We look forward to announcing the expert speakers coming to the 2023 Sustainable Investment Forum Europe. Take a look at 2022’s speakers.
Mark Barton
Mark Barton is one of the best-known anchors in global business television news.
Mark was was one of five journalists who founded Bloomberg Television’s European operations in London in the mid-1990s. Over the next two decades played an integral role in establishing Bloomberg TV as a global financial and business news network, broadcast in almost half a billion homes in over 70 countries.
Mark anchored all of Bloomberg Television’s prime-time programs over a 23-year career, breaking and analysing the biggest global business, financial market and geopolitical events of the past two decades, including six UK general elections, six US elections, the global financial crisis and Brexit. He also conducted over 20,000 interviews with world leaders, finance ministers, central bankers and chief executives, including Bill Gates, Shimon Peres and Jean-Claude Trichet.
Mark left Bloomberg Television in August 2018 to embark on a new career as a moderator, media trainer and communications & public relations specialist.
He moderates panels on business, tech, financial markets, politics, sport & social issues, and gives coaching sessions to elevate presentation & broadcast interview skills.
Mark Napier
FSD Africa
Mark is the CEO of FSD Africa. Mark’s early career (1989-2003) was in investment banking in the City of London where he advised growth companies on M&A and capital raising. He has now been involved in financial sector development in Africa for well over a decade.
From 2004-2009 he was CEO of FinMark Trust, based in Johannesburg. He then moved back to London where he became an independent consultant specialising in financial sector development in developing countries, mainly in Africa. He joined CDC, the UK’s development finance institution, as Director of Investment Innovation from 2011-2012 and moved to Nairobi to set up FSD Africa up in December 2012.
Mark has written papers and articles on financial sector development and was commissioning editor for a 2010 book of case studies on financial innovation in Africa – Real Money, New Frontiers. He has an MA in modern languages from Cambridge University.
Martin Spolc
European Commission
Martin Spolc is the Head of the Sustainable Finance unit in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Financial Services. Prior to his current role, he was the Head of the Capital Markets Union unit, the Economic analysis unit, Deputy Head of the Banking unit and Assistant to the Director General, directly involved in developing the Banking Union and other key projects in the area of financial services aiming at restoring financial stability since the crisis. Before joining the Commission, he had worked at risk management consultancy and the banking sector. He is the holder of the CFA and FRM designations and member of the CFA Institute and Global Association of Risk Professionals.
Mary Burce Warlick
International Energy Agency
Ms. Warlick, a retired senior career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Serbia, led the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources as the Acting Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs from January – September 2017 and served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from 2014 to 2017. In these roles, she advised the Secretary of State on energy diplomacy initiatives to promote global energy security, energy access and governance across Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. During this time, she served for three years as a U.S. representative on the IEA Governing Board and as Chair of the Standing Group on Long-Term Cooperation. Since then, she has served as team leader for the IEA’s recent in-depth peer reviews of the energy policies in the Netherlands and Canada.
During her diplomatic career, Ms. Warlick held a variety of other senior leadership positions in Washington and overseas at the Department of State, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense. In particular, she has extensive foreign policy experience working on Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, including previous assignments as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, and Director of the State Department’s Office of Russian Affairs and the Office of Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus Affairs. She also served as Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and as U.S. Consul General in Melbourne, Australia, with earlier assignments in Germany, the Philippines, and Bangladesh.
Ms. Warlick holds a B.A. in Political Science from Valparaiso University in Indiana, and an M.A in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. In addition to her prior service on the IEA Governing Board, she served previously on the board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. She is a recipient of The Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award, The Secretary of State’s Award for Public Outreach, and The Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.
Matt Christensen
AllianzGI
Matt Christensen is Global Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing and a Managing Director with Allianz Global Investors, which he joined in 2020. In this capacity, he is responsible for accelerating the growth of Impact Investing as part of the company’s growing private markets platform; he leads continued integration of ESG factors across AllianzGI’s existing range of public markets products, including stewardship activities; and supports the development of new SRI products. In addition, he has investment oversight for the company’s impact investments.
Matt joined AllianzGI from AXA Investment Management, where he had been Global Head of Impact and Responsible Investment since 2011. Prior to this, he was the Founding Executive Director of the think-tank Eurosif (European Sustainable Investment Forum), where he worked for nine years. Mr. Christensen started his career in 1997 as a strategy consultant at Braxton Associates/Deloitte Consulting. He then served as Director of Business Development at Motley Fool, a multimedia financial services company from 1999-2001.
Matt holds a BA in International Relations from Colgate University, an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from University of Pennsylvania – The Wharton School, and an MA in International Political Economy from University of Pennsylvania – The Lauder Institute. He has held board positions with various impact funds, including a listed private equity fund on the London Stock Exchange and as Vice President of one of the largest microfinance funds.
Matti Leppälä
PensionsEurope
PensionsEurope is the leading voice for funded pensions in Europe representing 25 European national pension fund associations covering over 110 million Europeans and € 5 trillion of assets.
