Daniel Beunza is Lecturer in Management at the London School of Economics. Beunza’s current research centres on the technology of responsible investment, and the rise of shareholder engagement. His award-winning study of a derivatives trading room on a Wall Street bank traces the roots of extraordinary returns to the use of space and internal organization. He has also studied securities analysts and the systemic risk posed by financial models. Along with other sociologists, Beunza’s research has led to the development of an emerging discipline, the social studies of finance, that challenges economic and behavioural understandings of finance by incorporating the role of social relations and technology. Dr Beunza obtained his Ph.D from New York University and taught at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) and Columbia Business School in New York City before joining LSE.

Jean-Philippe Desmartin is the Head of ESG research at Oddo Securities and a key partner of the PRI Academic Network for talent and research development. He started his career in Crédit du Nord’s financial engineering department in 1993 and has held various positions at the AReSE (France) and Innovest (US) – both social and environmental ratings agencies – before founding his own consulting firm.  

He is or has been a lecturer at a number of universities, including ESSEC; IAE Paris; IEP Paris (Sciences Po); HEC Paris; and the Ecole Polytechnique. He is also a member of several international ESG working groups and committees (EFFAS, ICGN, PRI, WICI) and has co-authored a book on Socially Responsible Investment that was published in 2005 by Economica.  

His practice is taught in the Oddo Securities: ESG Integration’s business case at the Harvard Business School (HBS).

Nick Edgerton is Manager of ESG Research and Engagement, In the role of Manager ESG Research and Engagement, Nick works closely with investment teams across equities, fixed interest and credit to build in a consideration of ESG issues and identify new investment opportunities. Nick also engages the investment community more broadly to increase the awareness of the risks and opportunities for long term investors. In doing this Nick has roles with the Investor Group on Climate Change, ESG Research Australia, and Australia’s Financial Services Council ESG Working Group, as well as participating in PRI engagement groups.  Nick advises the academic network on research relevance and helps to remind it’s northern members that the world is made up of two hemispheres.

Previously Nick was at AMP Capital Investors as an ESG analyst for Australia’s largest Sustainable Investment Fund, covering half of the ASX listed sectors and more than 200 stocks. Prior to that Nick was a sustainability consultant at a non-profit and a policy officer in the Australian Government.

Nick has a Bachelor of Economics, Macquarie University, and a Master of Science with Distinction (ecological economics), The University of Edinburgh.

Lars G Hassel has a Dr.Sc. degree in accounting from Åbo Akademi University in Finland where he has been a professor since 1999. In 2012 Lars was appointed dean of the School of Business and Economics at Umeå University in Sweden.

Lars has been working in the SRI/ESG area since 2006 as a Director of the Sustainable Investment Research Platform (www.sirp.se) funded by Mistra (www.mistra.org) in Sweden. The program wanted to find out how the use of sustainable investment practices can create an added value to investors, and identify barriers for such practices to become mainstream. The SIRP group was recognized with the Globe Award in May 2008 for an outstanding and tangible contribution to research in the field of CSR. SIRP launched a synthesis report of the program in 2012, Do Sustainable Investments Add Value? In 2011 Lars was the chair of the PRI- Mistra academic conference on Dynamics of Responsible Investments in Sigtuna, Sweden.

Dr Tessa Hebb 

Dr Tessa Hebb is the Director of the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation, Carleton University, Canada. Her research, focusing on Responsible Investment and Impact Investment, is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Government of Canada. The Carleton Centre for Community Innovation is a leading knowledge producer on both Responsible Investing and Impact Investing tools and instruments. Dr. Hebb received her Doctorate from Oxford University.

Dr. Hebb is a member of the steering committees of the PRI AN, the Heartland Network, Canadian Business Ethics Research Network, the Canadian Social Investment Organization and the Impact Investing Policy Collaborative. She led a four-year research project on US Public Sector Pension Fund Investment in Urban Revitalization, which was based at Harvard University and funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations (2004-2008). She is a frequent guest speaker on responsible investment issues in both Canada and the US. She has published many books and articles on responsible investing and impact investing policies including the volumes Working Capital: the Power of Labor’s Pensions; No Small Change: Pension Fund Corporate Engagement; and The Next Generation of Responsible Investing.

Nicolas Mottis joined ESSEC in France in 1995, after having held a number of positions in companies (Renault, BNP, Bertelsmann) from 1988 to 1995. He was promoted to the rank of full Professor in September 2000.

He is the former Director of the school and still heavily involved in universities accreditation worldwide. He was Member of the Board of the Initial Accreditation Committee of AACSB from 2003 to 2006 and Chair of the Board of the Accreditation Quality Committee (in charge of defining standards) from 2006 to 2009. He regularly chairs accreditation teams in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.

He obtained his doctorate in economics from Ecole Polytechnique (France) and a “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” degree (qualification to supervise research) from the University of Paris Dauphine. He has been Visiting Researcher at Stanford University (US), the Harvard Business School (US) and the Australian Graduate School of Management (Sydney, Australia).

His research areas focus on strategic control (corporate governance, value creation, socially responsible investment, incentives and performance measurement) on which he has published many articles and several books (for a complete list see: www.essec.edu/professors-research). In 2011 he was the President of the jury of the FIR-Eurosif Prizes and is member of the jury for the Best Paper Award of the PRI Academic Conference since 2010.

Steve Waygood, Aviva Investors, Head of Sustainability Research and Engagement, Aviva Investors

Steve Waygood leads Aviva Investors’ Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) analysis, engagement and voting. Steve is also Chairman of the SRI Advisory Committee for Aviva Investors. He previously worked for Insight Investment where he was a Director in the Investor Responsibility team. Prior to that, he was a Senior Analyst in the Governance and SRI team of F&C. He was on the board of the UK Sustainable Investment Forum (UKSIF) from 2003 to 2010, serving as its Chairman from 2006. Steve has a PhD in Sustainable Finance and was part of the expert group that wrote the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment. He currently lectures in Sustainable Finance at Cambridge University’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership.