable experience and/or share an interest in specific questions/topics.

We also help make new personal connections upon request – however, we are sensitive to member executives’ time and limited bandwidth, so we always contact individuals first to gain permission and ensure mutual interest/availability before making trusted introductions.

To request a trusted introduction, contact Mike Rama: mike@corporateecoforum.com

Special Action Initiatives to Tap the Power of $4 Trillion

Over the years CEF has served as an incubator for impactful ideas that bubble up from our community of influential leaders representing $5.5 trillion in revenue. When there are clear opportunities to add complementary value, and to identify, accelerate, and bring scale to existing solutions, we harness our neutral convening space to help move such ideas to action.

Examples:

• 2021-2022: CEF supported 5 member companies–Google, Apple, Amazon, Dell, and Microsoft–to incubate and launch a collaborative year-long pilot project in Denver, CO to roll out an innovative doorstep collection model for consumer electronics recycling.

• 2019-2022: CEF convened confidential consultation processes to collate feedback from over 40 CEF member companies that expressed concerns about methods and approaches of the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) and Greenhouse Gas Protocol. CEF channeled collective feedback to the SBTi secretariat and GHG Protocol team and brokered a series of private calls with SBTi and GHGP leadership.

• 2020-2021: CEF convened a confidential consultation with 17 member companies who expressed interest in providing collective feedback to RE100, in hopes of deepening RE100’s engagement with the corporate sector and addressing significant concerns members have around technical requirements, governance, company communication and engagement.

• 2016: CEF partnered with US BCSD and WBCSD on the Materials Marketplace, a national-scale B2B materials reuse platform, recognized with a prestigious “Circulars” Award at Davos. Acquired by Rheaply in 2022, the Materials Marketplace now has a dedicated team and more resources to facilitate and support the platform’s continued growth and success.

• 2012: At the Rio+20 Earth Summit, CEF showcased natural capital business leadership by releasing a groundbreaking report, “The New Business Imperative: Valuing Natural Capital," which featured 24 company commitments demonstrating nature’s value to business.

Criteria for Special Initiatives

• Aligns with interests of a significant number of members
• Clear opportunity to add complementary value to important work underway
• Potential for significant impact 
  

To explore ideas, contact Executive Director Amy O’Meara: amy@corporateecoforum.com

The C.K. Prahalad Award for Global Business Sustainability Leadership

The C.K. Prahalad Award for Global Business Sustainability Leadership was created in 2010 to honor founding CEF Advisory Board member C.K. Prahalad by recognizing exceptional, globally significant private-sector leadership that exemplifies sustainability as a key driver of innovation and long-term business success. Honorees may be either (1) individual executives, (2) notable corporate actions/initiatives, or (3) collaborations involving the private sector whose actions to align sustainability and business objectives have produced groundbreaking innovations, influential “next practices,” industry or value chain-level transformations, or problem solving on major global challenges. For more details, click here.