Guest bio
- Has been CEO of the Stewardship Asia Center in Singapore and president of Leadership Energy Consulting in the US.
- Was chief learning officer of Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley, and held senior positions at American Express, HSBC and Goldman Sachs.
- Author of Open Source Leadership, Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders and Sustainable Sustainability, and a Forbes contributor.
Rajeev Peshawaria combines 22 years of global corporate experience with research-based insight into personal leadership, ethics, governance and sustainable business growth. He has been CEO of the Stewardship Asia Center in Singapore and president of Leadership Energy Consulting in the US. He was chief learning officer of Coca-Cola and Morgan Stanley, held senior positions at American Express, HSBC and Goldman Sachs, and began his career as a banker and currency trader. He is the author of Open Source Leadership, Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders and Sustainable Sustainability, contributes to Forbes, and is a member of a World Economic Forum Global Future Council. His concepts include leadership energy and emotional integrity, the brains, bones and nerves model of enterprise leadership, and steward leadership, with its ESL framework of Environmental, Social and Leadership.
Show notes
In this illuminating episode of Money Majlis, visionary thinker Rajeev Peshawaria, CEO of the Stewardship Asia Center, takes listeners on a powerful journey through the future of leadership, purpose, and the pursuit of good profit.
Drawing from his groundbreaking book, Sustainable Sustainability, Rajeev argues that the global obsession with ESG metrics has reduced sustainability to an exercise in compliance rather than conviction. What the world needs, he insists, is not more measurement-but more meaning. His solution: ESL, or Environmental, Social, and Leadership, a framework that places purpose-driven leadership at the heart of sustainable business strategy.
Rajeev explains how his personal evolution from financier to steward advocate reflects the very essence of transformation he now teaches: that real progress begins with intrinsic motivation, not external regulation. In his signature candid style, Rajeev critiques greenwashing, the fetish for ESG rankings, and the folly of “rewarding A while hoping for B.” True steward leaders, he says, measure success not by quarterly returns but by their ability to create a collective, better future for society, future generations, and the environment.
From examining corporate giants like Unilever, Tata Group, Faber-Castell, and Patagonia to exposing the hollow promises of net-zero pledges decades away, Rajeev challenges the idea that doing good must come at the cost of doing well. Referencing the “naked era” of radical transparency, he asserts that in a hyper-connected world, companies can only sustain profitability by maximizing purpose. He underscores this with empirical research showing that steward-led enterprises consistently demonstrate greater longevity and resilience than competitors chasing quarterly targets.
This conversation also explores the moral energy behind stewardship-the belief that leaders must harness emotional integrity, gratitude, and forgiveness to lead authentically. We are reminded that happiness is not a byproduct of success but the foundation of it.
Insightful, provocative, and profoundly human, this episode invites business leaders to reimagine capitalism itself: not as a zero-sum pursuit of profit, but as a moral enterprise powered by stewardship. In an age defined by crisis and short-termism, Rajeev’s message is both urgent and uplifting: leadership is not a title but a choice to leave the world a little better than we found it.
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