Legal & General and Birkbeck: driving sustainable change

A shared vision

Both Legal & General and Birkbeck share the goal to deliver progressive and long-lasting outcomes for students, our local communities, and the planet.

Empowering a diverse cohort of students

Birkbeck aims to equip its students with the skills and knowledge to find innovative solutions to local and global challenges, and by offering evening study, it welcomes a diverse community who may not otherwise be able to access this education. Like Birkbeck, Legal & General recognises that building a more sustainable future is as much a people challenge as it is a scientific, technical, or economic one.

A unique partnership

Through working together, we hope to inspire the next generation of leaders to approach unprecedented challenges confidently and develop innovative solutions using a multisectoral approach. Highlights of the partnership against our shared objectives include:

• Mobilise students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds to access Birkbeck education through the Legal & General Sustainable Leaders bursary programme
  • Launch of the Legal & General Sustainable Leaders Bursary which currently supports five students from underrepresented backgrounds to receive £5,000 each to improve their access to studying Environment & Sustainability courses at the university
  • Launch of the second cohort of five Sustainable Leaders Bursary students, who will be enrolling at Birkbeck in the 2025/26 academic year    

• Support and expand undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in environment and sustainability, incorporating relevant business context to provide ‘real-world’ application
  • Creation of two new undergraduate courses with a further course in development for the 2026-27 academic year
  • Early-stage development of two new postgraduate courses for the 2025-26 academic year
  • Launch of a minor pathway for undergraduate students interested in developing environment and sustainability knowledge and skills, adding value to their major degree

• Launch a first-of-its-kind accreditation programme that will help to embed benchmarking standards in environmental and sustainability higher education
  • Work underway to create an accreditation framework.

• Share relevant knowledge to support academics and Birkbeck students where relevant, for example, via thought-leadership guest lecturing and mentoring:
  • L&G climate teams hosted an interactive workshop during Birkbeck’s annual Climate Festival, supporting students to review and develop climate change scenarios through data analysis and group discussion
  • Five L&G colleagues mentored Birkbeck final year students as they navigated the steps to their future careers and professional development goals

Founded in 1823, Birkbeck, University of London is a world-class institution, a vibrant centre of academic excellence and London's only specialist provider of evening higher education.