With a background in political science, economics and international affairs, Celia joined the banking industry almost 10 years ago. She joined the French Group Crédit Agricole back in 2015 and, after holding several roles within compliance at CACIB, became Head of ESG Compliance in 2022. Her mission is to ensure that the Bank is compliant with the many European and international regulations on sustainable finance, addressing the greenwashing and ESG non-compliance risks through the implementation of supervision controls and effective advisory to the businesses. In order to address the ESG issues, the bank has launched a transversal ESG program, sponsored by the Top Management, that she is co-managing along with the sustainable banking business.

With private and public sector experience, I’ve been leading on Diversity and Inclusion strategy for over ten years now – since long before it became fashionable and considered a ‘proper job’! I am passionate about creating safe and inclusive workplaces which focus on trust and wellbeing. I love hearing stories which bring data to life and I feel so lucky to work in a field where I get to learn new things every day!

Michelle Auger advises on sustainability strategy for the Wells Fargo International entities with a focus on regulatory and policy matters. She has deep expertise in strategy and implementation planning to scale up sustainable investment activities on a cross-functional basis. Over the course of her career, she has advised investment teams on ESG and sustainable investing practices across diverse asset classes and strategies including equities, fixed income, hedge funds, supply chain finance, commercial real estate and infrastructure. Michelle Auger earned an LL.B. in Law from the University of Leicester and is a CFA charterholder. She has also completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

Venetia Bell is the Group Chief Sustainability Officer at Gulf International Bank (GIB), and Head of Strategy at GIB Asset Management.  Amongst other responsibilities, Venetia leads GIB’s drive to embed sustainability and responsible banking principles in everything it does.

Venetia is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.  She is a Chartered Governance Professional, a designated Climate Competent Director, a Certified Investment Fund Director, and the Chair of Trustees of several charities.  Prior to GIB, she had several roles at the Bank of England, and has published a range of policy-focused research.

Sharon Bloemendal joined ING in 2021 and became Global Head of Sustainability Management Treasury in 2022. She takes the lead in implementing ING’s sustainability strategy, where she navigates between regulatory ESG disclosures, securing sustainable funding, enabling and supporting business in developing sustainable products while minimising ESG risks. At her former employer, de Volksbank, Sharon developed a sustainable debt strategy with the objective of aligning with the Climate Neutral Balance sheet target and subsequently, became part of the initiation of PCAF focussing on mortgage-backed securities. In 2020 Sharon was responsible for the issuance of the first Green Tier 2 for a FI in Europe and was part of the top 50 of Woman in Sustainable Finance 2021 (NL).

Biography Coming Soon

Gustavo Heads NatWest’s Debt and ESG Advisory Businesses globally and has more than 22 years of experience advising global clients across various industry sectors on debt structuring, event financing and credit ratings.

For the past 5 years, he has advised clients on ESG issues including structuring sustainable financing, investor communications and ESG ratings. He has advised on over 300 mandates during his career, across multiple sectors across the Americas and in Western, Eastern Europe and Middle East. He is a regular contributor to forums and publications on his areas of expertise.

Gustavo has recently acted as ESG Advisor to global issuers in the Real Estate, Media, Transportation, Infrastructure and Telecommunications sectors. He has recently acted as rating/ financing advisor for major transactions and events in the following sectors Chemicals, Ports, Utilities, Energy from Waste and Telecommunications.

Prior to NatWest, he held the position of Director Debt Advisory at ABN AMRO and before that, Associate of Strategy Consulting within the Mitchell Madison Group.

Gustavo holds a BA in Economics from the London School of Economics and an MBA in Finance from Carnegie Mellon University.

Ella leads the development and implementation of the Nomura’s sustainability vision and goals, including: net zero transition, ESG risk management, and sustainable finance frameworks. She provides input to developing green and sustainable finance business opportunities and oversees non-financial disclosures and reporting on sustainability. Ella has over 20 years of experience in banking and capital markets, with senior roles in investment banking, sustainable finance, and reputational risk.

Ella is passionate about advancing the integration of impact considerations into business decisions and leveraging her expertise to support the transition to a low-carbon economy. She is an educator and speaker on sustainable finance and ESG. She holds an MBA from London Business School.

Stephanie Chang is responsible for ensuring that sustainable investment knowledge and practices are robustly embedded across the client and investment teams at Schroders.

She leads a team of 8 people who work to evolve the firm’s approach to sustainable investment and collaborate with the firm’s client relationship and investment professionals to ensure Schroders continues to be at the forefront of robust and leading practices.

More recently, she has led the firm’s net zero commitments in alignment with the Science Based Targets Initiative and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. Schroders is the largest asset manager by AUM to have its targets formally validated by the SBTi.

Prior to this, she was a senior consultant at PwC’s Sustainability & Climate Change consulting practice focused on providing advisory and risk management services to financial sector clients.

From 2004 to 2013, Stephanie worked at HSBC across the corporate banking and sustainability teams, including latterly as the Deputy Global Head of Sustainability Risk.

