RI People & Appointments, September 5:

Denise Saber has joined natural resources funds group Craigmore Sustainables as Head of Sales and Marketing. Saber was most recently Head of Distribution at Osmosis Investment Management’s Climate Solutions ETF. She was formerly Head of European Business Development at Insight Investment. Craigmore was formed in 2009 by financial software entrepreneur Forbes Epworth. Link

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) research house GES Investment Services has hired two Finnish Senior Research Analysts. Anna Tytti Kaasinen joins from The Co-operative Asset Management; Sari Kuvaja is a former corporate responsibility and communications advisor. In addition, GES’ Key Account Manager Fredric Nyström has been appointed Engagement Coordinator.

Sylvia Giezeman has become an ESG Analyst at SNS Asset Management NV, the Dutch funds firm. She was previously with the Green Business Club and the NGO Move Your World.
Tjerk Kroes has been named as the new Director of Corporate Strategy and Policy at APG, the funds arm of Dutch civil service pensions giant ABP. Kroes, who is currently Director of Labour and Social and Economic Affiars in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, joins on November 1. Link

Andrew Winston, the founder of Winston Eco-Strategies author/co-author of Green Recovery and Green to Gold, has been named as an independent Sustainability Advisor to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. “PwC is aggressively growing its sustainability practice, and we see this relationship as an important and timely opportunity through which to bolster PwC’s presence in the US marketplace,” said Kathy Nieland, US Sustainable Business Solutions Leader at the firm.Russell Read, the former Chief Investment Officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), has been named CIO and deputy chief executive officer of Kuwait-based Gulf Investment Corp. Read, who left CalPERS in 2008, remains a principal of the sustainable boutique he founded, C Change Investments, according to a report in Pensions & Investments.

Professor Richard C. Green will chair Norges Bank Investment Management’s new Scientific Advisory Board. Green is Professor of Financial Economics at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. The other members of the board are Per Strömberg, Director of the Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) and Professor of Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, and Annette Vissing-Jørgensen, Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

There have been some changes to the Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church. Alan Groves, Peter Cussons and Sir Partridge have stepped down, to be succeeded by John Sandford, Garry Young and Terry Wynn.

Vicki Smith has been named senior manager, Corporate Social Responsibility, at Nissan Americas. She also becomes Executive Director of the Nissan Foundation. She was most recently a speechwriter for Nissan’s president and CEO, Carlos Ghosn. Release

Thomas Mueller, President & CEO of the Canada Green Building Council, is to join the founding board of Socially and Environmentally Responsible Aggregate (SERA) – the Canadian not-for-profit organization working to develop a certification system for socially and environmentally responsible aggregates.

Sustainability consultancy AccountAbility is expanding in the Middle East. It has advertised vacancies for a Middle East Regional Head and an Associate, Advisory Services, to be based in Saudi Arabia or Dubai. “The Middle East is a key growth region for AccountAbility,” the ads state.