The Nature & Biodiversity Challenge

Marian is the Global Head of Risk & Sustainability at GFG Alliance. 

Prior to joining GFG, she was a Managing Director at Redington and before that led Deloitte’s Trustee Advisory team in London. Her experience covers pension risk management, sustainability, trusteeship, scheme actuarial work, corporate advisory and investment consulting.

Mark has worked with institutional investors around the world for the past 30 years working for firms including WTW, AGI, Russell and Robeco.

More recently, he has transitioned to focussing on a range of projects. He provides advice and raises capital for ventures and private market firms.

He works with a number of FinTech businesses, and he has a particular passion for innovative firms focused on addressing the challenges of developing natural capital as an asset class, with a particular focus on the blue economy and aquaculture.

Sally is Chair at Brunel Pension Partnership and at the Development Bank of Wales, as well as non-executive director at insurers Pension Insurance Corporation and Royal & Sun Alliance. 

Her non-executive portfolio has included roles at the Nuclear Liabilities Fund, NEST Corporation and the Lloyds Bank pension schemes and as Chair of the first local government pensions pool, Local Pensions Partnership Investments (LPPI) Limited.  She was CEO of the BP Pension Scheme in the interesting years of 2007-14 after twenty years with Aon Hewitt working as a pensions consultant and in investment research and innovation.

Paul joined LPFA in October 2022, and is responsible for developing and overseeing the implementation of LPFA’s approach to responsible investment, including their net zero commitments. 

Paul has worked in the responsible investment industry for 20 years. Prior to joining LPFA, he had 14 years working at Minerva with institutional investors – including a portfolio of LGPS clients – on a variety of stewardship-related solutions including proxy voting, monitoring of manager voting, RI policy development, company engagement and stewardship reporting. He also spent 4 years working for Vigeo Eiris (later Moody’s ESG), providing ESG integration-related solutions to investors. 

Paul has also served as Vice-Chair of the Pension Advisory Board at the Essex Pension Fund, as well as member of the Pensions Climate Risk Industry Group, which was tasked with drawing up guidance for the private pensions industry in the UK to meet climate risk reporting regulations.

Mark is the Climate & Sustainability Lead at The Pensions Regulator (TPR), responsible for developing the regulatory response to climate change and sustainability disclosure requirements and delivering TPR’s Climate Change Strategy. He brings 30 years of experience working predominantly in the public sector.

Prior to joining the TPR, Mark worked for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) within the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, where he led on climate change and sustainability. During his time at MoD, Mark contributed to the Defence Climate Change and Sustainability Review, which ultimately led to the publication of the Climate Change and Sustainability Approach in 2021. 

In tandem, he developed a Defence Energy and Emissions Strategy, and was involved in work to mobilise third party capital to invest in renewables across the Defence estate, before attending COP26 as part of the Cabinet Office’s COP26 Unit.

Just before leaving the MoD to join TPR, he was busy supporting across sector work to integrate climate risks into sustainable land management and specifically brownfield land development.

Emma has been at the forefront of developments in stewardship, ESG, sustainable investment for 25 years.

She is an expert in change management and the development and implementation of policy and strategy. The power of strong partnerships, effective change management, commercial acumen and good humour are cornerstones of Emma’s approach to work. 

Kerry is the Executive Director for Capital Markets & Fundraising at Accounting for Sustainability (A4S), where she is responsible for leading their Capital Markets programme to accelerate awareness and action towards a global sustainable financial system.  

This includes running the A4S Asset Owners Network for pension fund chairs, supporting their commitments to embed sustainability into their strategic and investment decisions; convening senior finance to address specific challenges faced by the financial sector; and leading on guidance to scale up adoption of sustainable action by pension scheme trustees and finance within the banking and insurance sectors.

Having worked on numerous sustainability initiatives of His Majesty King Charles III, Kerry first joined A4S in 2006 and returned in 2017, to drive support for and adoption across a global CFO community on the recommendations of the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). 

Arne Philipp Klug, as Director of Biodiversity Research for MSCI, oversees thematic research on biodiversity and natural capital. He engages with investors and key stakeholders to help clients set and prioritize their investment objectives to biodiversity. In addition, Arne serves on the ESG Editorial Committee.

