Has ESG lost its way — or just its courage?
Is ESG broken — or just leaderless? Lawyer-technologist Scott Lane, founder & CEO of Speeki, joins Sustainability Forward to argue the bottleneck is corporate courage, not cost or complexity. We cover boards’ ESG literacy, reframing the conversation around risk and resilience, compliance vs. true performance, customer-pulled sustainability, China’s scale, and how AI/agentic automation will reshape decisions. Scott’s advice to CEOs: have courage.
In today’s episode, Wrishi and Carmine sit down with Scott Lane (lawyer, technologist, and founder/CEO of Speeki) to unpack why ESG feels “stuck” — and how to get it moving again.
We discuss:
Crisis of leadership: why the missing ingredient is corporate courage
Boards & ESG: shifting the conversation to risk, resilience, duty of care
Reporting ≠ performance: ESG as a management system that happens to report
From green push to customer pull: building products people value (not paper-straw optics)
China’s renewable scale-up and lessons for global progress
AI & agentic automation: from “smart” to truly predictive decision-making
A CEO playbook: long-term thinking, listen to customers, stop being hostage to politics, and learn the new discipline
Scott Lane — lawyer & technologist with 25+ years in ESG risk; founder & CEO of Speeki (ESG reporting and management partner). Former founder of The Red Flag Group (acquired by LSEG).
