Lead Facilitator. Convenor. Board Member. Designer. Editor. Advisor. Head Tutor. Judge.
Victoria Hurth has active roles in sustainability and purpose which span advisory, implementation and leading consensus-building processes, panels and debates.
Highlights
Helping move purpose from fantasy to reality
Purpose, done well, aligns organisational decision-making with a sustainable future. But what are the governance and management behaviours of a purpose-driven organisation that make this a reality? Victoria was engaged by the British Standards Institution to act as an expert facilitator and technical author of PAS 808:2022 Purpose-Driven Organisations: Worldviews, Principles and Behaviours, the first consensus-based national guidance standard in purpose-driven organisations. The group was made up of experts from Anglian Water, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, JLL, John Lewis Partnership, Blueprint for Better Business, B Lab, Business in the Community, KPMG, the UK Government, ReGenerate, Future-Fit Foundation and The Wildlife Trusts. The standard was launched in July 2022 and is freely available.
Leading the world’s first global consensus standard in Governance of organisations ISO 37000
2021: Between 2016 and 2021, Victoria was the co-convenor of the Working Group (TC309/WG1) and project lead for ISO 37000:2021 Governance of Organisations - Guidance, the world’s first truly global benchmark on the principles and behaviours of good governance of organisations for any type of organisation in any country. The standard was eventually signed off by 164 countries and the working group comprised at least 77 countries and 25 liaisons across its five years of development. The standard finally gained 100% approval across 164 countries. This consensus standard represents a watershed moment where the world, for the first time, sets out a global view on the definition of governance of organisations and the governance system it wants to see. The standard solidifies why good governance is vital to sustainability and why purpose is central to good governance. ISO37000 has purpose as the core principle and along with the other 10 principles ensures a governance system aligned with a sustainable future.
Thought leadership, executive education, learning design and research for the world-leading University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
As a long-standing Fellow of CISL, Victoria is engaged on a range of executive and academic leadership programmes for CISL, including:
- Driving thought leadership and developing foundational thinking: Unleashing the sustainable business reports and the aligned Business Transformation Framework.
- Designing, shaping and delivering research projects: the multi-year CISL/ DLA Piper collaborative research project on Future of Boards.
- Advising on topics and designing and delivering online courses: Victoria co-designed and is Head Tutor for CISL’s online 8-week certification course: Sustainable Marketing, Media and Creative (watch the introductory video with Victoria here) and was a lead contributor for the equivalent course on Governance for a Sustainable Future (watch a related launch video with Victoria here).
- Supervising Master’s dissertations and other Postgraduate student work: Acting as faculty on programming such as the post-graduate certificate in sustainable business.
- Executive education and guidance: Delivering company-facing bespoke executive education and regularly presenting to and supervising executive projects across programmes, including BNP Paribas Positive Impact Pioneers, as part of their groundbreaking learning journey.
Supporting sustainability in the financing of Italy’s export industry
In 2022, Victoria became a founding member of the impact advisory committee for SACE. SACE is Italy’s national underwriting arm for export activities by Italian companies of all sizes. SACE has a vital role in financing the future we want in Italy, Europe and the world. In her advisory role, Victoria is supporting SACE to align their financing with long-term wellbeing for all (sustainability). Watch a video about SACE and Victoria’s support here.
Helping bring purpose-driven Venture Capital to life
Venture Capital and private equity firms have shown themselves to be some of the most toxic to a sustainable future. What would purpose-driven VC look like? UnaTerra is leading the charge to work this out and in 2022 Victoria became the lead member of its sustainability impact committee in support of this goal. Read about Una Terra here.
Buy the book Una Terra created profiling 45 leading females in the field of sustainability, including a chapter by Victoria here.
Bringing world-class sustainable marketing skills to global executives
Along with Charlie Thompson and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) team, Victoria co-designed and co-led the development of a ground-breaking eight-week online certificate: ‘Sustainable Marketing, Media and Creative’ for CISL. The course takes students on a journey to explore why marketing is vital to sustainable business, how and why it currently runs counter to a sustainable future and how we can rethink and re-enact marketing to drive the solutions urgently needed. Victoria is the Head Programme Instructor for the course, which runs four times a year. It aims to get a critical mass of global marketing, media and creative professionals trained to support the global marketing industry transformation that so many are calling for. More recently Victoria was a lead contributor for the cutting edge CISL 8-week online Governance for a Sustainable Future course.
Watch a summary with Victoria and Charlie here.
Learn more about governance course here.
Helping steer a University’s Sustainability Institute to maximum impact
In 2022, the University of Surrey, which is globally renowned for its work on shifting economies to align with a sustainable future, created an Institute for Sustainability, led by Professor Lorenzo Fioramonti, an architect behind the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. Victoria is the Chair of the International advisory board set up to help guide the institute whose members include: Jo Swinson, Professor Iain Stewart, Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, Robert Hanea, Lorna Hinds-Sotomey, Jules Peck, Jeremy Nichols, Mark Cutifani, Sarah Mukherjee and Alan Brewin.
Collating expert views on how Universities can become Purpose-Driven
Between 2020 and 2022, with Professors Iain Stewart (of BBC documentary fame) and Stephen Sterling (guru of Education for Sustainable Development), Victoria served as a co-editor for the Special Issue of the Frontiers in Sustainability journal, ‘Re-Purposing Universities for Sustainable Human Progress’. This collection provides open access to 24 papers from a wide range of academic, governmental and practitioner authors. As part of this, Victoria and Stewart’s paper ‘Re-purposing Universities: The Path to Purpose’ argues that universities are essentially operating like business-as-usual corporations and that they need to address their purpose and governance head-on if they want to align with a sustainable future. The paper sets out the starting basis for doing this.
Bringing diverse academics across the world together to solve critical issues
Since 2020, Victoria has been the Academic Lead for the Common Ground Research Networks’ (CGRN) Climate Change Theme. CGRN was set up over 30 years ago to break silos within academia and across the world to focus efforts on the issues that matter and the stakeholders who are affected. Each year there is a global conference and a special issue journal focused on solving the Climate Emergency. Annual topics include solutions at the nexus of climate and nature, governing for the climate emergency and the central role of purpose-driven organisations.
Other Highlights
Board Member: Soil Association Certification Ltd.
February 2019-present
Visiting Scholar, Éklore-ed School of Management (Business School)
2024 onwards
Award: BSi Standards Builder. Creativity in Standards development, ISO 37000 2022
November 2022
Award: ISO Award: ISO 37000 2021
November 2021
Task Force Member, UNEP/UNCTAD: SDG Indicator 12.6.1 and Core Indicators (SDG indicators for business)
2019-2020
Judge: UNCTAD ISAR (International Standards of Accounting and Reporting) Honours
June 2020-June 2022
Chair: Led, along with Professor Roger Street, the Funding Panel for multi-country European Union Research fund: ERA-NET Consortium AXIS JPI Climate
January 2019
Fellow, Leadership for Environment and Development (Lead International)
2011-present
Judge: Soil Association's Best of Organic Market Awards (BOOMs) for Organic Marketing
2020 and 2022
Ex-Board member of the Chartered Institute of Management Institute
2014-207
Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Institute
2017-present
Visiting Fellow, Judge Business School
2020-2023
Expert Contributor: ISO 37120 Sustainable City Indicators
January 2013-November 2016
