George Serafeim

George Serafeim is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, recognized for his expertise in corporate sustainability, ESG strategy, and the relationship between purpose and financial performance. Serafeim's research explores how organizations drive performance and create value amid technological, environmental, social, and institutional change. His work spans accounting, finance, strategy, management, and leadership, focusing on how organizations clarify priorities, allocate resources, build purpose-driven cultures, integrate sustainability into strategy and innovation, and design systems for measurement, governance, and reporting to ensure accountability.

Serafeim earned a doctorate in business administration from Harvard Business School, where his dissertation received the Wyss Award for excellence in research, and a master's degree in accounting and finance from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he was awarded the Emeritus Professors' Prize for best academic performance. His research addresses the intersection of sustainability transformation with digital and AI transformation, including business strategies for climate change transition risk and opportunities, measuring organizational purpose, ESG data analytics, and the role of leadership and governance in corporate behavior and performance. At the Harvard Business School AI Institute, Serafeim co-leads research on how firms use generative AI and large language models to innovate in energy, mobility, materials, and resource efficiency technologies.

Serafeim founded the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative at Harvard Business School, which developed methodologies, datasets, and applied research to measure corporate impact. He has contributed to advancing corporate transparency, serving on the inaugural Standards Council of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the Taskforce Working Group on Impact Transparency, Integrity and Reporting established by the UK's Presidency of the G7 nations. Serafeim was appointed to the first decarbonization advisory panel by the New York State Governor and Comptroller to help protect the state's pension fund from climate change risks and identify sustainable investment opportunities.

He previously taught "Reimagining Capitalism: Business and Big Problems," which received the Ideas Worth Teaching Award from the Aspen Institute and the Grand Page Prize, and created "Risks, Opportunities, and Investments in an Era of Climate Change," an MBA course focused on leadership, entrepreneurship, and investment in energy, mobility, materials, and resource efficiency. Serafeim has authored more than 100 business cases and teaching notes, and his book "Purpose and Profit: How Business Can Lift Up the World" examines the challenges and opportunities of building high-performance, purpose-driven organizations that create measurable value for business and society. His research is cited in media outlets including The New York Times, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Economist, The Guardian, BBC, Le Monde, El País, Corriere della Sera, Washington Post, and NPR.

Serafeim has received several recognitions, including the Greenhill Award for contributions to the Harvard Business School community, the Pericles Leadership Award for services to the Hellenic Republic, the Kim B. Clark Fellowship on Responsible Leadership from the University of Oxford, the Dr. Richard A. Crowell Memorial Prize, the JIBS Decade Award, and the Graham and Dodd Scroll Award. Barron's named him among the most influential people in ESG investing. Serafeim has presented his research in more than 60 countries and ranks among the top 10 most popular authors out of over 12,000 business authors on the Social Science Research Network. The Financial Times described his research as a turning point for companies and investment managers in integrating ESG issues into business and investment strategies.