Road to COP26: Getting Finance Fit for Net Zero
Join leading experts from Moody's and the international community for our 6th annual Climate Week NYC Event
Key discussion topics:
- How carbon transition risks will shape credit quality across the most exposed industries
- Why transparency on data and disclosure is critical to understanding long-term climate commitments
- The role of sustainable debt markets in financing net zero strategies
Moody’s is thrilled to partner with Climate Bonds Initiative for the 5th consecutive year, for our 6th annual Climate Week NYC event. Join us as we discuss how carbon transition risks will shape credit quality across the most exposed industries, why transparency on data and disclosure is critical to understanding long-term climate commitments, and the role of sustainable debt markets in financing net zero strategies.
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Agenda09:08 - 09:10EDT
Welcome remarks
09:10 - 09:30EDT09:35 - 10:15EDT10:15 - 10:35EDT10:35 - 11:15EDTBringing transparency to net zero commitments
- What challenges are companies facing for their net zero commitments
- What data are investors looking for to understand companies’ net zero plans?
- How can currently available data, such as temperature alignment datasets, provide insight on net zero progress?
11:20 - 12:00EDTScaling finance for net zero
An introduction by Sean Kidney, Chief Executive Officer of Climate Bonds Initiative
Followed by a panel discussion:
- How are sustainable debt labels and structures evolving to facilitate the transition to net zero?
- What role will market standards and regulations play making finance an impactful tool for accelerating transition?
- How are investors and other market participants combating the potential for greenwashing?
12:00 - 12:05EDTClosing remarks
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SpeakersSean Kidney Chief Executive Officer Climate Bonds Initiative
Nigel Topping UN High-Level Climate Action Champion COP26
Sarah Wilson Managing Director, Head of ESG Integration Nuveen
Jeanne-Mey Sun, Ph.D Chief Sustainability Officer NRG Energy, Inc.
Cynthia Cummis SBTi Steering Committee member
Hewson Baltzell President & Chief Operating Officer Helios Exchange
Richard Manley GLT-Managing Director, Head of Sustainable Investing CPP Investments
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Rob Fauber became President and Chief Executive Officer of Moody’s Corporation on January 1, 2021 and was elected to the Board of Directors effective October 22,2020. Rob joined Moody’s in 2005 and has held multiple leadership roles at Moody’s. Until his appointment as CEO, he was Moody’s Chief Operating Officer and drove strategic initiatives across the company. He served as President of Moody’s Investors Service from 2016 to 2019 and was Head of Moody’s Investors Service’s Global Commercial Group from 2013 to 2016, overseeing relationship management, product development, and strategy for the rating agency. Rob has also served as Head of Moody’s Corporate Development. Prior to Moody’s, he held roles in alternative investments, corporate strategy & business development, and investment banking at Citi. Rob earned his B.A. in economics from the University of Virginia and his M.B.A. from the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. He and his wife have two children.
Nigel Topping, CMG was appointed by the UK Prime Minister as UN Climate Change High Level Champion for COP26. In this role Nigel mobilised global private sector and local government to take bold action on climate change, launching the Race To Zero and Race To Resilience campaigns and, with Mark Carney, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. Nigel is now a global advisor to governments, financial institutions and private companies on climate and industrial strategy. He is a non-executive director of the UK Infrastructure Bank, an Honorary Professor of Economics at Exeter University and was awarded the honor of CMG in Queen Elizabeth’s final honors list in 2022.
Nigel read Mathematics at St Johns and won two rugby blues, before entering a career in the manufacturing industry.
James Leaton is a senior vice president in Moody’s global environmental, social and governance (ESG) team. In this capacity, James leads the global ESG research and outreach strategy and is a primary spokesperson on ESG. James is the lead architect of Moody’s carbon transition assessment of companies in high impact sectors. James brings expertise across environmental issues, especially climate change risk and the energy transition. James is a regular participant at high-profile market briefings, external conferences, media engagements and policy discussions related to climate risk. Prior to joining Moody’s. James was previously Research Director at Carbon Tracker - a house - where he led a team producing thematic energy research combining elements of climate change scenarios with financial analysis. James was lead author of a series of research which sparked investor interest in the concept of stranded assets, and led to a number of investor initiatives on carbon asset risk. James also advised blue-chip clients on climate change and sustainability strategy whilst a consultant at PwC and was a senior policy advisor at WWF, focusing on the biodiversity impact of extractive industries. James holds a Masters degree in Environmental Technology from Imperial College, University of London.
