RI People & Appointments, December 9: Druckman joins SASB Foundation

Paul Druckman has joined the Governing Board of the SASB Foundation, the body which oversees the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Druckman is a former President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW) and board member at UK watchdog the Financial Reporting Council as well as being chair of the Prince of Wales' Accounting for Sustainability executive board. He founded and led the International Integrated Reporting Council and currently chairs the World Benchmarking Alliance and Clear Insurance Management. Last month SASB announced that former World Bank Treasurer Madelyn Antoncic would step down as CEO after less than a year in the role, to be succeeded by Janine Guillot, the former senior CalPERS executive who was SASB’s Director of Capital Markets Policy and Outreach. 

Maria Simonsonhas been appointed as Head of Group Societal Impact & Sustainability at Danske Bank. It’s an in-house move; she was previously Head of Societal Impact & Sustainability for Danske Bank in Sweden. She will report to Berit Behring, Head of Wealth Management.

Karen Lockridge has left Mercer after more than eight years to join Canada Post’s pension investment team. Formerly Principal of Responsible Investment at Mercer, Lockridge is now Director of ESG at the Canadian postal giant’s pension fund. According to a document, the job involves leading the development of an ESG investment strategy, action plan and risk framework, as well as “implement[ing] the process of becoming a signatory” to the PRI. She will remain based in Toronto.

Niamh Whooley has joined Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) in an ESG role. She was formerly with fixed income giant PIMCO where she was Senior Vice President, ESG Strategies, having worked earlier in her career held senior ESG roles at Societe Generale Corporate and Investment Banking – SGCIB and Fidelity Worldwide Investment.

Kirsten English, who is a board member of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), has joined the board of Actual Experience, the AIM-listed analytics-as-a-service company. Until recently English, who joined the USS board as an independent non-executive director in 2014, was CEO and Executive Chair of Style Research, the provider of portfolio analysis software and research. She worked for Reuters for over 16 years including as CEO of their Norwegian and Icelandic operations and was one of the co-founders of and General Manager at Radianz – the low latency network company built for financial markets, which sold to BT in 2005.

Pierre Jameson, chief investment officer of the Church of England Pensions Board, is to step down from the role in February next year according to Investment & Pensions Europe. He has been CIO of the CEPB – which runs assets for four church pension schemes – since 2008. He joined from CCLA Investment Management. The report quoted him saying he was considering a number of options, mainly in a non-executive capacity.

Dr Tara Shine has been appointed as the new chair of trustees at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), taking over from former Costa Rica vice-president Rebeca Grynspan when her term at the London-based research organisation ends next year. Shine, who has worked with Irish Aid, the Swedish Development Agency, the OECD, The Elders and the Mary Robinson Foundation, is currently director and co-founder of the Change by Degrees social enterprise.

Eva Vitell has been named Managing Director at HYBRIT Development AB, a Swedish company developing what’s claimed to be the world’s first fossil-free iron-ore based steelmaking process. By using hydrogen instead of coke and coal for iron ore reduction, the process emits water instead of carbon dioxide. HYBRIT is a joint venture of industrial group SSAB,  mining company LKAB and energy firm Vattenfall. Vitell joins from Vattenfall Electricity Distribution, where she heads up Customers and Market.

Mark Wiseman, the former Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board CEO who was instrumental in the Focusing Capital on the Long-Term project (now FCLT Global), has left his senior role at BlackRock, where he was global head of active equities, according to media reports. The Financial Times reported he was ousted for failing to disclose a romantic relationship with a colleague in his team; his wife, Marcia Moffat, is head of BlackRock in Canada and sits on the board of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance.

Mark Suzman has been named CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, taking over from Sue Desmond-Hellmann. Suzman, who joined the foundation in 2007 and who is a former senior UN advisor and Financial Times correspondent, is currently its president of Global Policy & Advocacy and chief strategy officer. An oncologist by training, Desmond-Hellmann oversaw the creation of the Gates Medical Research Institute—the world’s first nonprofit biotech organization.