september 23rd, 2026 | Starting at €395❋
Anticipatory Leadership for Sustainability
Sustainability needs more than reporting.
It needs leaders who can see further, think longer, and act with more clarity about what is coming.
The tools that got us here are no longer enough.
Most sustainability professionals are working harder than ever and feeling less effective. Not from a lack of expertise but because the conditions have changed.
Reporting, disclosure, and measurement frameworks are the dominant currency of the profession. They are important. But they are fundamentally backward-looking: they tell you what happened. They do not help you lead toward what is coming.
Meanwhile, the gap between what science demands and what organisations are willing to do keeps widening. Short-termism dominates planning cycles. Political headwinds have made once-straightforward conversations harder. A growing number of companies are going quieter, not bolder.
This points to a genuine gap in how the profession has been trained: we have built extraordinary capacity to measure the past. We have underinvested in the ability to think clearly about the future.
Anticipatory leadership is what fills that gap.
What is Anticipatory Leadership?
Anticipatory leadership is the practice of using futures thinking to strengthen your decisions today. It means reading signals of change, surfacing hidden assumptions, and leading with a longer horizon in mind.
Who is this for?
This training is designed for people who sense that their current frameworks are reaching their limits and want sharper tools for what comes next.
Sustainability directors, managers, and strategists inside organisations. Corporate governance and public affairs professionals navigating transition. CSR and ESG leads who want to move from compliance to strategic influence. Consultants and advisors bringing foresight into their practice. Anyone who has felt the gap between what the world needs and what their organisation is willing to do.
The session is capped at 20 participants.
This is a working day with a cohort of peers, not a conference.
One day training: September 23rd, 2026Our day-long training will run from 9 am to 4.30 pm and take place in the iconic Waag, one of Amsterdam's oldest buildings, a medieval city gate turned weighing house turned home to the Surgeons' Guild and its anatomical theatre. It now houses Waag Futurelab, a research organisation working on technology and society, continuing its long history as a place where knowledge was made public.
Overview
What you will leave with:
A working understanding of anticipatory leadership and futures literacy, and how to apply them in your organisation.
Experience reading weak signals and identifying patterns before they become obvious.
A clearer view of the assumptions embedded in your current sustainability strategy.
Scenarios for your sector, built collaboratively on the day, and a method for building more.
A practical framework for bringing futures thinking into board conversations and strategy processes
Meet the facilitators
Erik Korsvik Østergaard
Erik Korsvik Østergaard is a Danish author, futurist, and organisational thinker based in Copenhagen. His work sits at the intersection of leadership development, systems thinking, and what he calls the rewilding of organisations. He has worked across Europe with CEOs and leaders navigating complexity and is the author of Anticipatory Leadership, included in the registration for all participants.
Alba Tiley
Alba Tiley has 14 years of experience at the intersection of sustainability, public affairs, and foresight. She teaches Corporate Foresight for Sustainability at EDHEC Business School and co-founded Futures & Sustainability. Her work focuses on helping organisations develop the long-term thinking their current frameworks rarely build in.
Darina Elencheva
Darina Elencheva has over a decade of experience leading integrated sustainability programmes in multinational corporations. She is ESG Director at Pepco Group, a leading value retailer present in 18+ European countries, and co-founder of Futures & Sustainability and The Sustainable Link & Co., specialising in translating complex sustainability challenges into practical strategy.
Pricing
Early registration (first 8 places): €395
General admission: €495
Two tickets from the same organisation: €895
NGO / academic / freelance rate (on request): €295
All participants receive a full-day co-facilitated programme, welcome coffee and lunch, all printed workshop materials and a personal copy of Anticipatory Leadership by Erik Korsvik Østergaard.
Who we are
Together with Erik, Alba Tiley and Darina Elencheva are bringing anticipatory leadership into the sustainability field for the first time as a structured, practical training. Drawing on their combined experience across corporate sustainability and organisational foresight, the three facilitators have translated the book's frameworks into a day designed specifically for the conditions sustainability professionals are working in right now.
The sustainable link & co. is a strategic advisory platform co-founded by Alba Tiley and Darina Elencheva, operating at the intersection of sustainability strategy and futures thinking. It positions itself as a strategic integrator — helping organizations turn complex sustainability challenges into clear, actionable strategies.