Speakers
Maureen Bujno
Managing Director, Audit & Assurance Governance Leader, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Maureen is a Managing Director in Deloitte’s Center for Board Effectiveness and the Audit & Assurance Governance Leader. As a leading subject matter resource on a variety of corporate governance topics, Maureen advises boards, committees and executives on governance challenges, rules and leading practices. She is a frequent speaker to public and private company boards and other audiences on a variety of governance topics. Maureen leads the governance offerings for many of Deloitte’s most significant and complex clients. Maureen was instrumental in the development of Deloitte’s Center for Board Effectiveness and has led many of its activities. Maureen is active in a number of industry organizations and currently a member of the Advisory Board of the University of Delaware Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, a member of the Council of Institutional Investors Markets Advisory Council and an active member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and the Society for Corporate Governance. In addition, Maureen is a member of the Fairfield University Dolan School of Business Advisory Board and a member of the Athletic Committee at the New York Athletic Club. In 2022, Maureen was awarded with the Fairfield University Alumni Service Award. With over 31 years of business experience, Maureen is a CPA and started her career in the Audit practice, followed by spending a number of years in the Merger and Acquisition Services group.
Doug Chia
Owner and President, Soundboard Governance LLC
Fellow, Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance
Douglas K. Chia is President of Soundboard Governance LLC and Fellow at the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance.
Mr. Chia was previously Executive Director of The Conference Board ESG Center and continues to contribute to The Conference Board as an ESG Center Fellow. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University School of Law, Fellow at The Aspen Institute Business & Society Program, Advisor to Foresight BoardOps, and Advisory Board Member of the ESG Professionals Network and PracticalESG.com.
Before joining The Conference Board, Mr. Chia served as Assistant General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Johnson & Johnson. Previously, he served as Assistant General Counsel, Corporate of Tyco International and practiced law at the global firms Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Clifford Chance in New York and Hong Kong.
Mr. Chia has held a number of central leadership positions in the corporate governance field, including Chair of the Board of the Society for Corporate Governance, President of the Stockholder Relations Society of New York, and member of the New York Stock Exchange Corporate Governance Commission. He is currently a member of the Corporate Laws Committee of the American Bar Association, American Law Institute, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and Ascend Pan-Asian Leaders. Mr. Chia has received numerous awards and recognitions in corporate governance and has frequently appeared in the news media, including CNN, NPR Marketplace, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Fortune, and The New Yorker.
Mr. Chia received an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College and a J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Chia is a Trustee and Vice President for Governance of the Historical Society of Princeton and member of the Dartmouth College Fund Committee. He lives with his family in Princeton, New Jersey.
Jina Choi
Partner, Morrison Foerster
With her one-of-a-kind skillset, Jina Choi represents public and pre-IPO companies, financial institutions, asset management firms, boards of directors, audit and special committees, and individuals in internal investigations, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other government investigations, enforcement-related litigation, as well as compliance-related issues. Jina joined the firm after over 16 years with the SEC, where she ultimately served as Director of the San Francisco Regional Office, helping to enforce many of the laws that govern the public and pre-IPO companies she now represents.
Many of Jina’s achievements as an SEC enforcement lawyer and federal prosecutor are public record, and her former colleagues and senior officials at the SEC describe her as “an exceptional attorney” who has shown “leadership and [a] thoughtful approach to new and complex issues” and “strategic thinking on examination initiatives, particularly those involving developing technology.” She is praised for leading the San Francisco office of the SEC in bringing “a series of ground-breaking enforcement actions, including against public and private technology companies in Silicon Valley and their senior officers” and “establish[ing] important precedents” that will continue to be followed in the years ahead.
Jina has experience in matters related to financial reporting and accounting, disclosure, insider trading, offering fraud, investment adviser and broker dealer fraud, auditor misconduct, market structure, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). As Regional Director of the SEC’s San Francisco Office, she led a staff of over 130 attorneys, accountants, and professionals and worked closely with leadership in numerous U.S. Attorney’s Offices, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and state securities regulators in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, as well as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. She also provided training to attorneys and accountants from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
In addition to her time at the SEC, Jina’s distinguished government experience includes serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Texas, serving as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, and serving as a law clerk for the Honorable Robert P. Patterson, Jr., in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. She also has experience in private practice at other large law firms.
