One year on from the inaugural event, 黑料正能量 is hosting the second Sustainable Investment Symposium. It will explore the crossroad intersection of climate, nature, and society 鈥 and the role of sustainable investment in navigating this complex and challenging terrain.
Sessions will examine:
The event will include multiple opportunities to network and refreshments and lunch will be provided. The event will conclude with a networking drinks reception and will spotlight 黑料正能量鈥檚 commitment to sustainability, knowledge sharing, and practical tools for real-world impact.
Activity | Time | Details |
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Registration | 09:00 - 09:30 | |
Welcome | 09:30 - 09:45 | Welcome and setting the context Read more |
Welcome and setting the context Speakers:
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Planetary crossroads: re-aligning our understanding of risk and climate goals | 09:45 - 10:30 | The session will showcase how climate sensitivities can re-align climate goals, encouraging a better understanding of climate risks and sustainable investing. Read more |
There is a high degree of risk and uncertainty surrounding climate sensitivity measurement. This is accompanied by continued concerns that net zero targets alone are insufficient to achieve internationally agreed temperature goals. The session will showcase how climate sensitivities can re-align climate goals, encouraging a better understanding of climate risks and sustainable investing. Speakers:
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A decade from Paris: challenges in reaching a sustainable economy | 10:30 - 11:15 | This panel will offer expert insights into key issues, including the pitfalls of emissions reporting, the critical need to integrate biodiversity considerations, and the evolving roles of government support versus private sector leadership. Read more |
A decade after the Paris Agreement, achieving a sustainable economy remains a significant challenge. This panel will offer expert insights into key issues, including the pitfalls of emissions reporting, the critical need to integrate biodiversity considerations, and the evolving roles of government support versus private sector leadership. Speakers:
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Break | 11:15 - 11:35 | |
Impact investing: beyond theory and into practice | 11:35 - 12:20 | A panel with experience and expertise in a wide variety of impact investment areas will discuss examples of the trends, opportunities and practicalities of sourcing funding, structuring partnerships as well as of defining and measuring impact. Read more |
A year from the inaugural symposium we revisit the topic of impact investing. We follow its journey through a tumultuous year of headwinds and tailwinds both external and closer to home. Speakers:
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Lunch | 12:20 - 13:20 | |
Sustainable finance in the mid-transition | 13:20 - 14:05 | The session will explore the role of economics in addressing these challenges to support a stable, equitable, and well-funded transition to a low-carbon economy. Read more |
There is growing complexity in financing the green transition. This is driven by mid-transition risks from overlapping fossil fuel and renewable systems, reinforcing positive and negative economic feedback loops, and geoeconomic and domestic political economy pressures. The session will explore the role of economics in addressing these challenges to support a stable, equitable, and well-funded transition to a low-carbon economy. Speakers:
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Steering through complexity: stewardship in a modern world | 14:05 - 14:50 | Hear from speakers across the investment eco-system as we explore how recent events are shaping stewardship and the future direction of this important investment tool. Read more |
As global challenges intensify, the role of stewardship in long term value creation is evolving. Hear from speakers across the investment eco-system as we explore how recent events are shaping stewardship and the future direction of this important investment tool. Speakers:
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Break | 14:50 - 15:00 | |
Turning insight into action | 15:00 - 15:45 | The final session of the symposium will focus on translating the day's insights into meaningful action, demonstrating how actuaries, investment professionals and other experts can drive real-world impact. Read more |
The final session of the symposium will focus on translating the day's insights into meaningful action, demonstrating how actuaries, investment professionals and other experts can drive real-world impact. Speakers:
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Closing remarks | 15:45 - 16:00 | Wrap-up and next steps Read more |
Wrap-up and next steps | ||
Networking drinks reception | 16:00 - 18:00 | Informal networking and discussion Read more |
Informal networking and discussion |
Carole Bernard is an index and markets specialist with 20+ years鈥 experience bridging investment teams and distribution across multi-asset, ESG, ETFs, and structured products. At Bloomberg she helped launch Paris-Aligned and other ESG index solutions, advising global institutional allocators and banks on index licensing, data, and product strategy. MSc-trained, Carole focuses on product construction鈥攚here regulation, market plumbing, and real-economy financing meet鈥攖ranslating policy signals into portfolio and index design, and into capital-markets tools that unlock scalable decarbonisation.
