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The 17 United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) represent a powerful guide to foster actions to achieve a more sustainable planet. This paper aims to analyze the challenges and opportunities of SDGs based on an interview conducted with climate scientist Dr Carlos Nobre. In this interview, Nobre addresses the opportunities and challenges of the SDGs. More broadly, the aim is to raise awareness among scholars, policymakers and citizens about what is considered to be the most important societal questions of the times.

The authors analyze the interview conducted with this prominent and experienced climate scientist through academic lenses of interpretive approach. Further, the authors are bringing important reflections from this interview and linking it to Rasche et al.’s (2017) model, which cut across different levels and take into consideration the individual, organizational and societal levels in the relationship for SDG.

The interview reveals that all SDGs are interlinked and are of equal importance. However, the authors discuss three important challenges and opportunities addressed by Dr Nobre regarding the implementation of the SDGs. These are education, climate change and peace.

To better understand the challenges and opportunities of SDGs and how to act on them as citizens and management scholars, the authors believe that it is imperative to consider the viewpoint of climate scientists who, through their knowledge on earth science, have been contributing globally to the United Nations SDGs agenda at global and local levels. In this paper, the authors analyze the challenges and opportunities of SDGs based on an interview conducted with climate scientist Dr Carlos Nobre. In this interview, Nobre addresses the opportunities and challenges of the SDGs.

The Covid-19 crisis has coerced organisations and business schools to rethink and reflect their practices about well-being and purpose individually and collectively. While this discourse was existent within academic and professional sphere, it was rather muted or isolated in the quest of pursuing traditional indicators of progress in terms of economic productivity. It is within this context we revisit our past interaction with the leader who has been advocating for responsible leadership which encompasses well-being and purpose amidst Covid-19. Arianna Huffington is the Founder and CEO of Thrive Global, which is a platform to help corporations in promoting individual and collective well-being. Formerly she was also the Co-founder and the President and Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group. In 2014, she received the Tesla Sustainable Leadership Award, after which one of the authors had an opportunity to interview her for the Sustainable Leadership Blog.¹ A staunch advocate of issues like climate change, gender equality, work-life balance and youth empowerment, Arianna exemplifies the commitment to articulate and implement purpose-led corporations, proposing the People–Planet–Profit approach to leadership . By shedding light on Arianna’s perspective this chapter suggests reflective pointers for decision-makers in management education, these are follows: (a) business schools can lead integrating sustainability in their purpose and practice; (b) relevance of the spiritual dimension and its significance in business schools and organisations; and (c) proposing a holistic view in comparison with a traditional view of business education. Finally, we also posit that her practice as role model for responsible leadership during Covid-19 reflects consistent adherence in her past and present discourse about responsible management issues. Thus, her insights can help leaders of public, private and social organisations to grapple with complex organisational issues arising due to of Covid-19.

The new post-pandemic normal reveals challenging features of living through a crisis, including a heightened sense of fear and the awareness of one’s limitations. Some of the challenges have been identified as relating to shifts in employer–employee interfaces or doctor–patient interactions; to increased effort to embrace rapid digitalisation while maintaining interpersonal relations; and to increased pressure to adapt flexibly to financial and structural changes. These are embedded in a greater (and mostly positive) consciousness of human and organisational interconnectedness.

This chapter looks at the parallel experiences of business and health systems as they endeavour to thrive during and beyond a pandemic. The authors recognise the intricate relationship between businesses and health as they feed each other’s overall growth directly or indirectly. Businesses create wealth through a healthy regard for the well-being of their stakeholders while healthcare systems are affected by their own business structures. In both cases, responsible leadership and fairness help to avoid an unhealthy prioritisation of profit.

This chapter reflects on the various routes businesses and health care can take to preserve fairness through ethical leadership. The authors focus on six stakeholders (employee, customer, shareholder, society or community, environment, and creditors) who need to be appropriately cared for and prioritised. The authors consider how promoting human competencies can affect skill acquisition, emotional intelligence, spiritual, and moral growth in both spaces. At the core of our discussion is the concept of self-leadership, which boosts the organisational leadership that in turn determines the kind of future we will have in the new normal.