Cinnamon Clark
Practice Lead, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Services, McLean & Company
Cinnamon Clark is the Practice Lead, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Services at McLean & Company where she leads the development of DEI strategy. Her work allows her to partner with organizations to build strategies that address inclusion, equity, and systematic barriers to embed inclusive leadership. Cinnamon is a 20 year, retired Chief Petty Officer in the United States Navy, where she was an electrician and traveled the world. The Navy is where her passion of inclusive and equitable workplaces began, traveling to many exciting places like Iceland and Vietnam. She is San Diego transplant from a rural desert community in Arizona, where women and people of color are underrepresented, the need for representation is close to her heart.
As a thought leader, and change maker in the DEI space, she is committed to advocacy, lending her voice and expertise through service to the community as a Commissioner (Co-Chair) on the City of San Diego Citizen’s Equal Opportunity Commission (CEOC), Commissioner on the Human Rights Commission (HRC) for the County of San Diego in addition to a number of advocacy and community.
Cinnamon is the first generation college graduate earning a Bachelors & Masters degree prior to retiring from the Navy.
John Cruden
Principal, Beveridge & Diamond
John provides strategic counsel on high-stakes environmental and natural resources litigation, civil and criminal enforcement, and compliance. Working with clients makes the practice of law worthy and valuable to him as they advance strategic needs while protecting human health and the environment.
For more than two decades, John served as a senior leader on environment and natural resource matters at the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), where he supervised some of the department’s most significant litigation, including the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Love Canal, and Bunker Hill litigation. As the Senate-confirmed, Assistant Attorney General, ENRD, John worked on the most high-profile environment cases, and personally negotiated the multi-billion dollar resolutions of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Volkswagen emissions scandal. These cases required a great deal of coordination, expert assistance, and sophisticated management of numerous players to reach successful outcomes. This experience has given John insight into the workings of large corporations, as well as into the challenges that major companies face in lawsuits.
As the former President of the Environmental Law Institute, the former Chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section on Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources, and the immediate past President of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, John has led each of the premier environmental organizations in the United States. In addition, he was the first government attorney to be elected and serve as the President of the District of Columbia Bar, now the largest bar in the nation.
Bonnie Lyn de Bartok
Founder and CEO, S-Factor
Bonnie Lyn is a subject matter expert in all things Impact Measurement and Management (IMM), her experience spans more than two decades and over 60 countries boots-on-the-ground. Her early experience she worked for Non-Governmental Organizations (Red Cross, Peace Corps, CIDA, UNDP, et al.), followed by advising dozens of Mining and Oil&Gas Companies (Junior, Development and Production) for over a decade on Impact Management, Reporting and Strategy, to ultimately advising Governments and Global Financial Institutions from the outside looking in on Human Rights issues and risks of assets and investments.
Mike Delikat
Partner, Orrick
Michael Delikat, a partner in the New York office, was the previous Chair of Orrick’s Global Employment Law Practice for over twenty years, which has employment law teams in the European Union, Asia as well as the United States.
He also is the founder of the firm’s Whistleblower Task Force. He previously served as the Managing Director of Orrick’s Litigation Division.
Under Mike’s leadership, Orrick’s Employment Law & Litigation group was recently named Labor & Employment Department of the Year in California for the fourth consecutive year by The Recorder, the premier source for legal news, in recognition of their significant wins on behalf of leading multinational companies on today’s most complex and challenging employment law matters. The practice group has also been chosen as one of the top national employment law practices by Law 360. Chambers USA and Chambers Global has ranked him in Band 1 since it began publishing its rankings, noting he is a “giant of the employment bar, widely regard as an expert in whistleblowing matters and sex harassment claims”,”sought out by premier clients to handle high-stakes employment litigation and investigations,” and “a very persuasive advocate who knows the law inside out and is able to get to the heart of the issue very quickly.”
He represents a broad range of major corporations and other institutions including law firms in all facets of labor and employment law. Mike has an active trial, arbitration and appellate practice and handles a number of high-visibility class action and impact cases.
