NEWS Alva Lind and Markus Leautwiler, students at the Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics (USBE), are the recipients of this year’s award and a prize of SEK 15,000 for their thesis “Women’s Effect on the ESG Performance.”
Alva Lind and Markus Leautwiler.
ImagePrivatThe award aims to stimulate and sustain student interest in how topics within business administration, economics, and statistics relate to diversity and inclusion. The prize, awarded as a scholarship, is made possible through USBE’s strong collaboration with Nordea.
Fredrik Stenling, Head of the Business Banking unit at Nordea:
“The winning thesis applies a gender perspective to corporate sustainability efforts. Combined with a comprehensive and well-executed empirical analysis, this has resulted in a piece of work that is truly deserving of Nordea’s scholarship for the best thesis in the field of diversity and inclusion.”
Alva’s comment:
“A huge thank you to USBE, and especially to Nordea! We also want to thank our supervisor Henrik Höglund for all the support and guidance throughout the thesis process. It feels amazing to receive this award – diversity and inclusion are such important topics, and we’re happy to contribute to highlighting them.”
Markus’ comment:
“We are incredibly grateful to receive this award from Nordea and USBE. We’re glad to see this topic being recognized. Hopefully, this can inspire others to continue shedding light on the challenges we face regarding diversity and inclusion in the business world.”
“The thesis addresses a relevant and timely question regarding the relationship between female board members and ESG scores in publicly listed European companies, as diversity and inclusion are becoming increasingly central to corporate success and sustainability. The results and conclusions are both current and practically applicable.
The authors not only highlight the challenges of achieving board diversity but also offer potential solutions and examples of best practices. This contributes to a deeper understanding of how companies can actively work with diversity and inclusion to improve their ESG performance, which in turn can lead to increased corporate value and societal benefit.”
Markus and Alva receive the award from the Dean of USBE Mats Bergman.
ImageMattias Pettersson