Jairo Chung is a Vice President – Senior Credit Officer in Moody’s Global Infrastructure Finance Group, joining the Utilities team in August 2013. She is responsible for a portfolio consisting of electric and gas utilities. Prior to joining Moody’s, Ms. Chung was an equity research analyst covering utilities and power sector for several years. She began her career at Public Service Enterprise Group, a utility holding company located in New Jersey. Ms. Chung holds a B.S. in International Business from The College of New Jersey and an M.B.A. in Corporate Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Matthias Heck is a Vice President – Senior Credit Officer within Moody’s European Corporate Finance Group, based in Frankfurt. He is Moody’s Lead Analyst for European Automotive Suppliers. Previously, Matthias covered a diverse portfolio of manufacturing, business services, real estate and consumer goods companies based in Europe. He also coordinated Moody’s Global Construction Industry Outlook.
Matthias has over 18 years of experience in corporate ratings and financial analysis from a credit and equity perspective.
Matthias joined Moody’s in 2013, as a Senior Analyst of the Infrastructure Finance Team in London. Prior to this, Matthias worked for Macquarie, Sal. Oppenheim and Banco Santander as an equity research analyst focussing on European utilities. In addition to producing idea-driven sector and company research reports and communicating his analysis to institutional investors, Matthias also accompanied several equity capital market transactions.
Matthias is a CFA charterholder and holds the CEFA qualification from the German Association of Financial Analysis and Asset Management (DVFA). Matthias has a degree in Business Administration from the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW), Mannheim, Germany.
Natalie Ambrosio Preudhomme is an Associate Director at Moody’s Analytics on the Commercial Real Estate thought leadership team, where she does research and outreach focused on climate and ESG. Previously Natalie led climate-related thought leadership at Moody’s ESG Solutions which she joined through the acquisition of Four Twenty Seven, a leading provider of data on physical climate risk. At Four Twenty Seven she led communications and editorial strategy, leveraging her background in climate adaptation, communications and environmental sciences to translate technical information into actionable insights for climate risk assessment and resilience-building across sectors. Previously, Natalie helped develop an assessment of U.S. cities’ vulnerabilities to climate change and their readiness to adapt, at the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN). Natalie holds a B.S. in Environmental Science, a Certificate in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy from the University of Notre Dame and a Certificate in Climate and Investing from the CFA UK.
Hewson Baltzell is President, COO and initial investor in Helios Exchange, a SaaS business focused on energy efficiency in commercial buildings that has significant potential for reducing carbon emissions. Helios is the world's first commercial real estate platform for energy retrofit project development, insurance, and financing, with analysis of 315,000 commercial properties in North America and Europe.
He is also on the planning team at OS-Climate, an initiative under the Linux Foundation to create an open-source data and application development community to bring more and better climate data and analytics to institutional investors, regulators, and the public at large.
Having co-founded what is now MSCI ESG Research, Hewson spent 17 years building the dominant firm in the environmental, social and governance research field, from a 2-person start-up in 1998 (Innovest). He and his team conceived and built the rating models, carbon estimation models and many of MSCI’s current products. The ESG unit now has 300 employees, over 1,000 clients, research on over 9,000 equities, 250,000 bonds, and 35,000 mutual funds and ETFs, covering over 1.6 million securities, and revenue of $100 million.
Hewson was on the Board and Audit Committee of the Global Impact Investing Network for 7 years through December 2018 and has been on the Standards Advisory Council (the rating committee) of B-Lab for over 9 years.
Hewson recently spent a year as CEO of the Sorenson Impact Center at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business. Founded and endowed by Jim Sorenson, an entrepreneur and early impact investor, the Center has 30 full time staff and 60 interns and focuses on managing an early-stage impact investing fund, on helping to solve social issues through data analytics and innovative financing structures, and on education through intern programs, impact-related courses, executive education, and the annual Winter Innovation Summit.
Prior to Innovest, Hewson spent 12 years in real estate finance at JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers and private investment companies. He has an MBA in Finance from Wharton and a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.
