Cso Strategic Taskforce

The CSO Strategic Taskforce brings together Chief Sustainability Officers from government, business, and institutions of civil society from across LA County to focus on Southland sustainability as a whole and innovate professional-community collaborations. Programs serve professional development, higher ed, and community learning. We help LA’s sustainability professionals collaborate in innovative ways to meet the County’s ambitious sustainability goals. We’re building on four years of experimentation and success. We have a membership and community base; an innovative model for professional-community collaboration; an understanding of the infrastructure we need to make our work be more effective, and ideas for scale. A professional-community collaboration model is the centerpiece of our work and defining feature of the Taskforce. Our model involves Taskforce members in everything from innovating strategic opportunities to matchmaking between professionals and community teams, and allows members to plug in as advisors and mentors at stages throughout a project’s development — from project conceptualizing and implementation to sustainability impact assessment. The CSO Strategic Taskforce was launched as a Pando network in 2017 at the suggestion of Los Angeles City Councilmember Paul Koretz with Caltech’s CSO and Interim Vice President John Onderdonk as founding chair. As a Pando initiative, staff work for the Taskforce is handled by Pando with the addition of volunteer support. Originally created with a core of “chief” sustainability officers, the Taskforce soon evolved to include a range of professionals from government, business, and institutions of civil society who carry sustainability briefs.