John Alker, director of policy and communications, UK-GBC
John has been working at UK-GBC since shortly after its launch in 2007. He leads on programme strategy, policy, government relations, campaigns and communications, and led the development of UK-GBC’s current three year strategic plan. John works in conjunction with the World GBC and was author of the 2014 global report on health, wellbeing and productivity of office occupiers.
Prior to joining the UK-GBC he led political communications on the EU emissions trading scheme and sustainable homes campaign for WWF-UK, where he managed a trip to the Arctic with David Cameron. He has also previously worked as an MP’s researcher and speech-writer in the House of Commons and in commercial public affairs.
Craig Bennett, chief executive, Friends of the Earth
Since 2010, Craig has led Friends of the Earth as director of policy and campaigns. Under his campaign leadership, Friends of the Earth achieved a number of notable successes such as securing political commitments to introduce a decarbonisation target for the power sector in 2016 and securing a national pollinator strategy to reverse the decline of bee populations.
Prior to joining Friends of the Earth, he was deputy director at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and director of the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on climate change. He’s a policy fellow at the University of Cambridge, and lectures at other universities and business schools.
Wendy Berliner, head of editorial, Guardian Professional Networks
Wendy is an award-winning journalist who has spent half her career at the Guardian working across news and features. She is a former education features editor of the Independent and has edited the Times Educational Supplement. Wendy rejoined the Guardian in 2011 after a two-year spell in Dubai where she was the first director of parental engagement for the world’s largest group of international schools.
Wendy is now head of editorial of the Guardian’s online professional networks. The 15 networks have been developed since 2011 and now have more than 700,000 members, 700,000 Twitter followers and around 60 million unique browsers in the year to date.
Deborah Doane, former director, World Development Movement
Deborah is a campaigner, writer and consultant on sustainable development, corporate responsibility and ethical trade. She blogs regularly for the Guardian on sustainable business and development issues. Her insight comes from the NGO sector where she’s held a number of senior roles, including as director of the World Development Movement, head of sustainable consumption for WWF-UK, and director of the Core Coalition. She has been a trustee of the Fairtrade Foundation and recently spent two years in India working with and writing about social movements and social enterprise.
Paul Ekins, professor of resources and environment policy and director, UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London
Paul is professor of resources and environment policy and director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London. A co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre, he is also chairman of the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), which promotes resource efficiency in industry. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution from 2002-2008.
He has extensive experience consulting for business, government and international organisations, and has been a contributor to HRH the Prince of Wales’s Business & Sustainability Programme for senior executives, and the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
John Elkington, executive chairman and co-founder, Volans Ventures
John is a writer and a serial entrepreneur. He is an authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development and is credited with coining the “triple bottom line”.
John serves on some 30 boards, where a key part of his role is to channel the future into the present across a wide range of disciplines. He has just released a new book alongside Jochen Zeitz entitled, The Breakthrough Challenge.
David Grayson, professor of corporate responsibility and director of the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Cranfield School of Management
David became professor of corporate responsibility and director of the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility in April 2007, after a 30-year career as a social entrepreneur and campaigner for responsible business, diversity, and small business development. This included the chairmanship of the UK’s National Disability Council and several other government bodies, as well as serving as a joint managing-director of Business in the Community.
He was a visiting senior fellow at the CSR Initiative of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard from 2005-10.
He now also chairs the national charity Carers UK, which champions and supports the contribution of the 6.5 million Britons who at any one time are caring for a loved one.
Oliver Greenfield, convenor, Green Economy Coalition
The Green Economy Coalition is the world’s largest multi-stakeholder network for action on green, fair and inclusive economies. It works to create convergence of different agendas: jobs, industry, environment, poverty reduction and economics to find shared policy and action.
Prior to this, Oliver led WWF’s sustainable business and economics work, where he pioneered systemic stakeholder change programmes. Before WWF, Oliver managed change in the public sector and in industry, as the senior strategist for the BBC World Service and as a business strategy consultant for Booz Company. He has worked with many organisations and cultures for social, environmental and economic value.
Emma Howard Boyd, non-executive director, Menhaden Capital PLC
Emma has spent her career working in financial services, initially in corporate finance, and then in fund management, specialising in sustainable investment and corporate governance at Jupiter Asset Management.
She is currently the chair of trustees for ShareAction, the movement for responsible investment. She is also deputy chair of the Environment Agency, vice chair of Future Cities Catapult, and a member of the board of Menhaden Capital plc , the 30% Club steering committee and the executive board of the Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project.