See details about companies, non-profits, and other initiatives at www.hewsonbaltzell.com
Emilie Mazzacurati is MD - Global Head of Climate Solutions and oversees the climate solutions suite within Moody’s ESG Solutions Group, a new business unit formed to serve the growing global demand for ESG and climate analytics. Moody’s climate solutions provides climate risk screening for listed securities and real assets to help banks, financial institutions, corporations, and governments understand their exposure to the impacts of climate change, prepare for the transition to a zero carbon economy, and build resilience. Ms. Mazzacurati was the founder and CEO of Four Twenty Seven, a renowned climate risk analytics firm acquired by Moody’s in 2019.
Ms. Mazzacurati has published extensively on the impacts of climate change in financial markets, on climate risks disclosure (TCFD), on emissions trading, and on adaptation finance opportunities. She is a frequent public speaker and teaches at the University of California, Davis Executive MBA.
Previously, Ms. Mazzacurati was Head of Research at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, where she directed research and modeling on carbon pricing. She also served as a policy advisor to the Mayor of Paris on environmental policy. Emilie holds a Master’s of Political Science from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and a Master’s of Public Policy from UC Berkeley.
Ms. Mazzacurati is the recipient of multiple awards, including Top 100 People in Finance (2019), Berkeley Visionary Award (2016), and Cartier Women’s Initiative Award (2013). Four Twenty Seven was named 2019 Best Alternative Data Provider by Risk Magazine. Moody’s received the 2021 Chartis RiskTech100® Climate Risk Award and Environmental Finance’s 2021 Climate Risk Solutions of the year highlighting its commitment to integrating climate risk analytics into its world-class credit models.
Cynthia Cummis is the Director of Private Sector Climate Mitigation in WRI's Business Center. In this role she leads the institute’s work with businesses to reduce GHG emissions, including the Science Based Targets initiative, which she co-founded, and GHG Protocol’s suite of corporate GHG accounting and reporting standards. Cynthia was formerly Deputy Director of GHG Protocol and led the development of the Corporate Scope 3 (Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard.
Ms. Cummis is a well-known expert in GHG accounting and brings more than 18 years of experience working on the issue of global climate change. Prior to WRI, Cynthia was the Director of Carbon Management at Clear Carbon Consulting where she managed carbon quantification and management projects for multiple Fortune 500 clients as well as large public institutions. Ms. Cummis was the Founding Director of U.S. EPA’s Climate Leaders Program, a voluntary program that partnered with businesses to develop corporate-wide greenhouse gas inventories and reduction goals. For more than 5 years, she led the design and implementation of the program and oversaw the growth of the program to more than 90 corporate Partners.
Cynthia holds a MPA in environmental policy from Columbia University in New York City and a B.S. from Cornell University in Ithaca N.Y. Cynthia is a steering committee member for SBTi.
Richard is the Head of Sustainable Investing. His team is responsible for integrating consideration of environmental, social and governance and climate risk and opportunities across our investment programs to support our mandate of maximising returns without undue risk of loss.
Prior to joining CPP Investments in 2019, Richard had an 18 year career at Goldman Sachs where he was most recently Global Head of Thematic Equity and ESG Research and Co-Head of EMEA Equity Research. Previously he worked at Merrill Lynch, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette and Paribas Capital Markets as an Integrated Oil & Gas equity analyst.
Richard holds a Graduado Superior/BA (Hons) in European Business Administration from ICADE (Madrid).
Andrew is a Vice President at Moody’s ESG Solutions, where he leads on methodologies for climate change products. He was previously Co-Head of Research at Carbon Tracker Initiative, a non-profit think tank that looks at the financial implications of the energy transition for investor audiences, and led oil and gas and mining sector coverage. He also acted as a Senior Advisor on climate change to Critical Resource, a boutique management consultancy specialising in managing stakeholder challenges. Andrew formerly worked at Barclays Natural Resources Investments, a private equity department of Barclays that committed capital across a range of commodities and related industries, and has prior experience in remuneration and corporate governance at New Bridge Street LLP. Andrew holds a degree in Chemistry & Law from the University of Bristol.
Sean Kidney is CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, an international NGO, working to mobilize global capital for climate action. Projects include a green bond definitions and certification scheme with $34 trillion of assets represented on its Board; working with the Chinese central bank on how to grow green bonds in China; market development programs in Brazil, Mexico, ASEAN and Africa; and market tracking services for the green bonds industry. He is a member of the European Commission's Platform on Sustainable Finance, and was a member of its predecessors, the 2017 EU High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance and the EU Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. He is also a member of green finance committees in China, India, Mexico and Kazakhstan. Sean is also a Professor in Practice at SOAS University of London.
