Sustainable Investment Forum Europe 2022

Carine Smith Ihenacho is responsible for the governance and compliance area, which includes ownership and responsible investment activities, control and operational risk, compliance and legal services.

Carine Smith Ihenacho was appointed Chief Governance and Compliance Officer 6 October 2020. She joined Norges Bank Investment Management in August 2017 as Global Head of Ownership Strategies and was promoted to Chief Corporate Governance Officer on 1 January 2018.

Prior to joining Norges Bank Investment Management, Ms Ihenacho was Vice President Legal and Chief Compliance Officer in Statoil ASA. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a lawyer, working in both financials and the oil and gas industry, as well as in law firms. She also has extensive board experience.

Ihenacho holds a law degree from the University of Oslo, a Master of Law from Harvard Law School and a Master of Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).

Catherine joined ShareAction in July 2008, having previously been the founder and lead organiser of West London Citizens. Earlier in her career she was Senior Researcher at the New Policy Institute. Catherine is a board member of Green Alliance and of the Scott Trust, owner of The Guardian, serving on the Scott Trust’s investment committee. She was a Member Nominated Trustee of The Pensions Trust (the multi-employer pension scheme for the UK’s not-for-profit sector) for five years until Spring 2013. She served for four years on The Pensions Trust’s Investment Committee.

Catherine holds a First Class BA in Modern History from Oxford University and an MSc in Industrial Relations from the London School of Economics. In June 2011 Catherine was named a ‘Rising Star of Corporate Governance’ by Yale University’s, Millstein Center. In 2013, Pensions Insight featured her as one of the 50 most influential people in pensions and in May 2011 Investment and Pensions Europe called her one of the ‘top ten women in pensions’. Catherine was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2014.

Dave Zellner is the Chief Investment Officer for Glenview, Illinois-based Wespath Benefits and Investments, an agency of The United Methodist Church (UMC), and Wespath Institutional Investments. Wespath manages $28 billion on behalf of 100,000 active and retired clergy and lay employees of the UMC and over 120 UMC-affiliated institutions. Prior to joining Wespath in 1997, Dave was Senior Vice President and Director of Operations with Investment Research Company, then an investment management affiliate of United Asset Management. Previously, he was Director of Equities for the Shell Oil Company Retirement Funds where he managed two internal investment portfolios.

Dave helped co-author and was one of the original signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment in 2006. He presently is the board chair for FaithInvest, a U.K. based charity. He received his B.S. in Finance from Louisiana State University and MBA from the University of Houston.

Elina started her banking career in the Nordea Group in risk management and later on in international banking. She joined the Financial Institutions team of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London in 2001 and built a track record in business origination, structuring and execution of financing transactions ranging from senior debt to equity in various countries of EBRD’s operation. Elina moved to Luxembourg and to European Investment Bank (EIB) in 2006 and has since held several positions in the EIB. Before taking up her role as a head of the newly created Climate Office in the Bank’s operations directorate in the beginning of 2020, she lead EIB’s corporate lending team covering eleven markets in central and norther Europe. During her career, Elina has contributed to a number of green financing initiatives involving both public and private sector promoters and including financing of green innovation.

Eric Usher currently heads the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, UNEP FI, a global partnership bringing together the UN with 230 banks, insurers and asset managers working to develop the sustainable finance and responsible investment agendas. Eric oversees governance, strategy and day-to-day management of UNEP FI’s work programme and global network development. Over the years UNEP FI has established some of the most important sustainability oriented frameworks within the finance industry, including the Principles for Responsible Investment (2006), the Principles for Sustainable Insurance (2012) and work now underway on the establishment of Principles for Responsible Banking. Since joining in 2015, Mr. Usher has focused on accelerating the deep integration of sustainability risks into financial practice, including addressing climate change, natural capital loss and human rights abuses, as well as building out the frameworks for positive impact finance needed to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Eric sits on several industry bodies including as UN representative on the Board of the Principles for Responsible Investment, as a member of the Evaluation Council of the French sovereign green bond, as Director for the impact fund REPP Africa and founder of the Seed Capital Assistance Facility.

Prior to leading UNEP FI, Mr. Usher has over twenty years of experience in the low carbon sectors, spanning technology commercialisation in Canada, solar rural electrification in Morocco and financial sector development across emerging markets. During 2011, Mr. Usher worked on the establishment of the Green Climate Fund and led efforts to create its Private Sector Facility. Eric has been an editor of the Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment report published annually with Bloomberg and was lead author for finance of the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources. Before joining the UN, Eric was General Manager of a solar rural electrification company based in Morocco.

Olivier Guersent graduated with distinction from the “Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux” in 1983. He joined the French Ministry of Economy and Finance in 1984, where he carried out many investigations for the French Competition Authority. He joined the European Commission in 1992, initially with the “Merger Task Force” in the Directorate-General for Competition. Since then, he has alternated between the private offices of a number of European Commissioners (Karel Van Miert, Michel Barnier and Neelie Kroes) and DG Competition (successively Deputy Head of Unit in charge of cartels, Head of Unit in charge of policy and coordination of cases, Head of Unit in charge of merger control, Acting Director “Transport, postal and other services” and, from 2009, Director responsible for the fight against cartels. From 2010 to 2014 he was the head of the private office of Michel Barnier, Commissioner for Internal Market and Services. Having held the position of Deputy Director-General since July 2014, Olivier Guersent has been Director-General of the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union from 1 September 2015 to 31 December 2019. As of 1st January 2020 he is the Director General of the Directorate General for Competition. Married and a father of three children, Olivier Guersent is a member of the board of of the non-profit organisation Aremis that provides medical care in the home, primarily to cancer patients in the Brussels area. He is a regular lecturer to postgraduate university students.