Biography Coming Soon

I joined the banking industry more than 15 year ago. After holding several roles at Deutsche Bank in the Credit Risk, Treasury and Regulatory Risk space across different locations (London, Frankfurt Singapore, and New York), I joined UBS in 2015 in Zurich. I became Head of Retail Credit Risk Models Validation, leading an international risk management team and delivering for several regulatory purposes (Pillar I, CST, LPA, IFRS9, CCAR, CECL and Climate Risk).

In 2023 I was appointed as Head of MRMC Sustainability & Climate Risk at UBS, and continued to focus on S&CR. I am building a central S&CR validation function, responsible for the independent model risk management and approval for use in line with the bank’s Model Risk Appetite framework and model risk governance & control principles.

Vesselina Haralampieva is a Senior Counsel at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, UK. She leads the climate change and sustainability policy and law reform work at the EBRD’s legal department. Vesselina advises on matters relating to sustainable finance, ESG regulation and reporting, climate governance and energy transition. She has led key ESG policy initiatives with corporates and financial institutions, national authorities and capital markets in the EBRD region. Vesselina is the originator of the EBRD’s corporate climate governance facility, which supports private and public sector companies in strengthening their governance and management of climate-related risks and opportunities, and is central to the EBRD’s Paris agreement alignment approach.

Vesselina is a member of the Climate Change Working Group with the Law Society of England & Wales. She is a member of the legal working group under the Network for Greening the Financial Systems (NGFS) and also of the EFRAG’s technical working group on ESRS for Governance. Vesselina is admitted to practice as a solicitor in England & Wales and as a lawyer in Bulgaria. She holds law degrees from Harvard Law School and Sofia University.

Maya Hennerkes leads the ESG work of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) with financial institutions and private equity funds. She promotes the integration of environmental and social risks and opportunities including climate risks in investment decisions and investment management. Maya designs and supervises environmental and social risk management and safeguard frameworks for a portfolio of over EUR 4bn new approvals per year. She also runs EBRD’s ESG training programme for financial institutions and private equity funds. Maya is a sustainable finance expert with over 15 years of experience, with previous positions at the Inter-American Development Bank Group in Washington DC and Bloomberg L.P. in London. She is a member of the Club of Rome’s Think Tank 30 and serves on the Advisory Board of SustainableFinance.Live. Maya studied economics, political science and Latin America studies in Germany and Spain and holds an Executive Masters in Public Management from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Julius is Head of Audit at the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) in London and in that role responsible for covering Risk Management, Compliance, Treasury, Capital Adequacy and Finance in the EMEA region, and Client Asset Safety globally. Before joining BNY Mellon in 2015 he worked at PwC in Luxembourg as Risk and Regulatory Consultant, specialised in Prudential Risk/ Basel III. Julius has a Master in Economics and Political Sciences, and holds both the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) as well as the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR) Certificate.

Biography Coming Soon

Kay Hope is a managing director and leads BofA’s fixed income research effort ESG issues globally. She is also a corporate credit analyst focusing on emerging market names across sectors, mainly in the CIS, Sub-Saharan Africa and Israel. She has been a top-ranked analyst across her categories for multiple years. Prior to joining the firm in 2010, Hope held emerging markets roles at Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse First Boston. She also spent several years at McKinsey & Company in Moscow, and a year in Almaty, Kazakhstan, working for an international aid organization. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, a master’s degree in Soviet foreign policy from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a bachelor’s degree in Slavic literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is based in London.

Ilan joined Citi’s Global Government Affairs team in February 2015.
An expert in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) regulation and policy, Ilan regularly writes and speaks on ESG developments, creating Citi’s thought leadership and representing Citi at client, trade association and policymaker events.
Ilan is currently Vice Chair of the Sustainable Finance Task Force of the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union and Co-Chair of the International Regulatory Strategy Group’s (IRSG) Sustainable Finance Taxonomy Working Group.
Prior to joining Citi, Ilan spent over eight years in a variety of roles at GE, where he was responsible for Government Affairs and Policy for GE Capital across Europe.
Outside of work, Ilan is the Chair of Governors of Alma Primary, a local school in the London Borough of Barnet, where he lives with his wife and 2 daughters.

Michelle draws on a range of business experience from an early career as entrepreneur, business consultant and academic, to most recently working as a Group Director of Organisational Risk & Resilience at a FTSE-100. With oversight of Sustainability and Reputational Risk globally across a multi-entity business, she launched the first group Reputational and ESG Risk frameworks, policies and controls across a complex asset management, insurance and savings business. Michelle also featured in ‘Midlands Sport Power 50’ for her role as Senior Independent Director at Warwickshire County Cricket Club, Edgbaston, host venue for Commonwealth Games 2022 and currently studying for her certificate in Sustainability Management with University of Cambridge (CISL).

Saad is an experienced sustainability professional and thought leader. At Lloyds Banking Group, he is responsible for driving the sustainability agenda in business and commercial banking, aiming to reduce the Group’s financed emissions and enhance sustainability and resilience for clients, with a particular focus on SMEs and mid-corporates.

