The twelfth annual SensAbility – The WHU Impact Summit was held on the Vallendar campus at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management from March 31 to April 1. This year’s conference, titled “Choose to Change,” aimed to show students and young professionals from all branches and fields that success need not come at the cost of the environment—and that it is now more important than ever to work toward ensuring a more sustainable and responsible future for the business world.
Over two days of panels and workshops, the SensAbility summit welcomed a large group of attendees passionate about finding that balance. Among them is Julius de Gruyter (BSc, 2024), one of the student leaders behind the event. In a recent interview with SWR2, he spoke about the power that the newer generations have to act today and now: “We cannot rely solely on politics here. We too have to pick up the reins.”
The conference offered interesting ways of interacting with experts on a variety of hot topics—from agriculture to mobility to the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace. Enapter co-founder Vaitea Cowen, an advocate of greenly sourced hydrogen, gave a speech calling for the end to the fossil fuel era, followed by Dr. Alexandra Becker, CEO at GMH Group, who discussed the environmentally friendly production of steel through the use of electric arc furnaces. As they noted in their joint Q&A, green hydrogen could play a vital role in the decarbonization of various industries. Keynote speaker Tim Schumacher, an impact and climate investor, then took the stage to share his experiences with co-founding Ecosia, a Berlin-based independent search engine that uses its profits to plant trees and finance the Ecosia World Fund.
