Speakers

Yonov Frederick Agah

Deputy Director-General, World Trade Organization

Yonov Frederick Agah has been one of the four Deputy Directors-General of the World Trade Organization since October 2013. 

Yonov Frederick Agah was appointed as Nigeria’s Ambassador to the WTO in 2005. In that capacity, he served as the Alternate Chief Negotiator for the Doha Round and Head of Nigeria's Trade Office to the WTO in the Permanent Mission of Nigeria to the United Nations Office in Geneva. 

Mr Agah has previously worked as a lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna (1979-81), senior features writer/circulation manager, Benue Printing and Publishing Corporation (1982-84), Sales Manager, Benue Bottling Company Limited (1984-87), Field Manager, UTC Nigeria PLC (1990-91), Deputy Director (multilateral) (1991-2001) and Director (external trade) (2002-05).

Mr Agah holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Economics from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He obtained a Master of Business Administration and Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (International Trade) from the University of Jos, Nigeria, in 1989 and 2007 respectively. His doctoral dissertation was on “Trade Policy Reform and Economic Growth in Nigeria Since 1986”. Mr Agah also obtained a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Abuja, Nigeria, in 2009. He has contributed to various books and journals.

Nazma Akter

General Secretary and Executive Director, Awaj Foundation

Nazma Akter started work at a garment factory in Bangladesh at 11. She began organising her colleagues and protesting against injustice at 14, and today leads AWAJ Foundation, a Bangladeshi organisation that promotes workers' welfare.

Nazma is also founder and president of Sommilito Garment Sramik Federation, an affiliated union with over 70,000 garment workers as members, and an alternate for IndustriALL, a global union.

Maryam al-Khawaja

Special Advisor, Advocacy, Gulf Center for Human Rights

Maryam al-Khawaja is a Bahraini Woman Human Rights Defender, a Special Advisor on Advocacy at the Gulf Center for Human Rights, and the founder of al-Khawaja Consulting, where she works as a human rights consultant and trainer.

Maryam played an instrumental role in the Bahraini Arab Spring protests in early 2011, which resulted in a widespread government crackdown, including extrajudicial killings, arrests, and torture of activists. Due to her work, she has been subjected to assault, defamation, and imprisonment. Despite these threats, Maryam has emerged as a leading voice for human rights and political reform in Bahrain and the Gulf region, and has acted as a consultant for prominent European and American policymakers regarding Middle Eastern affairs.

Maryamhas received numerous awards for her human rights work, including the Rafto Prize. Previously, she served as Co-Director for the Gulf Center for Human Rights and as Acting President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, and currently serves on the Board of the International Service for Human Rights and Urgent Action Fund.

Srilatha Batliwala

Senior Advisor, Knowledge Building, CREA & Senior Associate, Gender at Work

Srilatha Batliwala is Senior Advisor, Knowledge Building with CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action), an international organisation that works at the intersection of gender, sexuality and human rights, and Senior Associate, Gender at Work, a global network of gender experts supporting organisations to build cultures of equality and inclusion. Her work focuses on building knowledge from practice, especially in the areas of women’s rights, empowerment, feminist movements and movement building, and feminist leadership. 

Srilatha worked from 2008 – 2016 as Scholar Associate in AWID (Association for Women's Rights in Development), as Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations (2000 – 2007), and Civil Society Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, New York (1997-2000). Up to the mid-90s, she was involved for over twenty years in grassroots work in India, where she helped build large-scale women’s movements that mobilised and empowered tens of thousands of the most socio-economically marginalised rural and urban women in slum communities in Mumbai (Bombay) and in the backward districts of Karnataka state in South India.  

Srilatha has served on the boards of a number of international and Indian human rights, women’s rights and development organisations.  She has written and published extensively on a range of women’s issues, and is best known for her work on women’s empowerment, women’s movements and feminist approaches to monitoring and evaluation. Her most recent publications are (i) a collection of her writings of the past twenty years: “Engaging with Empowerment – An Intellectual and Experiential Journey” (Women Unlimited, 2014, and eBook version 2015), and (ii) a primer for activists, “All About Power”. 

Srilatha is a member of IHRB's International Advisory Council.

Ruth Bergan

Senior Advisor, Trade Justice Movement

Ruth Bergan is the Co-ordinator of the Trade Justice Movement, a UK national network that campaigns for socially and environmentally sustainable global trade. Ruth has led the strategic development of the organisation, tracking and responding to traditional trade policy issues, such as the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations, and developing new areas of work. The latter include ‘Worried about your BITs?’, TJM’s campaign for a radical change to the international investment regime, and ensuring TJM was part of the ‘Economic Justice Project’ – providing activists with information and political education on the 2008 banking crisis.

