As part of AT&T’s Aspire initiative – which accelerates the learning revolution and connects it with the young people who need it most – we’ve invested more than $350 million to help ensure all students have access to the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond. We know that in order to truly accomplish this mission, we must look to those “on the ground: ”the teachers and inventors who are creating solutions for our students using the power of technology.

This is not encouraging: the respected management consulting company Bain & Company surveyed the leaders of 300 companies engaged in "sustainability transformation" and conducted interviews with heads of sustainability recognized for outstanding results.

The question: What are the results of instituting sustainability as a top priority? The answer: Alas, not really encouraging for stakeholders, says Bain & Company. There's an important "but" here with tips for CEOs and C-suite on how to overcome the odds of losing forward momentum in corporate sustainability efforts.

At the start of each year, we take time to reflect upon the prior year to ensure we don’t lose sight of the lessons we learned. From launching innovative product partnerships that benefit society and celebrating milestone environmental achievements, to helping those in need by rallying our employees and sharing our commitment to do more for green spaces, we celebrated progress and overcame challenges in 2016. As we look to 2017, here are three lessons we learned in the past year that we’ll carry with us in our mission to be Earthkeepers in all that we do.

Margie Flynn and Mark Miller from Brown Flynn talk about the importance of natural capital in a piece for GreenBiz. The authors use TD Bank Group's natural capital work as an example of how companies can use it to assess the impact of their environmental work—hoping to encourage businesses to embed natural capital valuation into their business decisions.

KeyBank’s Community Development Lending & Investing (CDLI) group announced today it has provided $54.5 million to construct 256 4% LIHTC units at Puget Park, a fully affordable multifamily housing development in Everett, WA, 30 miles north of Seattle. The property will serve residents who earn 60% or less of the area median income.

Understanding personal values of CEOs informs employees and investors about a company’s commitment to ethics and corporate social responsibility. In a paper titled “Relation between personal values of CEOs and their commitment to corporate social responsibility”, Professor Erhemjamts and her student Sarah Maher examined corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings of S&P500 companies along with social capital of the states their CEOs grew up in.

Work is well underway in transforming Citi’s Global Headquarters located at 388 Greenwich Street in New York City into a modern, world-class facility that supports Citi’s businesses and functions, enabling employees to connect and work more closely together, and to better serve our clients and customers.