Michelle Edkins
Managing Director, BlackRock Investment Stewardship
Michelle Edkins is a Managing Director in BlackRock’s Investment Stewardship team of 70 specialists covering the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Asia-Pacific. The team engages companies and others in the investment stewardship ecosystem to promote the governance and business practices aligned with long-term value creation by the companies in which BlackRock invests on behalf of clients. Michelle is responsible globally for institutional relations, policy on investment stewardship issues, and communications related to BlackRock’s investment stewardship perspectives and activities. She also serves on the firm’s Global Operating and Government Relations Steering Committees. She is an alumna of BlackRock’s Women’s Leadership Forum, Enterprise Leadership Program and Human Capital Committee.
Michelle is an active participant in the public corporate governance debate and regularly speaks and writes on the importance of good stewardship for company performance. She was named in the NACD (the US National Association of Corporate Directors) Directorship 100 Governance Professionals list for the past seven years. She is Chair of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a former Chair of the International Corporate Governance Network and an Aspen Institute First Movers’ Fellow. She currently serves on a number of industry initiatives to enhance governance and sustainable business practices including the US chapter of the 30% Club, a market initiative to increase the number of women on boards and in senior management, and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Investor Advisory Group.
Prior to joining BlackRock in 2009, Michelle was Managing Director at Governance for Owners, an independent partnership offering products that support responsible long-term share ownership. She started her corporate governance career in the UK in 1997 at Hermes Pensions Management, where she spent eight years, initially as the head of the corporate governance team and thereafter as Director of Institutional Relations. An economist by training, Michelle has also worked for New Zealand’s Reserve Bank and the British High Commission in Wellington. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.
Sarah Fortt
Global Co-Chair, Latham
Sarah is the Global Co-Chair of the ESG practice at Latham & Watkins. Before joining Latham, Sarah was the mind behind the creation of one of the first cross-functional ESG groups at a U.S.-based global law firm, where she also served as the firm’s dedicated corporate governance expert.
Sarah is a key thought leader in U.S. corporate governance and on matters regarding environmental and social corporate risks and opportunities, including those relating to climate change, human rights and corporate culture. She regularly helps clients create consistent, effective and meaningful stakeholder communications (both required and voluntary). Sarah has worked with companies across multiple industries in times of calm and in times of crisis, as well as during key strategic transactions.
Sarah has created a unique perspective on and approach to corporate cultural wellness that connects an in-depth understanding of leadership, governance, the ethics and compliance functions, employee incentives and initiatives, and corporate risk and crisis management. She has a sophisticated understanding of incentive structures and how they function across various levels of an organization given an organization’s strategies, goals and “sacred cows.”
Megan Glowacki
Partner, Thompson Hine
Megan is a partner in the Labor & Employment practice group. She focuses on counseling management clients on all areas of labor and employment law. Her practical and timely advice addresses a comprehensive range of business issues and is designed to help employers mitigate risk and ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations. In addition, she represents employers’ interests in litigation involving employment discrimination, wrongful discharge, restrictive covenants, trade secrets, and wage and hour disputes.
Megan also represents private and nonprofit employers in collective bargaining negotiations, contract and discharge arbitrations, and investigations and actions involving unfair labor practice charges, and she advises on the interpretation of labor agreements.
While attending law school, Megan served as a legal intern for the National Labor Relations Board.
Lawrence Heim
Editor, PracticalESG.com
Lawrence Heim is Editor of CCRcorp’s ESG platform, PracticalESG.com, where he shares insights based on over 35 years of supporting companies in environmental, health & safety compliance and management. He’s led various types of non-financial audits, designed corrective action programs and helped implement sustainability programs. He spent nearly a decade in-house at a Fortune 150 manufacturer and went on to help create the Global Environmental Risk Consulting Practice at Marsh USA. Later, Lawrence founded & led the Sustainability practice at Elm Consulting Group, and most recently, he led development of supply chain due diligence standards at the Responsible Business Alliance/Responsible Minerals Initiative. When the SEC’s conflict minerals rules were under consideration, Lawrence was the only non-financial auditor selected to give testimony to the Commission. In 2018, he published the book “Killing Sustainability.” Lawrence also sits on the board of ASSET, a non-profit anti-slavery organization.
Denis Jacob
Managing Director, Health Industries Risk and Regulatory Practice, PwC
Denis Jacob is a Managing Director in the PwC Health Industries Risk and Regulatory Practice. He has over twenty years of professional experience in leading US and International audit, compliance, governance and ESG assurance programs. Responsible for large-scale business transformation initiatives focused on internal audit, M&A, investigations, distributors & 3rd party compliance, anti-corruption, and ESG.