Matti is a member and was the chair and vice-Chair in 2013-2018 of the Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group of EU supervisory authority EIOPA, a member of the European Commission’s High Level Group of Experts on Pensions 2018 – 2019 and the chair of the World Pension Alliance 2018 – 2019.
Before joining PensionsEurope in 2011 Matti worked for 11 years for The Finnish Pension Alliance in EU and international affairs, investment policy and legal issues. In 1990’s Matti worked for the Finnish trade unions in collective bargaining, labor law and social policy. In 1986 Matti started his professional career at the Law Drafting Department of the Ministry of Justice in Finland.
Matti has a LLM and an Executive MBA in Insurance and Financial services.
Morten Nilsson
Brightwell (formerly BT Pension Scheme Management)
Morten joined BTPSM in September 2018 and is responsible for leading all aspects of the business in its support of the Trustee of the Scheme and its members.
Morten has spent most of his career in financial services. He joined the pensions and investment industry in 2001 and spent over 10 years with the £90bn Danish pension scheme ATP, where he held different senior positions across administration, investments, product and business development. In 2010 he moved to London where he founded and as CEO made NOW: Pensions one of the largest occupational DC providers in the UK.
Nadège Lespagnol
EcoAct
Nathalie Borgeaud
Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)
Nathalie Borgeaud has significant experience in the financial industry, with a longstanding focus on sustainability. Prior to joining TNFD in February 2022, Nathalie worked for a start-up, now a Moody’s subsidiary, promoting data on physical climate risk and nature loss among European financial institutions. Before that, she worked as senior co-director for Corporate Social Responsibility at BNP Paribas CIB. She designed and implemented a sustainable development strategy, which included monitoring Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks and developing green financial product offerings. She built her finance career negotiating large complex financings for corporate clients with BNP Paribas and JPMorgan Chase for about twelve years. Initially based in New York with Citi, she originated project finance, bonds and equity issues for large industrial projects key to the development of emerging countries.
Nathalie is an ingénieur of the French Grande Ecole Mines-ParisTech. She also holds an MBA from HEC Paris and a landscape architect degree from Ecole du Paysage de Versailles.
Nathalie Lhayani
FrenchSIF
Nathalie Lhayani, President of the French SIF (FIR)
Nathalie is also Director of Sustainable Policy for the Caisse des Dépôts Group. In this capacity, she coordinates the responsible investment policy, climate, biodiversity, SDGs and ESG reporting of all CDC Group entities.
She is a member of Novethic‘s Strategic Committee and a director of CDC Biodiversité and of ORSE (French CSR association).
Aged 46, she is a graduate of the Institut de Hautes Études Internationales in Geneva and the University of Paris IX Dauphine, in applied economics and development.
She has held various positions in European and international civil society (at the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development, Confrontations Europe, EurActiv France as founder) and in European and national institutions. In France, she was notably advisor to the Minister of Ecological Transition and Solidarity (2017-2019), to the Minister Delegate in charge of European Affairs (2012-2014) and head of the parliamentary sector of the General Secretariat for European Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office (2014-2016). During the COP21, she participated, as part of a mission at Caisse des Dépôts, in the creation of Climate Finance Day and the mobilisation of sustainable finance actors to redirect capital towards a low-carbon economy.
Nigel Jollands
EBRD
Dr Jollands is a sustainable energy, climate finance and policy professional with 29 years’ experience leading innovation across multiple sectors and levels of government. He has spent the last 15 years as a climate finance practitioner delivering investment and policy outcomes in 30+ countries. He is currently co-Lead of EBRD Green Cities, the Bank’s flagship EUR3 billion investment programme supporting cities to address their environmental and climate challenges.
Nili Gilbert, CFA, CAIA
Carbon Direct | Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero
Nili Gilbert, CFA, CAIA, is the Vice Chairwoman of Carbon Direct, a leader in scaling carbon management into a global industry through both climate technology investments and client advisory.
She is also Chair of the US$130+ Trillion Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero’s (GFANZ) Advisory Panel of technical experts, as well as a member of its CEO Principals Group. Nili also sits as the Chair of US Policy for the UN-Convened Asset Owner Alliance. In addition to serving as a board member and Chairwoman of the Investment Committees of both the David Rockefeller Fund and the Synergos Institute, she is a Senior Advisor at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Nili is also a member of the Social Mission Board of Seventh Generation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unilever. Previously, she was Co-Founder and Portfolio Manager of Matarin Capital, which became one of the larger women-owned asset managers in the US. She also previously served as a member of the State of California’s Climate-Related Financial Risk Advisory Group.
Nili has been a recurring speaker on CNBC and Bloomberg television, among others, and her TED Talk on climate finance has received over 1 million views. She has been honored as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, LinkedIn TopVoice in Finance, Entrepreneur of the Year by the National Association of Securities Professionals, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek “One to Watch.” She is a permanent member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York.
Nili received her BA, magna cum laude, from Harvard University, her MBA from Columbia Business School, where she was a Toigo Fellow, and she has completed programs in leadership and sustainability at Oxford and Stanford Universities.