Jeanne-Mey Sun, Ph.D., has a diverse background that spans sustainability and the energy transition, corporate strategy, management consulting, and economic and policy research.
Jeanne-Mey currently serves as Vice President, Sustainability, at NRG Energy, Inc., where she leads the company’s sustainability strategy. Key priorities include working to achieve NRG’s target of having a net-zero carbon footprint by 2050 and advancing sustainability solutions and standards for new and existing NRG customers. Prior to joining NRG, Jeanne-Mey was Executive, Energy Transition and Clean Energy Solutions at Baker Hughes Company, the global energy technology company. At Baker Hughes, she led the development and operationalization of the company’s energy transition strategy which included writing the company’s commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, building a portfolio of low carbon solutions, and working with key customers on joint carbon footprint reduction efforts. Other leadership roles at Baker Hughes included leading strategic growth initiatives and corporate strategy. Prior to Baker Hughes, Jeanne-Mey was Vice President, Strategy at Sysco Corporation, the global foodservice marketer, distributor, and supply chain company, and Principal at global management consultancy A.T. Kearney, where she served clients in multiple industries including consumer products, retail, and automotive.
Dr. Sun earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in European Economic Studies from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium, and a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from the University of Toronto.
Jeanne-Mey is active in the Houston, innovation, and clean-tech ecosystem communities. She is a member of the Greater Houston Partnership and its Energy Advisory and Executive Women’s Partnership committees. She has consulted for the Center for Houston’s Future and is active in its low carbon energy initiatives. She is a member of the Carbon Leadership Council of the Carbon-to-Value Initiative, serves on the Rice University Carbon Hub Advisory Panel and the Rice University Clean Energy Accelerator Advisory Board, is a member of the Rice University Baker Institute working group on carbon capture and hydrogen in the Texas industrial sector, has served as an advisor on the Rice Alliance Energy Advisory Board, has mentored energy-focused start-ups at Rice’s OwlSpark start-up accelerator, and serves as a judge in the annual Rice Business Plan Competition. She also serves on the board of the Houston Hispanic Forum.
Sarah Wilson is the head of ESG integration on the responsible investing (RI) team at Nuveen, the investment management business of TIAA.
Nuveen’s responsible investing team is responsible for creating a firm-wide holistic RI vision and executing a unified framework across Nuveen’s multi-affiliate structure. Nuveen’s RI framework establishes the firm’s overall RI philosophy as well as guidelines for incorporating RI disciplines in investment decisions and new product development.
As head of environment, social and governance (ESG) integration, Sarah leads a team that integrates ESG factors into investment decisions for all equity, fixed income, and real assets investments. Her team also sets market-leading standards for all of the firm’s ESG and impact strategies. She founded and leads the firm’s cross-functional Climate Risk Task Force, with a focus on aligning with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
Prior to joining TIAA, Nuveen’s parent company, in 2015, Sarah managed corporate sustainability reporting and renewable energy credit portfolios for Green Mountain Energy, a subsidiary of NRG, and helped structure debt financing for renewable energy projects as a summer associate at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
She holds an M.B.A. and Master of Environmental Management from Yale University and a B.A. in Economics and Plan II Honors from the University of Texas at Austin. Sarah sits on the advisory board of the Yale Initiative for Sustainable Finance.
Matt Kuchtyak is Vice President – Sustainable Finance for Moody’s ESG Solutions Group (MESG). In this capacity, Matt is responsible for the origination and publication of thematic research related to the global sustainable finance markets. He has authored Moody’s market-leading quarterly sustainable finance market update since its inception in 2015 and has developed into a leading market voice on sustainable finance developments.
Matt leads outreach and engagement on sustainable finance issues, cultivating relationships with asset managers, asset owners, financial institutions, corporations, standard setters and other market participants. He frequently participates in high-profile outreach including investor briefings, webinars, third-party conferences and media engagements. Matt also represents MESG on a variety of industry initiatives, such as the International Capital Market Association’s Green Bond Principles (GBP) working groups.