Catherine Howarth, chief executive, ShareAction
Catherine is chief executive of ShareAction, an NGO that promotes and facilitates responsible investment by pension funds, foundations, asset managers and individual shareholders. ShareAction has trained hundreds of people in the art of effective interventions on sustainability issues at the AGMs of the UK’s largest public companies.
Catherine is a board member of the Scott Trust and of Green Alliance. She serves on the investment committee of Trust for London, an endowed charitable trust.
Mark Kenber, chief executive, The Climate Group
Mark is chief executive of NGO The Climate Group. He has worked on climate change for 15 years and is an expert on international climate policy. Before becoming CEO, Mark was The Climate Group’s deputy CEO and international policy director.
Prior to joining The Climate Group, Mark was senior policy officer for WWF’s International Climate Change Programme, focusing on carbon market and finance issues. During this time he led the creation of the CDM Gold Standard, a tool for channelling carbon market investments into sustainable clean energy projects. He has also been director of planning at Fundacion Natura, and climate change adviser to the Ecuadorian government.
Tony Juniper, campaigner, writer, sustainability adviser and environmentalist
Tony is an independent sustainability and environment adviser, including special adviser with the Prince’s Charities International Sustainability Unit, fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and as president of Society for the Environment. He is a founder member of the Robertsbridge group that advises international companies. He speaks and writes on many aspects of sustainability and is the author of several books.
He began his career as an ornithologist, working with Birdlife International. From 1990 he worked at Friends of the Earth and was the organisation’s executive director from 2003-2008 and vice chair of Friends of the Earth International from 2000-2008. His latest book, What Nature does for Britain, will be published in February 2015.
Peter Maddox, operations manager, WRAP
As operations manager at WRAP, Peter is currently responsible for the delivery of WRAP’s resource efficiency programmes in England and Scotland. He works closely with government, environment and economic policy teams. In eight years with WRAP, he has led its work on closed loop plastics recycling, corporate research on resource efficiency and the current business strategy built around a circular economy framework. He has recently established a new partnership in London with the London Waste and Recycling Board to address the specific challenge of urban environments.
Patrick Mallon, field director, Business in the Community
Patrick has more than 20 years’ experience working on corporate responsibility issues for Business in the Community. During this time he has worked with many of the leading listed companies in the UK.
At Business in the Community he spent the 90s working on the environmental campaign, was one of the original architects of the environment and CR Indices, and established BITC’s reporting and advisory services team. As the field director he is responsible for BITC’s operations throughout the UK and has oversight of our rural and international work.
Patrick has been a member of FTSE4 Good Policy Committee that oversees the Investible Index, a judge on the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) Environmental and Social Reporting Awards and is currently a member of ACCA’s Social and Environmental Committee and a member of HRH The Prince of Wales Accounting for Sustainability initiative.
David Nussbaum, chief executive, WWF-UK
David became chief executive of WWF-UK in 2007 and chairs WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative. He is also non-executive chair of Transparency International UK, and sits on the Marks & Spencer Sustainable Retail Advisory Board and the board of the IIRC.
David joined Oxfam in 1997 as finance director and a deputy CEO and was later seconded to head up Oxfam’s operations in India. In 2002 David joined Transparency International as chief executive.
Meryam Omi, head of sustainability, Legal & General Investment Management
Meryam has overall responsibility for engaging on sustainability topics at LGIM. She is leading the project to integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects into the fundamental research of mainstream funds. She is also responsible for developing corporate governance policies in the Asia Pacific regions and for carrying out sector/theme specific engagements on sustainability topics, such as climate change, water and tax.
Meryam joined LGIM in 2004 to manage teams of new business proposal writers and to carry out marketing and sales projects across a wide range of LGIM’s products and capabilities. In 2010, she joined the corporate governance team to lead the ESG engagement effort as LGIM signed up to the UN principles of responsible investment and the UK stewardship code.
Sue Riddlestone, chief executive and co-founder, Bioregional
Sue co-founded Bioregional in 1994 with her husband. They initiated the BedZED eco-village in south London, where they live and where Bioregional has its headquarters. Bioregional works with partners around the world and in 2006 Sue and her team advised on the sustainability strategy for Masdar City, a planned city project in Abu Dhabi.
