The development of sustainability science, based on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research skills, is a focus of discussion in academia1. Institutional leadership for sustainability is also becoming a critical component of mainstream course offerings inside and outside universities2,3. However, these courses tend to focus on practitioners from industry, government and nongovernmental organizations. In contrast, building the next generation of academic leaders has received little attention4, and even less attention has gone to developing leaders of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary organizations that deliver education and research for sustainability. Such organizations include schools, institutes and centres within universities (for example, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, USA; African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, South Africa; University of Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership, UK), governmental and private research organizations (for example, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia; The James Hutton Institute, UK; Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Japan), cross-institutional research networks (for example, RedeClima, Brazil) and researchfocused non-governmental organizations (for example, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, India). The urgency of sustainability challenges makes it imperative to pay special attention to developing the necessary skills, experience and aptitudes of future organizational leaders within these institutions, so that they are able to provide an environment where interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science flourish. In March 2018, a group of 20 leaders, from a range of sustainability science and related institutions, met to discuss our experiences of organizational leadership5, especially the challenges we faced and the successes and failures we experienced. Our learning continued at subsequent meetings, including a recent Oceania regional meeting (http://nitro-oceania.net). Here we describe our collective views on the defining features of leadership of sustainability research organizations, call for specific endeavours to develop the future leaders of such organizations, and propose concrete steps for academia, governments and funders to foster such leadership.