 

Until 2021, Arne has led MSCI’S ESG research on the transportation sector. He authored several reports on ESG issues with a special focus on the automobiles and airlines industries.

 

Prior to joining MSCI, Arne worked for more than six years as an ESG analyst and account manager at Sustainalytics in Frankfurt and Toronto. Arne holds a master’s degree in communications science, political economics and Hispanic studies from the University of Münster in Germany.

Marion has a long background in public policy issues at regional, national and European level.  This included a number of years working for the Environment Agency in England as a senior adviser on the environmental regulation of renewable technologies and the oil and gas industry.

Marion started working for the Environment Agency Pension Fund in 2018, following a period as trustee to the Fund. 

Ruth is an Investment Director in the Gresham House Sustainable Infrastructure Team. 

Ruth has been with Gresham House since 2020. The move to asset management marked a career change for Ruth who was previously a senior partner in a top 100 law firm leading the Energy, Waste and Projects teams. 

The Sustainable Infrastructure Team manage the BSIF Funds’ strategies, investing in new Sustainable Infrastructure that can support and accelerate the changes and innovative solutions required to address key environmental and societal challenges whilst also delivering attractive returns. 

Ruth is the co-fund manager of the Gresham House Biodiversity Co-Invest strategy, a dedicated vehicle to fund portfolio company, Environment Bank, in establishing biodiversity rich habitat banks across England, catalysed by the introduction of mandatory biodiversity net gain for planning permissions under the Environment Act 2021. 

Ruth is a director of Environment Bank, and two of the BSIF Funds’ waste portfolio companies. 

Julius spent his executive career working with DC pensions in both the insurance and asset management industries. In his subsequent non-executive career, Julius has held a number of independent pension and investment governance roles. He was one of the founding trustee directors of NEST Corporation and chaired both its investment and risk committees.

Bobby is a Senior Pensions leader, who has over 25 years of experience advising both trustees and employers of Occupational Defined Benefit (DB) and Defined Contribution (DC) schemes.

Bobby is a qualified Actuary and a council member of AIMSE. He is a past Chair of the Association of Consulting Actuaries Investment Sub-Committee and has also served on the Finance and Investment Board of the Institute of Actuaries. 

He is a past winner of the MallowStreet Most Influential Investment Advisor Award, and has also twice won the industry Battle of the Bands, as a Bass player. 

Bobby is also a regular speaker on pensions issues at various conferences, and has participated as a judge for a number of industry awards. He has held leadership roles in areas including ESG, professional standards and governance, asset liability modelling and liability driven investment.

Eveliina is a Product Strategist in the Sustainable Indexing Team, and is responsible for the development, distribution and client engagement of BlackRock’s sustainable equity index funds and bespoke client mandates. 

In her previous role at BlackRock, Eveliina focused on the sustainability data available across the Aladdin platform, including Aladdin Climate risk offering. 

Prior to joining BlackRock, Eveliina spent 6 years working as a multi-asset class risk and portfolio optimisation specialist.

She holds a degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Strathclyde. 

Nick Spencer is a Founder at Gordian Advice and a Senior Consultant at Milliman. He is an award-winning thought leader with over 30 years of risk and investment experience. Nick helps clients develop practical capabilities for the challenges of tomorrow. More specifically, he leverages systems thinking to identify resilience-building and opportunity-making pragmatic actions and thus helps create solutions for a world at risk. 

Nick is the author of Accounting for Sustainability’s Nature-Risk guide. He regularly contributes to The Actuary, the IFoA Blog and papers for Milliman.

Nick has been an early proponent of integrating Biodiversity risks. He received a President’s Award for helping develop the IFoA’s Biodiversity Policy and has been an expert witness to the UK Parliament’s Environment Audit Committee. 

Nick is an advocate for aligning the asset management industry with a broader societal purpose; he recently co-authored a paper on Climate Change Inequalities. 

Darran leads the WYPF Alternatives team to deliver diversified, risk-adjusted returns aligned with long-term themes and beliefs critical to West Yorkshire Pension Fund and its members.