PwC teams up with Edelman to launch Trust Leadership Institute

PwC has launched the PwC Trust Leadership Institute, a continued education initiative in partnership with Edelman. 

The institute was designed to support the next generation of C-suite leaders and equip them with skills to drive responsible and ethical decision-making for clients and consumers. 

Trust is the basis of both PwC's dedication to being a community of solvers that its clients trust and delivering sustained business outcomes, according to J.C. Lapierre, PwC chief strategy and communications officer. 

"We are all transforming at a pace that has been accelerated by the past year," Lapierre said. "How do you take that disruption, that transformation and make sure that you can live up to your commitments to deliver those business outcomes? You need to be able to build trust with all of your stakeholders." 

The Trust Leadership Institute will run three, four-month sessions a year, with participants choosing from curricula in nine different tracks, including Empowering Economic Mobility, Policy in Action and Building a Culture of Transparency.

After a short orientation, classes will be a combination of virtual and in-person learning and include lecture and cohort learning opportunities. 

For the launch, PwC formed a strategic alliance with Edelman, the firm's long-standing agency partner. A few courses will be taught by Edelman leadership and will leverage learnings from the firm’s own Trust Institute, which launched last week. 

"The focus of the Edelman Trust Institute is to study the state of trust and to help build new paths for trust building," said Russell Dubner, Edelman global vice chairman and chair of the Edelman Trust Institute. "We thought it was an incredibly powerful combination to bring in our years of expertise studying the state of trust to complement what PwC can do operationally to get the job done." 

The Trust Leadership Institute is part of PwC's three-year, $300 million commitment to Tomorrow Takes Trust, an initiative revolving around the idea that tomorrow's leaders need to listen, engage and act so companies continue earning stakeholder trust, and create outsized positive impact on business and society.