Before his current role, Matt was an analyst on the ESG team at Moody’s Investors Service (MIS), where he advanced the rating agency’s efforts to systematically and transparently incorporate ESG considerations into its credit ratings. He was a key contributor to the development of MIS’s cross-sector ESG methodology, launch of ESG Issuer Profile Scores and Credit Impact Scores and the development of Carbon Transition Assessments. He was also the lead analyst for the MIS Green Bond Assessments. Previously, Matt was an analyst in the MIS US Public Finance Group, where he served as a lead analyst for a diverse portfolio of hospitals, public and private universities and other not-for-profits.
Matt is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) impact leader, working directly with Moody’s CSR team to shape, communicate and implement the firm's global CSR strategy and initiatives. He holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science summa cum laude from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Sean Kidney is CEO of the Climate Bonds Initiative, an international NGO, working to mobilize global capital for climate action. Projects include a green bond definitions and certification scheme with $34 trillion of assets represented on its Board; working with the Chinese central bank on how to grow green bonds in China; market development programs in Brazil, Mexico, ASEAN and Africa; and market tracking services for the green bonds industry. He is a member of the European Commission's Platform on Sustainable Finance, and was a member of its predecessors, the 2017 EU High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance and the EU Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. He is also a member of green finance committees in China, India, Mexico and Kazakhstan. Sean is also a Professor in Practice at SOAS University of London.
Nigel Topping, CMG was appointed by the UK Prime Minister as UN Climate Change High Level Champion for COP26. In this role Nigel mobilised global private sector and local government to take bold action on climate change, launching the Race To Zero and Race To Resilience campaigns and, with Mark Carney, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. Nigel is now a global advisor to governments, financial institutions and private companies on climate and industrial strategy. He is a non-executive director of the UK Infrastructure Bank, an Honorary Professor of Economics at Exeter University and was awarded the honor of CMG in Queen Elizabeth’s final honors list in 2022.
Nigel read Mathematics at St Johns and won two rugby blues, before entering a career in the manufacturing industry.
Sarah Wilson is the head of ESG integration on the responsible investing (RI) team at Nuveen, the investment management business of TIAA.
Nuveen’s responsible investing team is responsible for creating a firm-wide holistic RI vision and executing a unified framework across Nuveen’s multi-affiliate structure. Nuveen’s RI framework establishes the firm’s overall RI philosophy as well as guidelines for incorporating RI disciplines in investment decisions and new product development.
As head of environment, social and governance (ESG) integration, Sarah leads a team that integrates ESG factors into investment decisions for all equity, fixed income, and real assets investments. Her team also sets market-leading standards for all of the firm’s ESG and impact strategies. She founded and leads the firm’s cross-functional Climate Risk Task Force, with a focus on aligning with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
Prior to joining TIAA, Nuveen’s parent company, in 2015, Sarah managed corporate sustainability reporting and renewable energy credit portfolios for Green Mountain Energy, a subsidiary of NRG, and helped structure debt financing for renewable energy projects as a summer associate at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
She holds an M.B.A. and Master of Environmental Management from Yale University and a B.A. in Economics and Plan II Honors from the University of Texas at Austin. Sarah sits on the advisory board of the Yale Initiative for Sustainable Finance.
Jeanne-Mey Sun, Ph.D., has a diverse background that spans sustainability and the energy transition, corporate strategy, management consulting, and economic and policy research.
Jeanne-Mey currently serves as Vice President, Sustainability, at NRG Energy, Inc., where she leads the company’s sustainability strategy. Key priorities include working to achieve NRG’s target of having a net-zero carbon footprint by 2050 and advancing sustainability solutions and standards for new and existing NRG customers. Prior to joining NRG, Jeanne-Mey was Executive, Energy Transition and Clean Energy Solutions at Baker Hughes Company, the global energy technology company. At Baker Hughes, she led the development and operationalization of the company’s energy transition strategy which included writing the company’s commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, building a portfolio of low carbon solutions, and working with key customers on joint carbon footprint reduction efforts. Other leadership roles at Baker Hughes included leading strategic growth initiatives and corporate strategy. Prior to Baker Hughes, Jeanne-Mey was Vice President, Strategy at Sysco Corporation, the global foodservice marketer, distributor, and supply chain company, and Principal at global management consultancy A.T. Kearney, where she served clients in multiple industries including consumer products, retail, and automotive.
Dr. Sun earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in European Economic Studies from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium, and a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from the University of Toronto.