Accomplished investment officer and board member with over 20 years of experience across the entire investment value chain: strategic leadership, portfolio construction, risk management and corporate governance. Proven track record of navigating complex financial markets and regulatory environments while fostering long-term, sustainable growth for global institutions. Deeply committed to integrating ESG principles and driving responsible investment strategies.
Mark is Sector Lead 鈥 Cities and Government at Aviva Capital Partners, where he drives investment in regeneration, housing, and sustainable infrastructure.
With a background in public and private sector leadership, Mark has held senior roles at the UK Infrastructure Bank, Liverpool City Council, and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. He has 20 years of experience in unlocking long-term value through place-based investment strategies.
Recent highlights include aspirational housing in under-invested neighbourhoods and investment partnerships to unlock development in Norwich.
Christine has 25+ years鈥 experience in investment management, research & consulting, with a focus on technology, governance and sustainability.
Her PhD thesis on responsible investment was short-listed for a United Nations award in Sweden for industry relevance and academic excellence. She is the Board Chairman of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), an organization led by investors responsible for assets under management of around $US 77 trillion from over 39 countries and territories. She was appointed an honorary adviser to the Accounting and Financial Reporting Council (AFRC) Hong Kong and the Convenor (Chair) of the AFRC Sustainability and Climate Action Task Force (SCATF).
She is an Emeritus Governor of the London School of Economics (LSE), following the completion of her six-year term as a Member of Court and Investment Committee (2015-2021). She was a member in the Data Governance Task Force of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Artificial Intelligence; and an Adjunct Professor in Finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where she established the first tri-modal graduate course on social entrepreneurship and impact investing, supported by funds from family foundation and the government.
In 2019, She was named top 30 Inspirational Women in the City of London. In 2020, She won the Finance Monthly Women in Finance Award as the Investment Management Leader of the Year (Asia). In 2022, she won the Sustainable and ESG Investment Woman of the Year Women in Investment Award (large firms) of InvestmentWeek.
Christine is a graduate of the London School of Economics and the University of Melbourne. She completed an executive education course on financial engineering at Stanford University.
Prior to joining Tracker Group, she was Managing Director at UBS Asset Management. She also worked at Credit Suisse, HSBC, Federated Hermes and Schroders and was a board member of HSBC Asset Management UK Limited.
Charlie is an Associate Director at the Green Finance Institute and leads its programmes on nature-related risk and resilience.
This includes heading up UK market engagement for the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), the development of Nature-Positive Transition Pathways (NPPs) for the UK economy with WWF-UK, and work on structuring regional private sector co-investments for nature-based solutions across the UK.
Neha Dutt is the Policy Lead for Greening Finance at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In her role, she works to ensure that corporates, FIs and financial regulators incorporate nature-related risks and opportunities into business and investment risk management and decisions. Prior to joining Defra, Neha led country, sovereign and FI risk management for SSA at Barclays and then for LatAm and EEMEA at Deutsche Bank, for over 7 years.
脡tienne Espagne is a senior climate economist at the World Bank EFI chief economist office and an associate researcher at CERDI.
His research focuses on building theories, models and methodologies to assess the macro-financial aspects of low-carbon policies as well as climate and nature impacts, especially in the context of developing and emerging economies. He co-leads two major programs at the World Bank on analytical tool development and capacity development for finance ministries.
Prior to this, as a senior economist at AFD (Agence Fran莽aise de D茅veloppement), the bilateral development bank for the French government, he developed and contributed to a research program on the modelization and evaluation of climate damages, adaptation and mitigation strategies in developing and emerging economies.
He holds a PhD in environmental economics from the 脡cole des Hautes 脡tudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and is also a graduate from the French 脡cole des Mines de Paris and the Paris School of Economics. He has published several papers in academic journals in the field of climate change and energy economics, and regularly teaches at Paris 1 University, EHESS, Ecole Polytechnique and ENSTA Paristech.
He has previously worked at France Strat茅gie, CEPII and CIRED.