Prior to joining PwC, Denis worked for GE (General Electric), where he held the position of Chief Audit Executive – Compliance, ESG & Investigations.
Denis previously worked for Orthofix, where he held the position of VP, Deputy Chief Compliance Officer, and Becton Dickinson, as Global Director, Ethics & Compliance.
Prior to his latest role at BD, Denis worked for Covidien (later acquired by Medtronic), Deloitte and Citibank.
Denis is certified in Nonprofit Governance by the University of Texas at Dallas, as a Compliance & Ethics Professional (CCEP) by the Compliance Certification Board (CCB) and in Healthcare Compliance by the Healthcare Compliance Association (HCCA).
Denis has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Mackenzie University, a graduate degree in business management from Fundação Getúlio Vargas and completed his MBA program at Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo, Brazil.
Lisa Kenney
CEO, Reimagine Gender
Lisa Kenney is the CEO of Reimagine Gender and the former executive director of Gender Spectrum. Leveraging decades of corporate leadership experience, Lisa has worked with dozens of Fortune 500 and other brands to help them understand gender and implement changes across the organization.
Lisa is a frequent speaker at conferences, including SXSW, the 3% Conference, Institute For The Future, Techonomy, Sustainable Brands and The Shared Value Leadership Summit. In addition to co-writing “The Transgender Teen: A Handbook for Parents and Professionals Supporting Transgender and Non-Binary Teens”, Lisa has authored several articles on gender, including the Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Quartz at Work, and Fortune.
Maureen Kline
Vice President, Public Affairs and Sustainability, Pirelli Tire North America
Maureen Kline is Vice President, Public Affairs and Sustainability for Pirelli Tire North America, responsible for the US, Canada and Mexico. She is based in Rome, Georgia, USA.
She is a board member of the US Tire Manufacturers Association and the Tire and Rubber Association of Canada. She is on the Corporate Responsibility Steering Committee of the Automotive Industry Action Group, and on the ISSB Technical Reference Group (formerly the Standards Advisory Group of SASB). She is on the board of the Public Affairs Council, where she co-chairs a Social Impact Committee.
She writes a column on sustainability for www.Inc.com and is a frequent speaker on the topic. She teaches a course on Enterprise Sustainability within Clarkson University’s MS in Engineering Management program.
Previously she was based in Pirelli’s headquarters in Milan, Italy, where she coordinated government affairs for the company’s international subsidiaries, and before that was responsible for Pirelli’s international media relations.
Prior to her public affairs and communications career, Maureen worked as a journalist over a 15-year period. She was Milan correspondent for the Wall Street Journal Europe, Breaking Views, and Business Week, among others. She edited a blog on the topic of meritocracy, hosted by Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. She wrote and co-hosted a TV talk show in Italy on business and finance, broadcast on the local channel Telelombardia.
Maureen Kline holds a Bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics. She lived in Italy for over 20 years, working in the communications, public affairs and legal fields, and holds dual US-Italian citizenship.
She is a co-chair of the inaugural board of Yale Blue Green, the shared interest group for Yale alumni interested in environmental and sustainability issues and action.
Dr. Jennifer Kraus
Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Source Intelligence
Dr. Jennifer Kraus has over thirty years of experience in the supply chain compliance and transparency, EHS, and sustainability fields. She has been a leader implementing projects in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Central & South America. Dr. Kraus is Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer for Source Intelligence, a technology company that specializes in supply chain compliance and sustainability solutions. She was President of Global Environmental Consulting Company (GECCo, Inc.), a boutique consulting practice based in San Diego, CA. Prior to GECCo, Dr. Kraus was an Associate with Dames & Moore, an Environmental Manager for General Dynamics Electronics, and a Safety Engineer with Litton Guidance and Control Systems. Dr. Kraus was appointed by the Clinton Administration to the Good Neighbor Environmental Board, a congressional advisory committee on environmental and infrastructure issues along the US-Mexico border. In addition, she was appointed by the Governor Schwarzenegger Administration to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. Dr. Kraus was certified as a Professional Environmental Auditor for Environmental Compliance and EMS-ISO 14000 Plus by the Board of Environmental, Health and Safety Auditor Certifications (BEAC). Dr. Kraus has published articles on conflict minerals compliance, environmental management systems, sustainability, pollution prevention and auditing. She has also received grants for research in environmental management systems and occupational injury rates, pollution prevention and alpine skiing and snowboarding injuries. Dr. Kraus was raised in Puerto Rico and is fluent in Spanish. She completed her PhD in Public Health, Epidemiology at the UCSD School of Medicine and the San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health. She received her Master’s Degree in Public Health from UCLA and her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Princeton University.
