Principal | Sustainability & Climate Strategy Leader | Climate Risk & Scenario Planning | ESG Governance | GSI Environmental
Principal-in-Charge and sustainability leader at GSI Environmental, advising clients on sustainability governance, climate risk, assurance readiness, and building durable ESG operating systems that can hold up under uncertainty.
Wrapping up 2025 feels untidy. Not chaotic but messy in the way real-world systems are messy. Sustainability regulations shifted mid-stream. ESG became a political lightning rod again. Investor expectations stayed high even as public rhetoric cooled. Technology promised speed while quietly demanding rigor most organizations weren’t ready for. As a consultant, this was the year when tidy frameworks met operational reality.
Early in the year, many clients came to us asking the question, framed in different ways: Do we really need to do this now? The SEC rule stayed. CA’s climate disclosure laws were in litigation. Europe was “simplifying.” Boards were reading headlines suggesting ESG was over.
But inside most of those same organizations, nothing was actually slowing down. Investors were still asking climate questions. Insurers were still adjusting terms. Customers were still sending data requests. And operational teams were still dealing with heat, water stress, supply chain disruptions, and energy constraints.
That disconnect defined 2025.
One of the hardest parts of 2025 was helping clients accept that regulatory uncertainty does not equal risk reduction. If anything, uncertainty raises the stakes. When the rules are clear, compliance is mechanical. When the rules are unclear, judgment matters – and judgment requires systems, documentation, and governance.
We spent less time debating which framework would ultimately apply and more time helping clients answer fundamental questions: Where does your data come from? Who owns it? What assumptions are embedded into it? How would you explain it under scrutiny?
This was also the year ESG stopped being something companies wanted to talk about and became something many preferred to manage quietly. The backlash didn’t kill sustainability work, rather it changed its tone. Sustainability leaders became more cautious with language, more precise with claims, and more insistent on internal alignment before external communication.
Ironically, that made work better.
One of the most notable shifts this year was where sustainability conversations landed inside organizations. They moved into finance, legal, procurement, and risk committees. Climate scenarios became capital planning inputs. Supply chain sustainability became a data architecture problem.
The shift wasn’t always comfortable, but it was necessary.
By the end of 2025, the clients making the most progress were not the ones chasing every rule but rather building an adaptable system (e.g. data that can serve multiple purposes, governance that can flex with regulations, narratives grounded in what the business can actually deliver).
This year reinforced something I’ve come to believe deeply about sustainability consulting: my job isn’t to predict the future perfectly. It’s to help all types of organizations stay credible no matter which version of the future arrives. If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that sustainability work isn’t linear. It advances through pauses, reversals, and recalibration. Here is hoping 2026 brings more clarity. But if it doesn’t, at least we’re better prepared to operate in the mess!
Return to 2025: Working Through the Mess and the Shift that Defined the Year
