Lindsay Baker, founder of Comfy and currently the first head of sustainability at WeWork, is building sustainability into "everything we do."

The disruptive co-working office startup is able to "look at corporate sustainability through a fresh lens," Baker said. She's building a team, expanding her expertise and setting lofty goals to speed up not only the operations of the company, but to use the voice and power of the company to advocate for environmental issues.

The transportation sector has notoriously high emissions, and experts have often pointed to cutting the high number of single occupancy vehicles as a potential major lever. The CEO of Scoop, a San Francisco-based carpooling startup, Rob Sadow, explained the company's new mobility paradigm. Enterprises can purchase the extra seats from a driver already headed to employees' destinations, as a form of commuter benefits, community partnership and a reduction of employees' transportation emissions, making the behavior change as convenient as possible.

"Your ZIP code should mean zip, and sadly, it doesn't, all too often," said Jeff Senne, corporate responsibility strategy and implementation leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). "Where you're born and conditions many ways determine the outcome" of the ability to have a secure financial future, he said. 

That's why PwC's "Earn Your Future" fund empowers low-income youth with literacy, financial education and technology skills.