With more than 250 guests, econsense celebrated its 25th anniversary – bringing together participants from all our clusters and the Competence Program, numerous former employees, Executive Board members and Managing Directors, long-standing companions from organisations with whom we have cooperatedfor many years, as well as new partners. The anniversary day was shaped by great encounters and genuine togetherness that will carry us forward into the future.

To kick off the evening programme, Dr Klaus Mittelbach, founding Managing Director of econsense, provided insights in an interview with Daniel Schmid into the year 2000 and what it meant to launch a sustainability network at that time. Samira El Ouassil, Dr Nicole Zabel-Wasmuth and Lars Jessen provided forward-looking impulses on how we can use the power of stories to close the gap between knowledge and action together – keyword: informed optimism. A big thank you to all speakers for this inspiring journey through time!

We started the anniversary day with a new workshop concept that did not focus on the substantive topics of sustainability, but rather on the sustainability managers themselves and the departments with their roles and their anchoring within the organisations. This led to a valuable and in-depth exchange on what we can learn from the past for the future – and how we want to shape it. Many thanks to everyone for embracing this concept and contributing to such strong exchanges, and a heartfelt thank you to all facilitators and contributors to the workshops.