Table Stakes

What does it mean to be a corporate idealist when the company you believed in becomes the company behind one of the worst environmental disasters in American history? Christine Bader spent years doing innovative work on human rights inside BP — and then Deepwater Horizon happened. In this episode of the Read Responsibly Book Series, host Marcy Twete sits down with Christine, author of The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil, to talk about what the book still gets right twelve years later, what she'd write differently now, and what it looks like when a hyper-global career gives way to a hyper-local life as a school board member, business school faculty, and head coach of a high school girls rugby team in McMinnville, Oregon. A deeply honest conversation about idealism, accountability, and where impact actually comes from.

What does it mean for a body to belong — in sports, in the workplace, in the world? In this Pride Month episode of Table Stakes, host Marcy Twete sits down with Minneapolis author, educator, and former two-sport college athlete Ellie Roscher to discuss Fair Game: Trans Athletes and the Future of Sports, co-authored with Dr. Anna Baeth. They dig into the myths driving anti-trans sports legislation, the stories of the 20 trans athletes interviewed for the book, and why the fight over who gets to play is really a fight over who gets to belong — in locker rooms, in boardrooms, and everywhere in between. Plus: what embodied leadership looks like, why psychological safety is a structural problem before it's a personal one, and the book Ellie is working through with a group of women in commercial real estate right now.

What does it actually take to build a responsible company? Mot just a company with a sustainability department, but one where corporate citizenship is woven into strategy, operations, and culture? That's the question Dave Stangis and Katherine Valvoda Smith set out to answer nearly a decade ago, and it's the question at the heart of this conversation.Dave and Katherine join Marcy for the first episode of Table Stakes' "Read Responsibly" book series to talk about 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and Your Business — what inspired it, how it's held up across a decade of political and cultural turbulence, and what they'd add if they wrote it today. They also dig into the war over ESG terminology, the quiet disappearance of the word "ethics" from corporate vocabulary, and why the money in publishing a book is never actually in the book.

Host Marcy Twete, CEO of Veerless and author of the annual Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Book List, returns to announce a season unlike anything the podcast has done before. In the second half of 2026, Table Stakes is dedicating itself entirely to the authors behind some of the most important books in corporate responsibility and sustainability — books that have appeared on Marcy's list over the past seven years and shaped how thousands of leaders think about their work.In this trailer, Marcy shares why this moment feels different: she's approaching her 10th annual book list, she's writing her own book, and she has a question she can't stop thinking about — what does it actually take for a book to change how someone leads?Subscribe now so you don't miss a single conversation.

We're unveiling ESGPS, Veerless's new investor-ready sustainability reporting research. ESGPS combines years of research, qualitative interviews with investors, and analysis of thousands of existing reports to build more usable, narrative-driven disclosures that meet stakeholder expectations. In our conversation, we unpack what makes ESGPS different — from the Compass and Anchor frameworks to the "6 Dimensions of Stakeholder Intelligence" — and share actionable insights on how companies can adopt the new standard to elevate the clarity, trustworthiness, and impact of their ESG reporting.