Jeanne-Mey is active in the Houston, innovation, and clean-tech ecosystem communities. She is a member of the Greater Houston Partnership and its Energy Advisory and Executive Women’s Partnership committees. She has consulted for the Center for Houston’s Future and is active in its low carbon energy initiatives. She is a member of the Carbon Leadership Council of the Carbon-to-Value Initiative, serves on the Rice University Carbon Hub Advisory Panel and the Rice University Clean Energy Accelerator Advisory Board, is a member of the Rice University Baker Institute working group on carbon capture and hydrogen in the Texas industrial sector, has served as an advisor on the Rice Alliance Energy Advisory Board, has mentored energy-focused start-ups at Rice’s OwlSpark start-up accelerator, and serves as a judge in the annual Rice Business Plan Competition. She also serves on the board of the Houston Hispanic Forum.
Cynthia Cummis is the Director of Private Sector Climate Mitigation in WRI's Business Center. In this role she leads the institute’s work with businesses to reduce GHG emissions, including the Science Based Targets initiative, which she co-founded, and GHG Protocol’s suite of corporate GHG accounting and reporting standards. Cynthia was formerly Deputy Director of GHG Protocol and led the development of the Corporate Scope 3 (Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard.
Ms. Cummis is a well-known expert in GHG accounting and brings more than 18 years of experience working on the issue of global climate change. Prior to WRI, Cynthia was the Director of Carbon Management at Clear Carbon Consulting where she managed carbon quantification and management projects for multiple Fortune 500 clients as well as large public institutions. Ms. Cummis was the Founding Director of U.S. EPA’s Climate Leaders Program, a voluntary program that partnered with businesses to develop corporate-wide greenhouse gas inventories and reduction goals. For more than 5 years, she led the design and implementation of the program and oversaw the growth of the program to more than 90 corporate Partners.
Cynthia holds a MPA in environmental policy from Columbia University in New York City and a B.S. from Cornell University in Ithaca N.Y. Cynthia is a steering committee member for SBTi.
Hewson Baltzell is President, COO and initial investor in Helios Exchange, a SaaS business focused on energy efficiency in commercial buildings that has significant potential for reducing carbon emissions. Helios is the world's first commercial real estate platform for energy retrofit project development, insurance, and financing, with analysis of 315,000 commercial properties in North America and Europe.
He is also on the planning team at OS-Climate, an initiative under the Linux Foundation to create an open-source data and application development community to bring more and better climate data and analytics to institutional investors, regulators, and the public at large.
Having co-founded what is now MSCI ESG Research, Hewson spent 17 years building the dominant firm in the environmental, social and governance research field, from a 2-person start-up in 1998 (Innovest). He and his team conceived and built the rating models, carbon estimation models and many of MSCI’s current products. The ESG unit now has 300 employees, over 1,000 clients, research on over 9,000 equities, 250,000 bonds, and 35,000 mutual funds and ETFs, covering over 1.6 million securities, and revenue of $100 million.
Hewson was on the Board and Audit Committee of the Global Impact Investing Network for 7 years through December 2018 and has been on the Standards Advisory Council (the rating committee) of B-Lab for over 9 years.
Hewson recently spent a year as CEO of the Sorenson Impact Center at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business. Founded and endowed by Jim Sorenson, an entrepreneur and early impact investor, the Center has 30 full time staff and 60 interns and focuses on managing an early-stage impact investing fund, on helping to solve social issues through data analytics and innovative financing structures, and on education through intern programs, impact-related courses, executive education, and the annual Winter Innovation Summit.
Prior to Innovest, Hewson spent 12 years in real estate finance at JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers and private investment companies. He has an MBA in Finance from Wharton and a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.
See details about companies, non-profits, and other initiatives at www.hewsonbaltzell.com
Richard is the Head of Sustainable Investing. His team is responsible for integrating consideration of environmental, social and governance and climate risk and opportunities across our investment programs to support our mandate of maximising returns without undue risk of loss.
Prior to joining CPP Investments in 2019, Richard had an 18 year career at Goldman Sachs where he was most recently Global Head of Thematic Equity and ESG Research and Co-Head of EMEA Equity Research. Previously he worked at Merrill Lynch, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette and Paribas Capital Markets as an Integrated Oil & Gas equity analyst.
Richard holds a Graduado Superior/BA (Hons) in European Business Administration from ICADE (Madrid).