Dave Lynn
Partner, Morrison Foerster
Senior Editor, TheCorporateCounsel.net
Dave Lynn is a Partner of Morrison Foerster. Dave’s practice is focused on advising a wide range of clients on SEC matters, securities transactions and corporate governance. Dave is well known in the area of executive compensation disclosure, having co-authored, “The Executive Compensation Disclosure Treatise and Reporting Guide” for CompensationStandards.com. While serving as Chief Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance, Dave led the rulemaking team that drafted sweeping revisions to the SEC’s executive compensation and related party disclosure rules.
Dave re-joined the SEC as Chief Counsel shortly after adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and served in that position until 2007, providing interpretive advice, formulating policy decisions and publishing the Division’s Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations. Dave initially served on the SEC staff from 1995-2000 as an Attorney-Advisor and subsequently a Special Counsel in the Division of Corporation Finance. While in private practice from 2000-2003, he advised clients on SEC investigations, securities transactions, mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance.
Dave serves as Senior Editor of TheCorporateCounsel.net, CompensationStandards.com, The Corporate Counsel and The Corporate Executive.
Dave has served as the chair of the ABA Business Law Section’s Federal Regulation of Securities Committee, co-chair of the Practicing Law Institute’s Annual Institute on Securities Regulation and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society. Dave is also an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches a course about exempt securities offerings.
Michele Miller
Chair, West Coast Labor & Employment, Cozen O’Connor
Michele Ballard Miller, Chair of Cozen O’Connor’s West Coast Labor & Employment Department, is a widely recognized management-side labor and employment attorney. For more than 30 years, she’s represented businesses in single and multiple plaintiff cases and collective actions. Her clients — who run the gamut from Fortune 50 powerhouses to burgeoning startups — trust her practical business-centered advice and counsel on a wide range of workplace matters.
Ngozi Okeh
Director of DEI, NextRoll
Editor, PracticalESG.com
Ngozi Okeh is an experienced leader with a history of driving efforts to conceptualize, define, assess and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as strategic business processes.
Ngozi is currently the Director of DEI at a leading marketing technology company where she develops and executes enterprise-wide DEI initiatives through rigorous strategic planning efforts, community partnerships, leadership collaboration, strategy evaluation, and careful management of communication and buy-in as well as policies and procedures. Previously, she worked at an independent mortgage bank, where her work resulted in a significant increase in the recruitment, engagement, and retention of employees from underrepresented communities, in addition to increased production of over 10 million dollars by empowering communities of color.
As a consultant, Ngozi also partners with associations and companies to develop clear and actionable strategies that drive internal and external DEI objectives. She develops, implements, and monitors programs to attract, engage, and retain diverse teams and communities by leading organization-wide initiatives. She is also a dynamic educator with extensive experience developing training curriculum for all audiences.
Ngozi has a master’s in human resources management with an emphasis in diversity and inclusion from Georgetown University. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and running half marathons.
Doug Parker
Founder & CEO, Ecolumix
Doug Parker is the Founder & CEO of Ecolumix an environmental data company that uses mandated reporting data to measure corporate environmental performance for the ESG sector. Ecolumix provides its insights to companies benchmarking their operations, the financial sector, and anyone who needs to accurately assess companies’ environmental performance and risk. Doug has also advised Fortune 500 companies and leading law firms on environmental risk and compliance.
He previously served as a Special Agent and Director of the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division where he oversaw a nationwide team of criminal investigators as well as matters ranging from the investigation into the Deepwater Horizon disaster to the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal.
