UNPRI to hire five in major operational build-up

The $20 trillion United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) has embarked on a major recruitment drive to hire five new staff, as it emerges to become a fully-fledged investor organization. The new positions include three senior roles: a director of implementation support, a director of communications and a director of operations and finance. The senior hires, all based in the PRI’s London headquarters, indicate that the organisation is seriously building up internal operations capacities. In addition, the UNPRI will hire two junior level staff: a London-based manager for social issues in its on-line investor engagement service, the Clearinghouse, and a US-based consultant who will develop the PRI’s US network. The PRI, which started in 2005, now has over 700 signatories, including many of the world’s leading pension funds, investment managers and service providers. This year, the UNPRI began to operate its own assessment of implementation of its six principles among signatories, following initial work carried out for three years by Mercer, the investment consultant. It said that a the new director of implementation support would lead its work on assisting signatories to integrate the principles across portfoliosand asset classes and would lead a growing team of more than a dozen professional and support staff. The new director of operations and finance, the UNPRI said, will lead and manage its finance, HR, IT, risk management and governance functions and contribute to its long-term business strategy and “ambitious growth plans”. In August last year, Responsible-Investor.com reported that the PRI had started recruitment of seven new permanent and temporary staff to guide a five-year expansion programme. In March this year, RI revealed that the UNPRI was also planning to take its first steps to influence legislation in favour of ESG investment issues with the launch of a public policy network to lobby regulators and policy makers. The UNPRI said the network would “seek out ways for collaboration between policy makers and investors, to encourage better policy making to support responsible investors and to encourage governments’ own funds to be aligned with the PRI”.

Link to Director of Implementation Support position

Link to Director of Communications position

Link to Director of Operations and Finance position
Link to Clearinghouse social issues manager