Short Bio of Speaker

As Eva says:

What defines me is my passion to find solutions to sustainability challenges. To that end, I chose to merge three academic strands: finance, science, and business.  Apart from relevant finance & investment qualifications as a financial planner, I have a first degree in Science (Biology & Palaeontology) and a Master of Business Administration (MBA - Strategic Marketing and International Business).
These main themes also run through my professional life:

CONSULTANT and INVESTMENT SPECIALIST: My training and professional experience encompasses all facets of financial advice; I worked as financial planner specialised in Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and my accreditations are up to date.
2006/07: I have been working as advisor with an Australian not for profit organisation to invest their operating funds according to their principles and financial requirements. At present I advise their investment committee on maintenance of their SRI portfolio. I sit on the SRI committee of FINSIA, the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. Earlier this year, I facilitated a joint venture between a US based and an Australian SRI fund manager.

In the past few years, I worked as consultant with the Australian finance industry, i.e. assisted fund managers with implementing SRI principles, a group of eight ethical fund managers to initiate communication with the environmental and social NGO community. I have also written two financial industry courses on SRI investment. One is a distance education programme for finance professionals on the principles and issues of SRI written for a national finance education provider.

Over the past years, I have been invited as speaker on different facets of sustainability to national and international conferences (Sustainable Resources Conference in Boulder, International Working Group in Keystone, Colorado, Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (IÖW), Berlin, etc.), and I am published in a number of magazines.

Before entering the finance industry, I was engaged for many years in environmental services and eco-tourism. This included consulting to Federal Government on ecotourism and developing marine based and Aboriginal ecotourism products through my own company.  I was a founder member of the Ecotourism Association and founder and Chair of Cetacea Australia, a national marine ecotourism industry association facilitating the development of ecotourism benchmarks.

My professional experience also embraces Australian federal politics as assistant to a Federal Minister (The Hon. Jim Carlton) and working for a number of years for the UN in Geneva (UNDP publication ‘Development Forum’). I speak five languages (more or less well): English, German, Italian, Spanish and French, and am qualified as a teacher/presenter (one teaching certificate is in permaculture).

Over time, I have collected and synthesised much information on sustainability issues and observed the corporate and investment world in their responses. I also had a front seat as SRI specialised financial advisor in understanding public needs and wants with regard to these issues. Through working with the UN and in federal politics, I gained an appreciation of how these institutions function.
I would now like to widen my field of operation now to Europe, Asia and the US to contribute to a deeper understanding of practical solutions to sustainability issues as they effect and can be effected by the corporate world and the finance and investment industries.

 
TOPICS
TOPIC: Sustainability
TOPIC Title: Investing - Are you not forgetting something?
Target Audience: Can be adapted to any audience and level of sophistication
Level of Sophistication: General/Basic/Intermediate/Advanced

Duration of Talk (Excluding Breaks):  Adaptable

Please specify if the topic must be delivered with another topic: No, does not to be in tandem with another topic, but fits in nicely with any other investment talk

List of connected topics: all aspects of sustainability

Synopsis of Presentation :
1. The moral  high ground
How does management deal with the potential conflict between moral obligations and financial interests?
The simple truth is that companies cannot function in isolation from the society or the environment around them. The term ‘corporate citizenship’ has been longingly associated with an active and benevolent endorsement by corporations of societal goals ‘for the greater good’. However, this transformation of business for the greater good has not been a ‘moral road to Damascus’.
The ‘moral high ground’ alone does not make companies shape up and act in a more responsible manner; “the reality is that when a company commits capital there must be an expected return. Therefore the moral argument for change taken in isolation is not sufficient”. 

And I take if from there….

Note: this is the Al Gore argument of economy versus ecology.

2. Missing links
Financial markets have been slow in understanding the ramifications of sustainability issues to performance and risk parameters. The average financial analyst and fund manager is sceptical about the relevancy and materiality of environmental and social issues (CSR) in investing.

In the not too distant future, these non-financial elements will be universally recognised as complementary assessment mechanisms, “as integral a part of mainstream investment analysis as P/E ratios, earnings revisions, and dividend yields”.

And I take if from there….i.e why analysts struggle with CSR issues as ‘non-financial’, i.e.

Shifting from short to long term focus

CSR is as much about avoiding potential costs, as it is about opportunity – profit and innovation.
On the whole, the mainstream investment industry continues to be committed to financial performance indicators and short term results. This makes investors far more reactive than necessary.
Unless there is a crisis, CSR issues do not come up on radar screen. “No one cares unless there’s a financial risk or short-term exposure”.

3. Now to the good news…examples and solutions
I bring in examples of visionary companies and investment institutions that are embracing the future.

And give the steps to solutions. The solutions depend on the audience and will be tailor-made to the audience, i.e.
• Corporations
• Investment institutions
• The public

Who Should Attend :
I am totally flexible, I can address any level of audience.

How you will benefit :
We are all facing hard choices – as individuals and corporations – on how to integrate the changes happening right now, inconvenient or not.

My intent is to offer information and solutions, so our choice is informed and directed.

This is, I believe, of benefit to us all, whether we are building a house (and consider alternative power and water saving mechanisms) or whether we are investing (and want to know about environmental risk ramifications).
As corporations, we might not know how to adjust to the changing environment and communicate this new vision to our staff.
As investment managers, we might want to know what we don’t know, but need to know (risk, fiduciary duty, etc) – so to speak.

Classification :
Please specify here how you will classify this seminar
(i.e. Business/Finance/Tax, Business/Marketing/Direct, Personal/Health , Personal/Career)
• Business
• Finance
• Corporate
• Personal
• Health, etc

I can talk on all the above and more – very flexible. Sustainability issues affect us on all levels, individual, corporate, and in investments, i.e.
• Green housing
• Investments with environmental and social overlays
• Water
• Climate Change
• Toxic health – the connection between food and health.
And many others.