People & Appointments: CalSTRS CEO Ehnes to step down after nearly two decades

Jack Ehnes, CEO of $250bn pensions giant CalSTRS, will retire in September after 18 years in the role. A newly-formed board committee is to lead the search for a successor. Together with CIO Christopher Ailman, another CalSTRS veteran, Ehnes has overseen the fund’s emergence as a global leader for ESG and sustainability. Read a 2016 RI interview with Ehnes on climate risk and diversity here.

The Church of England (CoE) is seeking an investment manager to develop a £20m (€23m) social investment portfolio which will focus on addressing housing shortages, financial exclusion and the environment. The successful candidate will be tasked with establishing the CoE as “an influential and successful social investor within the UK”.

Link to CoE job

Sophie Robé, co-CEO and Founder of impact investment consultant Phenix Capital, has left the company. Her co-CEO, MN and Shell pension fund veteran Dirk Meuleman, will take over as sole CEO. Phenix Capital is the proprietor of the Global Impact Platform, an impact investment database and analytics provider.

Amanda Latham has been named Policy and Strategy Lead at investment consultancy Barnett Waddingham. Latham was previously with UK’s The Pensions Regulator (TPR) where she worked on standard setting for pensions trustees and DB scheme consolidation among others. She is founder of the Young Pension Trustee Network which aims to develop a diverse and inclusive pool of trustees. 

Rajaa Berrkia has been appointed Director of Sustainability at Mediterrania Capital, a private equity firm investing in SME and mid-cap companies in North and Sub-saharan Africa. Berrkia will oversee the firm’s impact investing process and research in her new role, in addition to monitoring the sustainability performance of portfolio companies. She joined the firm – which manages over $300m of assets – in 2008 and was most recently Operations Director.  

Iliana Lazarova, has joined UK pensions lifeboat fund, the Pensions Protection Fund (PPF), as a Senior ESG Analyst. She was formerly an ESG Analyst at Trucost, specialising in clean energy finance, analysis of portfolio carbon footprint and exposure, and ESG in private equity.

Positive Money, a campaign group for a more inclusive banking and financial system, is seeking a Senior Researcher to support the development of an organisational research strategy and to produce reports on a range of banking and money reform topics. The London-based role pays £30,000-38,000 annually and is for an initial fixed one-year contract.

Link to Positive Money job

UNEP FI, the UN initiative for sustainable finance, is seeking a consultant to support the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA) and Principles for Responsible Banking which aim to align institutional investment and banking portfolios with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Candidates for the Geneva-based role should have experience in financial climate change-related assessments and in-depth knowledge of approaches to measure the climate alignment of financial portfolios.

Link to UNEPFI job