In 2005, Sue worked with the London 2012 bid team to write the sustainability strategy Towards a One Planet Olympics, with Bioregional subsequently helping to deliver the greenest Games ever. Sue draws on the work of Bioregional and partners to change policy and industry practice, from zero carbon policy to eco towns and the UN sustainable development goals. In 2013 Sue was awarded an OBE for her work on sustainable business and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
John Sauven, executive director, Greenpeace UK
John has been executive director of Greenpeace UK since September 2007. Before that he was the director responsible for Greenpeace communications and working on solutions with business. With a background in forests he was instrumental in getting protection for the Great Bear temperate rainforest on Canada’s west coast. It was an epic battle, mostly fought in the marketplace between logging companies, timber traders and their retail customers in Europe and North America. Lessons learnt in the Great Bear campaign were used elsewhere, including in Indonesia, the Congo in central Africa and the Amazon.
John co-ordinated the international campaign to secure a moratorium on further destruction of the Amazon by soya producers. It involved eventually bringing together an alliance of US and European mulitinationals along with Brazilian counterparts. It was one of Greenpeace’s most successful campaigns to protect large areas of the world’s last intact rainforests.
Alison Tickell, director, Julie’s Bicycle
Alison established Julie’s Bicycle in 2007 as a non-profit, helping the music industry reduce its environmental impacts and develop new thinking in tune with global environmental challenges. Julie’s Bicycle has since extended its remit to many other art forms and is acknowledged as the leading organisation bridging sustainability with the arts and culture.
Trained as a cellist, Alison worked with seminal jazz improviser and teacher John Stevens. She worked for many years with socially excluded young people as development director at Community Music, and then at Creative and Cultural Skills where she established the National Skills Academy for the music industry. She is a school governor, a 2011 London Leader, adviser to Tonic, a judge on the Observer Ethical Awards and the Royal College of Arts Sustainable Design Awards, and a fellow of the RSA.
Solitaire Townsend, co-founder, Futerra
Solitaire co-founded Futerra, a sustainable development communications agency, working with big brands, NGOs and government departments to make sustainable development so desirable it becomes normal.
She advises global brands including Unilever, Greenpeace, ASDA, Danone as well as the United Nations on delivering green messages. Solitaire is passionate (and occasionally argumentative) about the need to make sustainability desirable rather than doom-laden.
She was named Ethical Entrepreneur of the Year 2008, is a member of the United Nations Sustainable Lifestyles Taskforce, chair of the UK Green Energy Scheme, and is a London Leader for sustainability.
Steve Trent, executive director, Environmental Justice Foundation
Steve has worked for 25 years in environmental advocacy, campaigning for the protection of natural resources, the environment and human rights and implementing solutions to ensure long-term sustainability. He has conducted investigations and trained environmental and human rights advocates in more than 25 countries. Steve has been involved in campaigns on marine issues, the illegal trade in ozone-depleting substances, illegal wildlife trade and illegal logging, orangutan conservation, illegal pirate fishing and environmental governance.
As a campaigner and campaigns director for the Environmental Investigation Agency from 1989 to 1999, Steve contributed to protecting the natural world from environmental crime and abuse.
In his executive roles at WildAid as president and at the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) since 1999, Steve has led both organisations to leverage positive change cost effectively and sustainably across a wide range of issues.
Sally Uren, chief executive, Forum for the Future
Sally has overall responsibility for delivering Forum’s mission to create a sustainable future and is closely involved in projects such as Tea2030, Retail Horizons and Net Positive – a concept she helped get off the ground. She serves on advisory boards for Kingfisher, Kimberly Clark and the C+A Foundation among others, and chairs Forum’s US advisory board. She is a regular speaker at international conferences, and contributes to everything from Management Today to the Huffington Post and is also a judge for the Observer Ethical Awards and the Queens Award for Sustainable Development.
Burkhard Varnholt, chief investment officer, Julius Baer
Burkhard is head investment solutions group, chief investment officer and member of the executive board of Bank Julius Baer & Co since March 2014. Prior to joining Bank Julius Baer, he held similar executive positions with Bank J. Safra, Sarasin Co and Credit Suisse group.
Burkhard has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Stern School of Business, New York University. In 2004, Burkhard founded the charity Kids of Africa, which runs an orphanage for homeless children in Uganda. In 2006 he was awarded the Swiss Re Civilian Services Prize and in 2012 received an honorary doctorate in international relations from the Geneva School of Diplomacy for his work on this project.
Frances Way, co-chief operating officer, CDP
Frances oversees the delivery and strategy of CDP’s (Carbon Disclosure Project) programmes. This involves working with investor, company and city stakeholders on climate change, water, and deforestation issues for the international non-profit, which provides the only global system for companies and cities to measure, disclose, manage, and share vital environmental information. Frances joined CDP in 2007. Previously, she spent eight years in the finance sector, primarily in Dresdner Kleinwort’s global equities division, where she was responsible for communications between the European research and sales teams. She sits on the board of EIRIS, an ethical investment organisation.