Before joining Lloyds in July 2023, Saad was National Grid’s Group Sustainability Reporting Director, leading a best-in-class reporting strategy and overseeing adherence with major established frameworks, while also driving the Group’s sustainable financing strategy and target-setting agenda. Prior to that, he was a Senior Manager in PwC’s Sustainability Risk & Reporting Advisory team in London, where he supported clients across a wide range of industries in driving impactful sustainability strategies, identifying and addressing climate-related risks and opportunities, as well as developing good practice sustainability reporting.

He is a qualified chartered accountant (ICAEW), a GRI Certified Sustainability Professional and has a Master of Science in Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment at UCL.

Prior to the IFRS Foundation, Mardi spent over a decade leading the global ESG standard setter, the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB). Under Mardi’s leadership CDSB published the first global capital market framework for reporting investor focussed information on climate, environmental and social matters to capital markets.  CDSB’s work notably underpins both the TCFD and the TNFD frameworks and became an influential foundational building block in the establishment the International Sustainability Standards Board, where Mardi also played an important leadership role in its establishment.

Mardi has enjoyed a vibrant career which involved her leading high profile flagship environmental campaigns, working in public sector policy advisory roles and public private partnership management. Originally qualifying as a forester and environmental scientist in Australia (Melbourne University) and agricultural economist (UK, SOAS), Mardi is a Board Member of XBRL International, a member of the UK Government Transition Pathway Taskforce Steering Group,  trustee of one of the oldest environmental NGOs in the world, the International Tree Foundation, a founding Board member of WOCAN – Women Organising for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management / W+ Standard,  a school governor and a member of the ICAEW Sustainability Advisory Committee. Mardi was awarded UK environmental campaigner of the year by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation in 2013 and in 2021 and was selected as one of the ESG Foundation’s ones to watch.

Jakub Piorkowski is a Climate Risk Director at Credit Suisse. He leads the CS Net Zero framework and Risk Appetite efforts, covering end-to-end methodology design, data, reporting, front office and business integration. In addition, Jakub is in charge of the TCFD report with a specific focus on the qualitative aspects. Before Jakub transitioned to the climate space, he led several comprehensive initiatives within the ERM mandate, including Geopolitical Risk, Divisional Economic Risk Capital and the Management Risk Overview framework. Further to this, Jakub was responsible for Central Counterparties’ front-to-back solutions and Credit Scenarios. A sustainability-focused entrepreneur, Jakub co-founded Yevee Life and is an adviser to KINN Living.

Yaroslav Sovgyra is a Head of ESG Risk at Lloyds Banking Group (LBG), responsible for embedding holistic ESG risk management into the Group’s credit process and oversight of a complex range of ESG activities across LBG’s Credit function.

Before joining LBG, Yaroslav was Associate Managing Director at Moody’s, where he managed a team of senior credit rating analysts covering financial institutions in EMEA. He also had various ESG-related responsibilities, included implementation of ESG rating methodologies and development of Net Zero and Sustainability-focused scoring tools and products.

Before Moody’s, Yaroslav worked in Global Corporate Reporting Group of PwC, where he advised the largest EU banks on valuation of financial instruments and derivatives, hedging strategies and M&A transactions.

Yarolav has Master degree in Finance from Kyiv National Economic University, is a CFA Charterholder (including CFA ESG Investing and CFA Climate Investing Certificates) and a US CPA.

Evgeny Tyurin is Head of ESG Finance and Corporate Bank Financial Planning & Analysis at Deutsche Bank. In this role he is responsible for sustainable finance reporting implementation across DB in view of upcoming regulatory requirements and on the back of DB’s own ESG volume targets. In addition to that, he manages the end-to-end financial planning process within Corporate Bank and oversees the delivery of its financial targets throughout the year. Evgeny joined Deutsche Bank in 2011 and worked in a variety of functions including Treasury and CFO office since then.

Adam is COO in the risk management function at ICBC Standard Bank, where he has primary responsibilities around all aspects of enterprise risk, risk appetite, cross-functional risk management and sustainability risk. He has been leading the implementation of sustainability risk considerations across the firm’s enterprise risk management framework, including strategy and disclosures. His 15+ year risk management career also includes roles at Standard Bank Group and Dresdner Kleinwort. Adam is a member of the risk advisory committee at the Association of Foreign Banks in London, and a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

Gwen is an Executive Director in JP Morgan’s Global Markets Sustainability Center, where she helps integrate sustainability metrics into solutions to help clients achieve and implement sustainability goals in accordance with their strategy and regulatory requirements. She contributes to the Firm’s thought leadership, recently co-authoring a paper on environmental considerations in commodity indices.

Previously she was Head of Sustainable Business Strategy and Innovation at BNP Paribas where she set the bank’s global sustainable finance strategy, oversaw R&D projects in sustainable finance including the creation of a natural capital & local development impact fund, and built programmes to upskill all 200,000 employees on sustainability.

She was a member of the European Commission’s Platform on Sustainable Finance on the data and usability subgroup and served as an alternate to the co-chair in the informal workgroup that helped set up the Taskforce on Nature Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). 

Her previous experience also includes working in North America and Asia providing market entry strategies, intellectual property valuation, corporate philanthropy, and brand management for clients in financial services, tech, FMCG, automotive, and pharmaceuticals on behalf of several professional services firms, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Edelman and Deloitte & Touche.