About this webinar

While sustainable development is often characterized as an environmental concept, it is actually a multidimensional concept that equally weighs social, economic and environmental considerations. This comprehensive approach is inherent in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

 

The globe is facing multiple crises that are making it increasingly apparent that environmental and social issues are intrinsically connected and must be tackled in tandem. The finance industry and regulators have made considerable progress on measuring and incorporating the environmental impact but still struggles with social factors. In fact more than half of global institutional investors last year said social issues were the most difficult to assess and integrate into their investment analysis.

This webinar will provide an overview of the factors that should be considered in the “S” of ESG. It will explore how social issues can be addressed throughout the investment process from pre-investment screening to engagement and will look at the challenges that need to be addressed to properly incorporate the “S” into sustainable finance approaches.

 

Guest Speakers

 

Patricia Richter

Senior Technical Officer for Social Finance, International Labour Organization
 
Panelist

Patricia Richter has been working with the ILO Social Finance Programme since 2007 and leads the programme’s work on sustainable investing and innovative finance. A development finance professional with twenty years of experience, her expertise covers the areas of social and environmental management, social performance, impact measurement, and rural finance with a regional focus on Africa and Asia & Pacific.

 

Martijn Oosterwoud

Lead ESG Specialist, UBS Group Sustainability and Impact.

Panelist

Martijn Oosterwoud leads the ESG specialists’ team within the Group Sustainability and Impact team of UBS. In this role, Mr. Oosterwoud works closely with the investment, product management and global sales teams in the various divisions of UBS Group on methodology, innovation of sustainability offerings and client solutions.

Mr. Oosterwoud joined UBS Global Asset Management as Head of Sustainable and Impact Investment Specialists in February 2017. In this role, he worked within investments on developing and promoting Sustainable and Impact products. Prior to this, he worked at RobecoSAM in Zürich, as head of Client Portfolio Management globally. In this capacity, he was responsible for the commercialization of the RobecoSAM investment strategies as well as the interaction with clients on sustainability research for the Robeco group. Previous jobs include head of research for the Amsterdamse Investerings Bank and Fixed Income product specialist at ING Investment Management (NN IP).

 

ESG Investment Director, Capital Group

Panelist

Belinda Gan is an ESG investment director at Capital Group. She has 17 years of industry experience and joined Capital Group in 2021. Prior to joining Capital, Ms. Gan worked as an investment director – global sustainability at Schroders. Before that, she was an account executive at Threadneedle Investments. She began her career at Goldman Sachs Australia. Ms. Belinda holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce and a bachelor’s degree in business systems from Monash University, Australia. She also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation. Ms. Gan is based in London.

 

Senior Engagement Specialist, Pictet

Panelist

Juan Salazar joined the ESG team in December 2021 to support integration and active ownership activities, with a focus on social issues, across the firm. Before joining Pictet, Mr. Salazar spent over 10 years as a member of the Responsible Investment team at BMO Global Asset Management, where he focused on developing and implementing ESG integration and active ownership strategies with companies in emerging and frontier markets. His role also entailed work on ESG investment products, ESG and impact reporting and client management. Prior to this, he worked in credit risk management at ABN AMRO Bank, assessing credit and ESG risks present in the bank’s global corporate lending operations. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and a BSc in Industrial Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia.

 

Dorothée Baumann-Pauly

Director, Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights.

Moderator

Dorothée Baumann-Pauly is the Director of the new Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights, launched in 2019 by the (UniGE). Since 2013, she is also the Research Director at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

As a business ethics scholar with extensive practical experience working on the implementation of human rights in multi-stakeholder settings, Dorothée Baumann-Pauly has published widely on topics at the intersection of business ethics, corporate responsibility, private governance mechanisms and human rights. For the last ten years, she has been teaching business and human rights related classes at academic institutions in the US and Europe including the new semester course in Business and Human Rights, part of the Bachelor in Economics and Management programme in GSEM, UNIGE.