Peter Tomczak
Partner, Baker McKenzie
Mark Trexler
Co-founder, The Climate Web
Director Climate Change Advisory, The Climatographers
Dr. Mark C. Trexler founded the first business climate risk consultancy in the United States in 1991, working with companies around the world on all aspects of the evolving climate change problem, from Boards of Directors on down. He is Director of Climate Change Advisory at The Climatographers and is Co-founder of The Climate Web – a knowledge management solution for climate risk decision-support. He has extensive legal and expert witness experience on climate change and energy topics.
Ashley Walter
Partner, Orrick
Ashley Walter advises technology and life sciences companies on strategy, oversight and compliance with respect to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) measures. He approaches sustainability from a governance perspective, helping clients to develop an appropriate framework in which to advance their ESG programs.
As Partner-in-Charge, ESG, Ashley assists public and private companies and their boards in establishing effective oversight of ESG matters, preparing ESG disclosures, addressing ESG commercial requirements, managing investor engagement with respect to ESG matters, and ensuring compliance with ESG laws and regulations. He also works with investment funds to develop fund-level and portfolio company ESG programs that address the full investment cycle, that are responsive to limited partner expectations, and that are appropriate for the stage, industry and business model of portfolio companies. He leverages a firm grounding in ESG substantive issues, significant experience in the design and implementation of ESG policies and procedures, and sector-specific knowledge to develop practical ESG solutions for clients in the tech sector and beyond.
Ashley is a co-founder and past chair of the Corporate Social Responsibility Law Committee of the ABA Business Law Section, has taught the course “Corporate Social Responsibility” as a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School, and is a co-editor of The Lawyer’s Corporate Social Responsibility Deskbook, a resource for legal departments and outside counsel to address ESG performance and risk. He has co-chaired the Practicing Law Institute’s annual full-day ESG program for the last two years, has served as a moderator at the Stanford Directors’ College, and has spoken on private company ESG for a workshop delivered by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.
Ellen Weinreb
Founder, Weinreb Group Sustainability & ESG Recruiting
Ellen has worked at the intersection of sustainability and human resources as a recruiter and consultant for 20+ years. A super connector, Ellen’s passion for sustainability and ESG was sparked while obtaining her MBA from Yale and interning at L.L.Bean. Ellen is a regular speaker at industry events, as well as a contributor to Forbes, Huffington Post, and has her own column with GreenBiz entitled “Talent Show.”
Tensie Whelan
Clinical Professor of Business and Society, NYU Stern School of Business
Founder and Director, Center for Sustainable Business
Tensie Whelan, Clinical Professor for Business and Society, is the founder and Director of NYU Stern School of Business’s Center for Sustainable Business, where she brings 25 years of experience working on sustainability issues. As President of the Rainforest Alliance, she built the organization from a $4.5 million to $50 million budget, transforming the engagement of business with sustainability, recruiting 5,000 companies in more than 60 countries. Her previous work included serving as Executive Director of the New York League of Conservation Voters, Vice President of the National Audubon Society, and Managing Editor of Ambio, a journal of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. She has served on numerous nonprofit boards and corporate advisory boards for companies such as Unilever and Nespresso and currently serves on the advisory boards of ALO Advisors, Buzz on Earth, Giant Ventures, and Inherent Group. She was most recently appointed to the board of InvestIndustrial SPAC, and is an Advisor to the Future Economy Project for Harvard Business Review and is a member of the “Exploring the Future of Sustainable Production and Consumption” Working Group of the Council on Competitiveness. Tensie was awarded the Stern Faculty Excellence Award in 2020.
Kristina Wyatt
Deputy GC, SVP Global Regulatory Climate Disclosure, Persefoni
Kristina is Persefoni’s Deputy GC and SVP of Global Regulatory Climate Disclosure. She joined Persefoni from the Securities and Exchange Commission where she was Sr. Counsel to the Director of the Division of Corporation Finance, focused on climate and ESG. There, she helped lead the drafting of the SEC’s climate disclosure rule proposals, and worked closely with other US regulatory agencies and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and foreign regulatory agencies on climate disclosure policy issues. Before joining the SEC, Kristina was Director of Sustainability at the law firm Latham & Watkins. While at Latham, she built the firm’s sustainability program and co-led its ESG practice.
Kristina holds a BA from Duke University, a JD from the University of Colorado, and an MBA in Sustainability from Yale University.