Robert Gilhooly is the Senior Emerging Markets Economist within Global Macro Research of Aberdeen Investments, responsible for research and monitoring of major emerging market economies. Robert joined the company in 2019 from the Bank of England where he worked as a Senior Economist covering Asia. With a primary focus on China macroeconomics, Robert also monitored financial stability across the country, as well as reporting on the global outlook to the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. Prior to this, he held an economist role at the Office for National Statistics for six years, where he worked on national accounts and big data analytics. Robert graduated with an MSc in economics from London University, Birkbeck college.
Dan Grandage is Chief Sustainable Investment Officer at , where he leads the company鈥檚 sustainable investment strategy and the Sustainable Investment team. His role is pivotal in driving the company鈥檚 commitment to integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into its investment processes.
Dan represents Aberdeen on the FTSE Russell Sustainability Committee, the TISA Responsible Investing Committee, and is involved in a number of Investment Association sustainable finance working groups. Dan joined the company in 2013 from WSP Group, where he spent over 15 years as an environmental and energy consultant.
William Hynes is a Senior Climate Change Economist at the World Bank, an Honorary Professor of UCL and an External Applied Complexity Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. He works on integrating climate issues into the Bank鈥檚 macroeconomic analysis and dialogue and is co-Director of the Coalition for Capacity on Climate Action (C3A). He previously served as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary General and Head of New Approaches to Economic Challenges (NAEC) at OECD. He holds a DPhil from Oxford University.
Amy is an impact measurement and management expert with over a decade鈥檚 experience in the UK and internationally.
Prior to joining TGE, Amy worked for 黑料正能量s England, the UK government鈥檚 arms-length body sponsored by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. There, she led performance improvement initiatives across its development, investments, affordable housing and Help to Buy portfolios including the agency鈥檚 refresh of its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to support its new strategy. She also developed performance reports and deep dive assessments for senior agency and government stakeholders.
Previously, she worked for the Commonwealth Secretariat, managing organisation-level performance reporting to the Board of Commonwealth High Commissioners and providing technical assistance to member government representatives to support the establishment of monitoring systems for newly developed policies and programmes.
Amy also worked as a Performance Advisor for the international NGO Christian Aid, where she established and managed community-led monitoring, evaluation and learning frameworks for large and complex / multi-country climate resilience, governance and health programmes.
Amy is passionate about supporting clients to collect, understand and use quality evidence to maximise their positive social and environmental impact and the achievement of priority outcomes for communities through their decisions.
Amy has a degree in Modern Languages (Spanish and Portuguese) from Oxford University, and a Masters in International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London).
Ethan leads the Planetrics client service team, leveraging Planetrics analytics and insights to support banks, investors, the insurance industry, and corporates on climate and energy transition impact, risk, and opportunity topics.
Lauren Juliff is Storebrand Asset Management鈥檚 climate and sustainability product lead. Lauren has written widely on the use of climate data in portfolio construction, regulation and reporting and, in particular, how that topic impacts institutional pension funds in the UK. Lauren also leads SAM鈥檚 UK institutional business and has over 20 years鈥 experience of working with institutional clients and consultants, with a particular focus on the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS). Lauren has an MSc in Climate Change and a BSc (hons) in Mathematics. In 2021 Lauren wrote an award-winning dissertation on the management of climate related investment risks in the LGPS and was recently shortlisted for Professional Pensions Sustainability and ESG woman of the year.
Valeria Piani is Head of Stewardship at Phoenix Group. She joined the firm in 2021 to lead the in-house stewardship team and collaborate with Phoenix鈥檚 Asset Management partners to influence ESG performance by investee companies.
She has over 17 years of experience in the industry and has held several senior positions at different firms. She joined UBS Asset Management in 2017 as Strategic Engagement Lead, responsible for the manager鈥檚 climate change engagement programme, stewardship reporting and integration research in the industrial sector.
Before this, Valeria worked for nine years at the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) where she managed a team of 11 members responsible for coordinating investor collaborative engagement activities with companies on a range of ESG issues. At the PRI, she supported over 30 investor coalitions involving more than 200 asset owners and investment managers. Topics included, among others, director nomination, gender diversity, emissions reduction and human rights. Her recent publications include reports on engaging on climate change and the added value of stewardship more broadly.