Before joining TJM Ruth worked for HomeWorkers Worldwide, for the Cooperative College and lived and worked in India. Ruth is also a CSLP fellow.

Vicky Bowman

Director, Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business

Vicky Bowman has been the Director of Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB) since July 2013. Prior to that, she led global mining company Rio Tinto's policy approach to transparency, human rights and resource nationalism/resource curse issues from 2011. She was Director of Global & Economic Issues and G8 sous-Sherpa for the United Kingdom from 2008-2011 and Head of the Southern Africa Department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the UK Government from 2006-2007.

Vicky served as ambassador of the UK to Myanmar from 2002-2006 and as second secretary in the Embassy from 1990-1993. She has also worked in Brussels as Member of Cabinet of European Commissioner Chris Patten (1999-2002) and as press spokeswoman for the UK representation to the EU (1996-1999).

Vicky has an MA in Natural Sciences (Pathology) from University of Cambridge, is an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of University of Bradford (Division of Peace Studies and International Development). 

Vicky is a member of IHRB’s International Advisory Council.

Sharan Burrow

General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation

Sharan Burrow was elected General Secretary of the ITUC in 2010. Prior to this, she held the position of ITUC President since its Founding Congress in Vienna (November 2006) and the position of ICFTU President since its 18th World Congress in Miyazaki (November 2004). She is the first woman to have held any of these positions.

Sharan studied teaching at the University of NSW in 1976 and began her teaching career in high schools around country NSW. Sharan was elected Senior Vice-President of the NSW Teachers’ Federation and became President of the Australian Education Union (AEU) in 1992. She represented the AEU on the ACTU Executive through the 1990s.

Sharan was previously Vice-President of Education International from 1995 to 2000. Education International is the international organisation of education unions representing 24 million members worldwide.

In May 2000, Sharan Burrow became the second woman to be elected President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).

She has also served as a member of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization and a member of the Stakeholder Council of the Global Reporting Initiative. As part of her ILO responsibilities, Sharan chaired the Workers’ Group of the Sub-Committee on Multinational Enterprises.

Leïla Choukroune

Professor of International Law, University of Portsmouth

Leïla Choukroune is Professor of International Law and Director of the University of Portsmouth Research and Innovation Thematic Area in Democratic Citizenship.

Her research focuses on the interactions between international trade and investment law, human rights, development studies, jurisprudence and social theory. It is also applied to emerging countries, India, China and East Africa in particular. She is the co-Chair of the South Asia International Economic Law Network (SAIELN) a learned society, which endeavours to foster research and publication in international economic law.

Leïla has taught all disciplines of international law to graduate and post-graduate students as well as specialized executive courses and programmes in Europe, Asia and Africa. She has also supervised and mentored a very large number of students at the master and PhD levels.

Before joining the University of Portsmouth, she was Director of the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), a research unit of the CNRS based in New Delhi (India), Associate Professor at the Law Faculty of Maastricht University (Netherlands); Deputy Director of the Institute for Globalization and International Regulation (IGIR) and Director of the Advanced Master in international economic law (Maastricht University); Assistant Professor at HEC Paris, Consultant for the OECD, Lecturer at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and Researcher at the French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC) a unit of the CNRS in Hong Kong.

Leïla holds a Doctorate in international law from the University Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne and is a qualified lawyer to the Paris Bar.

Carlos Correa

Executive Director, The South Centre

Dr. Carlos María Correa has been Executive Director of the South Centre since July 2018. Prior to this, he was the Special Advisor on Trade and Intellectual Property of the South Centre. Carlos is a renowned international authority on intellectual property and technology issues.

Originally from Argentina, Carlos has worked with the Argentine government and has been the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Industrial Property and Economics (CEIDIE) at the Law Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires.  He was a member of the UK Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health established by the World Health Assembly and of the FAO Panel of Eminent Experts on Ethics in Food and Agriculture.

He has been a visiting professor in post-graduate courses of several universities and consultant to various regional and international organisations. He has advised several governments on intellectual property, innovation policy and public health. He is the author of several books and numerous articles.

Carlos is both a lawyer and economist from the University of Buenos Aires and holds a PhD in Law from the University of Buenos Aires.

Rémy Friedmann

Senior Advisor on business and human rights, Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Rémy Friedmann is Senior Advisor on business and human rights at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs since 2011.

He was also the chair, between 2014 and 2019, of the Board of Directors of the association of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (ICoCA), a multi-stakeholder initiative launched by Switzerland, with the over-arching objective to articulate human rights responsibilities of private security companies, and to set out international principles and standards for the responsible provision of private security services. As part of his portfolio, he has worked for the Swiss government on the multi-stakeholder process that has led to the creation of an independent Centre for sport and human rights based in Geneva.

