Amsterdam-based sustainability-focused digital education platform Earth Academy announced today the appointment of Stefaan van Hooydonk as the Dean of the Academy. In his new role, van Hooydonk will be responsible to bring robust learning experience to sustainability professionals from around the world and make Earth Academy as the premier ESG learning platform.

In his most recent role prior to joining Earth Academy, van Hooydonk served as Chief Learning Officer for Cognizant, responsible for overseeing the learning and development for over 300,000 associates across the globe. After starting his career in investment consulting in China, he moved to set up the executive education arm of a major business school in Shanghai, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), which he ran for 5 years. On the corporate side, he has set up global learning teams and innovative corporate universities for companies including Nokia, Agfa Healthcare, Philips, Flipkart, Saudi Aramco and Cognizant. Stefaan is also the founder of The Curiosity Institute which helps organizations foster a mindset of curiosity to inspire them to keep discovering and innovating.

van Hooydonk said:

“I am thrilled to be part of the Earth Academy for two reasons. First, I believe strongly in the symbiosis of the people, planet and profit in achieving economic and societal progress. Second, the Earth Academy will be a powerful tool for good, as it will significantly move the needle of sustainability.”

Earth Academy aspires to become the world’s best educational platform for all the ESG related topics and aims to democratize sustainability knowledge. The Academy introduces an interesting learning model with 2 levels: Practitioner level and Master level. The first 3 Practitioner level courses are on Sustainability Reporting, GRI and SDGs.

Earth Academy also announced that they wish to collaborate with all standard setters where trainings on different standards will be offered. In the next few weeks Earth Academy will announce several partnerships with prominent sustainability standard setters.

Rahul Bhatt, Co-founder of Earth Academy said:

“We are excited that Stefaan is joining us. With so many sustainability standards around, we believe that education on sustainability needs a much bigger push. Stefaan’s vast experience in learning and development will be invaluable in achieving our mission at Earth Academy.”