Her research on the effectiveness of shareholders鈥 collaborative engagement activities with companies on ESG issues has been published by the Business & Society Journal and Emerald Group Publishing and was selected by the editors as an Outstanding Author Contribution in the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence.
In addition to being a non-executive director of the Investor Forum Board, Valeria is also the Chair of the CA100+ Global Steering Committee and a member of the IIGCC Advisory Group of Corporate Programme, the PRI Advisory Committee of Advance and the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance Engagement Track.
Rosalind is a Life and GI Actuary with nearly 25 years of professional experience and is currently an EMEA Actuary for the Corporate Actuarial Team in Zurich Insurance. Her broader working background is diverse and covers IFRS 17, Strategic Initiatives, Business Planning, Capital Management, Modelling, and With-profits. Rosalind is a member of 黑料正能量鈥檚 Sustainability Board and the IAALS Board Deputy Chair.
As well as being the Sustainable Investment Conference 2024 Chair and this year's Co-Chair, she has also chaired the 2022 Life Conference Committee, and presented and chaired sessions at previous IFoA and IAA Conferences and events, written feature articles in The Actuary magazine, and authored various IFoA blogs.
CEO & Co-Founder, Tumelo
is CEO and co-founder of Tumelo, a UK-based fintech innovator transforming the way investors engage with the companies they own. Under Georgia鈥檚 leadership, Tumelo has pioneered platforms that enable pension members and retail investors to see which companies they鈥檙e invested in and express their views on key shareholder votes 鈥 bringing transparency, stewardship, and democracy to the heart of investing.
With a background in natural sciences from Cambridge University, Georgia has worked in sustainable finance, equity analysis, and venture capital. She is a passionate advocate for using technology to empower investors and drive positive environmental and social impact through better corporate engagement.
Will is a climate and disaster risk actuary at the Government Actuary鈥檚 Department, specialising in supporting public sector organisations navigate climate-related risks.
Will has wider public sector actuarial experience working across public sector pensions and government-backed insurance-type arrangements.
Will is also on 黑料正能量 Sustainability Early Careers Board and a committee member of the Civil Service Climate and Environment Network.
Sandy is the Past-Chair of the 黑料正能量 Sustainability Board and is a member of the International Actuarial Association鈥檚 Climate Change and Sustainability Committee. He is the lead author of a series of collaborative research reports which bring together science and risk, seeking to improve policymaker level risk management. The latest report, 鈥Planetary Solvency 鈥 finding our balance with nature鈥, explores how actuarial techniques can help society manage climate change and other risks.
This builds on the findings from 鈥Climate Scorpion 鈥 the sting is in the tail鈥, which highlighted concerns around carbon budgets being unrealistic and 鈥The Emperor鈥檚 New Climate Scenarios鈥 鈥 which highlighted the limitations of commonly used climate scenarios.
Sandy鈥檚 personal mission is to help reconnect finance and the economy to nature and the biosphere to deliver a future worth living in.
He works with investors and advises a number of regulatory and policymaker groups on these topics.
Carbon Tracker is an independent financial think tank that carries out in-depth analysis on the impact of the energy transition on capital markets and the potential investment in high-cost, carbon-intensive fossil fuels.
Its team of financial market, energy and legal experts apply groundbreaking research using leading industry databases to map both risk and opportunity for investors on the path to a low-carbon future.
It has cemented the terms 鈥渃arbon bubble鈥, 鈥渦nburnable carbon鈥 and 鈥渟tranded assets鈥 into the financial and environmental lexicon.
Carbon Tracker operates as part of alongside . The Tracker Group looks to exploit synergies between the climate-focused research undertaken by Carbon Tracker and the nature-based research undertaken by Planet Tracker. As these two agendas increasingly converge, the Tracker Group will be in a position to lead on these intersecting areas.
Sustainable Investor (formerly ESG Investor) is a global media and events platform focused on institutional investors, asset owners, and their advisers, published by Sustainable Media Group. With a mission to connect asset owners with the investment managers and service providers shaping sustainable finance, the brand provides in-depth editorial, reports, data, and events that address investors鈥 priorities with 拢25bn+ AUM. Sustainable Investor will shape, scrutinise and explain the strategies being developed by the largest asset owners to bridge the gap between today鈥檚 common challenges and tomorrow鈥檚 solutions.