Responsible Investor is saddened to report that Peter De Simone, co-founder and Deputy Director of the Sustainable Investments Institute (Si2), the US group which analyses social and environmental shareholder proposals, has died.
De Simone, who helped co-found Si2 with Heidi Welsh in 2009, passed away from complications associated with pneumonia at the end of November.
He started his career covering South Africa in the mid-1990s at the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), which later became part of ISS, then RiskMetrics Group.
He covered issues ranging from early coverage of international sweatshops to fair employment in Northern Ireland, climate change and global corporate sustainability assessments. He co-authored the 1998 landmark study, The Sweatshop Quandary, Corporate Responsibility on the Global Frontier was an honors graduate of The American University with dual majors in international development studies and economics.
After a brief stint at US Social Investment Forum (now the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment), the SRI industry trade association, where he was Director of Programs, he joined Si2 full-time in 2011.
There will be a memorial event in Washington in the New Year.
“Everyone connected to Si2 is saddened by this tragic loss, but we also are well prepared to continue the work we started with the founding of Si2, and look forward to providing more careful, impartial research about corporate sustainability debates in the months and years to come,” the organization said.
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