Richmond Hosts PRME Event Promoting Responsible Management and Sustainability

Recently, we hosted our first PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) since our appointment as local co-lead for London and South East areas in October 2024. The first session was run by the current Chair of PRME UK & Ireland, Professor Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas, and enabled participants to get a Stage II certification on i5. 

Richmond joined PRME (a UN Compact Initiative for the Higher Education sector) in 2022 and we are now an active part of this group of universities (over 100 in the UK and over 30 in the London/South East group).   

There were attendees from across the UK HE sector, including Brunel, Kingston, and Queen Mary Universities. Participants discussed the Impactful Five (i5) Methods for responsible leadership facilitated by a member of PRME’s Expert Pedagogy Group and had opportunities to learn a variety of innovative pedagogical approaches for education for sustainable development.  

Other guest speakers discussing sustainability practices and employability transferable skills included: 

Bryan Cartwright, Water Unite 

Jake Hallam, NatWest Markets 

Neil Jones, Head of ESG International, Walgreen/Boots Alliance

Pedram Parhizkari, Co-Founder and Co-CEO Beurzbyte 

The pedagogy session was followed by presentations from sustainability practitioners in various business sectors from financial to retail and impact investment.  Then, a panel on employability and sustainability explored the green and sustainability skills universities need to provide to equip future business leaders to make them fit for purpose.  

Inma Ramos, Richmond’s lead for PRME and Director of the Richmond Institute for Corporate Sustainability, said “This event has shown Richmond’s commitment and active participation to responsible education. We are honoured to contribute to forge further initiatives and partnerships both with higher education institutions and businesses for the benefit of our students.” 

We had fantastic feedback from the event, including Dr Smirti Kutaula, Kingston University PRME local co-lead with Richmond, who told us: 

“What a great insightful session we had! The key highlights included the Impactful Five (i5) Methods workshop for responsible leadership, by Prof. Natasha, PRME UKI Chapter chair and the industry panel event. It was really nice to see so many of our London and SE Network colleagues in person and we hope to continue this momentum. A special thanks to Inma for hosting us at Richmond American University. Look forward to more opportunities to engage, collaborate, and grow together as a network.”