Tributes follow death of US SRI pioneer Joan Bavaria

Joan Bavaria, a pioneer of socially responsible investing in the US, has died after a prolonged battle with cancer. Bavaria, founding president and chief executive of Trillium Asset Management, was one of the leading figures of the US SRI movement. She co-founded the US Social Investment Forum in 1981 and went on to become founding chair of Ceres, the US environmental investor coalition. Bavaria was known internationally for the Joan Bavaria Award for impact in building sustainability into the capital markets. In November, 1999 she was lauded as “Hero for the planet” by Time.com and had been presented with many other awards including the City of Göteborg International Environment Prize in 2004. Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, said: “Joan was one of my heroes, a visionary who’s done an extraordinary job at both laying out a vision for changing the world, and at making that vision become reality.Today we celebrate her life, rather than grieve, which is exactly what she would have wanted us to do.” During her leadership as board co-chair at Ceres during the past 19 years, Ceres launched three major initiatives that continue to have global impact: the Ceres Principles, a corporate environmental code of conduct, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the de-facto international standard for corporate sustainability reporting now used by 1,300 companies worldwide, and the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), an alliance of over 70 investors with more than $7 trillion in collective assets dedicated to addressing climate change. A tribute book has been opened at www.ceres.org/joan