2024 Top Consultants: Alex Kotsopoulos

Alex Kotsopoulos is a partner at RSM and leads the ESG advisory practice in the United States and Canada. He has nearly 20 years of experience helping organizations quantify and incorporate ESG/sustainability considerations into their strategy and operations, reporting and risk management practices. He has worked across a range of industries and several functional areas including strategy, risk management, reporting and investment due diligence.

Alex is passionate about helping organizations embed ESG into their strategy and operations to improve firm financial performance and societal outcomes and developed RSM's Total Return on Investment methodology and technology solution to support ESG integration. Over the past few years, Alex has worked closely with major ERPs to develop technology solutions and accelerators to help companies embed ESG into their business models to effectively address regulatory requirements and how they make investment decisions.

Education:

• Bachelor of Arts, Economics and Financial Management, Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo)
• Master of Arts, Business Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo)
• New York University Stern Business School, Corporate Sustainability (New York)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Quantifying Environmental Impacts: Life Cycle Analysis (Cambridge)

Professional and Firm Affiliations and Credentials:

• Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®) Charter holder, CFA Institute
• Certificate in ESG Investing, CFA Institute

What has motivated you to excel over the course of your career?

I fundamentally believe that sustainability and a company's operational and financial performance and especially nowadays with the growth in sustainable finance, increased government regulations and incentives and increased general awareness. Helping my clients integrate ESG into their strategy and business model while measuring impact at a quantitative level has motivated me and continues to do so. I believe that we need to harness the power, resources and innovative capacity of private enterprise to address existential challenges like climate change and environmental degradation.

Yet, we have to understand that a company has many stakeholders and finite resources – money does not grow on trees. Helping my clients address these challenges and tensions has motivated me to think differently about how to approach sustainability/ESG from a balanced perspective. This perspective and posture has been critical to the success of our ESG practice and my own professional success too.

What has been the biggest factor in your success so far?

Being curious, a passion for learning and critical thinking. The practice of ESG/sustainability reporting has transformed considerably over my career and will continue to do so as we enter what we refer to as the Third Wave of Sustainability Reporting, which is driven by a much more rigorous government mandate.

Our ESG practice's ability to serve our clients is predicated on staying ahead of the curve, upskilling, anticipating where regulations or government policy may be going and ultimately developing solutions including technology offerings to help our clients on their ESG journey. Curiosity and a passion for learning, reading and research has served me and our practice well especially in such a fast-moving space.

Thinking critically about a company's constraints has been critical to our success. The intent of ESG/sustainability, at least in my mind, is not to burden a company with increased overhead. Helping our clients think about how they can address reporting requirements on a cost-effective basis while prioritizing sustainability initiatives that can have a positive business impact is what led to the development of our Total Return on Investment platform, which has been an important differentiator for our practice and firm.

What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?

I love being a consultant and think that I was predisposed in many respects to selecting consulting as my profession. It is really the only thing that I have ever done from a professional perspective. Consulting is one of the only professions that require you to constantly be in a state of continuous improvement and learning, which, at least for me, is driven by curiosity and critical thinking.

Being a consultant provides me an opportunity to learn about new topics, issues and client challenges across a variety of industries and functional areas and to think about solutions. It has also provided me an opportunity to work on projects in variety of other countries, which has also been exciting and rewarding from a professional and personal perspective, and to engage and learn from some of my colleagues and other like-minded professionals.

What is your proudest achievement to date?

Watching and helping my team grow is my proudest achievement. ESG/sustainability is a topic that has transformed considerably over my career and, as mentioned above, will continue to do so. My team has come to ESG from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds including accounting, economics, engineering, finance, environmental sciences and technology. They have all been required to upskill themselves with outside designations and on the job training and have done so admirably. Building a continuous improvement culture and witnessing my team's development over the years has been extremely rewarding and I think it is this ethos that will ensure our long term success.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

The best advice that I have been given is to reach out if you are having challenges both professional and personal. I am very fortunate to work in a firm that has some extremely talented people and leaders and ones that are approachable and more than happy to lend a hand or provide some good advice.

We work in a fast-paced industry and there are many pressures and challenges one can face. You do not need to go it alone – others are facing or have faced similar challenges. Not being afraid to reach out is some of best advice I have received and I have found that it can also help build relationships and trust over time.

What does this recognition mean to you?

I am honored and humbled to be even considered for this recognition. I am quite familiar with Consulting Magazine and the Top Consultants award.