Nigel Topping is the UN High-Level Climate Action Champion for COP26 in the UK, appointed by the UK Prime Minister in January 2020. Nigel works alongside the Chilean High-Level Climate Action Champion for COP25, Gonzalo Muñoz. The role of the high-level champions is to strengthen collaboration and drive action from businesses, investors, organisations, cities, and regions on climate change, and coordinate this work with governments and parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Nigel was most recently CEO of We Mean Business, a coalition of businesses working to accelerate the transition to a zero carbon economy. Prior to that he was Executive Director of the Carbon Disclosure Project, following an 18 year career in the private sector, having worked across the world in emerging markets and manufacturing.

Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE. He was Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank, and has held posts at other UK & overseas universities. He was Second Permanent Secretary to Her Majesty’s Treasury, Head of the UK Government Economic Service, and led the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. He was knighted for services to economics (2004), made a life peer (2007), and appointed Companion of Honour for services to economics, international relations and tackling climate change in 2017. He was President of the Royal Economic Society (2018-2019) and President of the British Academy (2013-2017). His latest book is “Standing Up for a Sustainable World: Voices of Change” (eds Henry, Rockström and Stern, Edward Elgar, 2020).

Dr Maria P. Neira has been directing the Department of Environment, Climate Change and  Health at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland since September 2005. Throughout her tenure and up until now she has led and advised on policy and management in key areas of environmental health.

Prior to that she served as Under-Secretary of Health and President of the Spanish Food Safety Agency.

From 1993-1998 she was Coordinator of the Global Task Force on Cholera Control.

Dr Neira began her career as a medical coordinator working with refugees in El Salvador and Honduras for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). She then spent several years working in different African countries during armed conflicts.

Born in the city of Oviedo, Asturias, Dr Neira is a Spanish national, a medical doctor by training and specialized in Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases; and Public Health.

Among many distinctions, she has been awarded the Médaille de l’Ordre national du Mérite by the Government of France and received an “Extraordinary Woman” award by HM Queen Letizia of Spain. In early 2019, she was nominated among the top 100 policy influencers in health and climate change.

On January 20^th 2021, John F. Kerry was sworn in as our nation’s first Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and the first-ever Principal to sit on the National Security Council entirely dedicated to climate change. President Biden announced Kerry would have a seat at every table around the world as he combats the climate crisis to meet the existential threat that we face. In recent years, Kerry was the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s first ever Visiting Distinguished Statesman, following his four years as the 68th United States Secretary of State. As America’s top diplomat, he guided the Department’s strategy on nuclear nonproliferation, combating radical extremism, and the threat of climate change. His tenure was marked by the successful negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Climate Agreement.

From 1985 to 2013, he served as a U.S. Senator representing Massachusetts, and was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2009 to 2013. Secretary Kerry served in the U.S. Navy, completing two combat tours of duty in Vietnam for which he received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Combat V, and three Purple Hearts. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his law degree from Boston College Law School. Secretary Kerry is the best-selling author of A Call to Service, This Moment on Earth with his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, and his 2018 memoir, Every Day Is Extra, which The New York Times described as “a bittersweet reminder of what the country once demanded of its leaders.” Secretary Kerry was the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States in 2004.

Ben is the acting Director General for Net Zero Buildings and Industry at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, where he is responsible for the Government’s programme to decarbonise the UK’s 30 million buildings and its industrial base. He has spent the last decade working on energy and climate policy, as well as having spent time in the energy industry as Director of External Policy for an international renewable electricity developer. Prior to his current role, Ben was previously head of core strategy and carbon budgets at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and has worked across a range of Government policies from childcare to family law, before moving to work on energy policy.

Mark Carney is currently the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance and Prime Minister Johnson’s Finance Adviser for COP26. Mark is a member of the Arnhold Distinguished Fellowship Program Board within Conservation International. He is also an external member of Stripe’s Board, a global technology company building economic infrastructure for the internet.

Mark was previously Governor of the Bank of England (from 2013 to 2020), and Governor of the Bank of Canada (from 2008 to 2013).

Internationally, Mark was Chair of the Financial Stability Board (from 2011 to 2018), He chaired the Global Economy Meeting and Economic Consultative Committee of the Bank for International Settlements (from 2018-2020) and was First Vice-Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board (from 2013-2020). He is Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management and a member of the Global Advisory Board of PIMCO, the Group of Thirty, the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, as well as the boards of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Hoffman Institute for Global Business and Society at INSEAD.

Mark was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada in 1965. After growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, he obtained a bachelor degree in Economics from Harvard and masters and doctorate degrees in Economics from Oxford.

After a thirteen-year career with Goldman Sachs, Mark was appointed Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada in 2003. In 2004, he became Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Finance. He held this position until his appointment as Governor of the Bank of Canada in February 2008.

Shirley Rodrigues was appointed as London Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy in October 2016.  She has devised and delivered environmental policies and programmes in London, nationally and internationally for government and philanthropy including most recently overseeing a global cities and climate change grants portfolio at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).

She is now working to deliver the Mayor of London’s vision to make the city a fairer, greener, healthier and more sustainable one. This includes ambitious programmes to reduce air pollution across London including the expansion of the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone, making London carbon neutral by 2030 and spearheading London’s economic and social recovery from the impacts of Covid-19 through a Green New Deal.