He has an extensive experience of more than 25 years in the humanitarian field, human rights and peacebuilding. He has worked for the European Union on crisis response and peacebuilding, as the Swiss special envoy for peace policy in Colombia and coordinator of the Swiss mine action policy, as a peacebuilding advisor at the Swiss Embassy in Colombia, as a human rights officer at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia and as a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Iraq, Somalia, Peru, South Africa, and Azerbaijan.

Isabel Hilton

Chief Executive, China Dialogue

Isabel Hilton is an international journalist and broadcaster. She worked for the Daily Express and the Sunday Times before joining the launch team for The Independent in 1986. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC's flagship news programme, The World Tonight and a columnist for The Guardian. In 1999 she joined the New Yorker as a staff writer.

Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Granta, the New Statesman, El Pais, Index on Censorship and many other publications. Isabel is CEO of independent online media platform Chinadialogue.net.

Isabel is a member of IHRB's International Advisory Council.

Frances House

Deputy Chief Executive, IHRB

Frances House is Deputy Chief Executive of IHRB. Frances is responsible for the overall operational management of IHRB as well as having a particular focus on delivery of the Migrant Worker programme and its leadership activities with global brands. She also oversees IHRB's nascent programmes on Shipping and the Built Environment. She works closely with IHRB’s trustees on strategy, governance and financial oversight. Frances is also a director of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. 

Before IHRB, Frances was Policy Director at the International Business Leaders Forum, Vietnam Researcher with Human Rights Watch, and worked with the European Commission in Brussels and Vietnam on humanitarian programmes with asylum-seekers. A former trustee of Amnesty International UK, Care International UK and Streetkids International UK, she also sits on IKEA’s Stakeholder Advisory Board.

Linda Kromjong

Global Labor & Human Rights Director, Samsung Electronics

Linda Kromjong joined Samsung Electronics in October 2018 as Global Labor & Human Rights Director. This new role was created to strengthen the company’s relationships with key international policymakers and opinion formers, and to support Human Resources and other business departments in driving corporate and supply chain improvements.

In 2018, Samsung was the market leader for products across each of its independent business divisions: Consumer Electronics (CE), IT & Mobile Communications (IM), and Device Solutions (DS). The company employed 309,630 members of staff across 206 worldwide operation hubs in 74 countries during 2018 and reported a turnover of KRW 243.8 Trillion. Samsung is unlike many of its competitors, which have limited or no direct manufacturing capability. Instead, it is responsible for the manufacture of approximately 90% of the products it sells to consumers every year. These facilities are predominantly located in Korea, China and Southeast Asia, but Samsung has a global network of production facilities, including factories in the US and Europe. 

Prior to her role at the IOE, Linda Kromjong was Secretary-General of the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) in Geneva from 1 May 2015 to 1 October 2018. The IOE is the largest network of the private sector in the world, with more than 150 business and employer organisations members. Before the IOE, she was the Vice-President, Labor Relations International & Human Rights for Deutsche Post DHL, the recognized world leader in logistics services. Linda started her career in the Hospitality Industry with Sodexo in the Netherlands and has many years’ experience in senior positions in general management, HR, Labor Relations and Business & Human Rights. 

Linda Kromjong is a Dutch national and completed Hotel Management School and Business Management studies in the Netherlands.

Linda Kromjong served recently as a member of the Advisory Boards of the UN Global Compact, Mega Sporting Events (MSE) striving for excellence project and the Global Apprenticeships Network (GAN) Board.

Mairead Lavery

President and CEO, Export Development Canada

Mairead Lavery joined Export Development Canada in 2014 as Senior Vice-President for Business Development. She was appointed President and CEO in February 2019. Mairead is also the first woman to occupy EDC’s chief executive role in its 75-year history.

Prior to EDC, Mairead held numerous executive roles at Bombardier. During sixteen years, she managed large and complex portfolios, including Finance, Strategy, Business Development and Business Transformation. Since coming to EDC, her focus has been on expanding the Crown corporation’s impact in support of Canadian exporters by understanding their needs and championing their objectives here in Canada and in markets around the world.

Mairead is committed to social and environmental responsibility, addressing in particular the challenges of climate change, human rights and gender equity. She also believes in the imperative of a diverse and culturally inclusive workforce. 

A native of Northern Ireland, with a degree in Management and Accounting from Queen’s University Belfast, Mairead is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. 

Sandra Lendenmann

Head of the Office of Human Rights Policy, Human Security Division,  Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Sandra Lendenmann is the Head of the Office of Human Rights Policy in the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs’ Human Security Division, HSD. In this role, Sandra leads and contributes with her team of experts to the Department’s bilateral and multilateral policy to promote respect for human rights, a key objective of Switzerland’s foreign policy.

Prior to joining HSD, Sandra served as the Legal Counselor at the Swiss Mission to the European Union in Brussels. From 2010 to 2012, she served in the Directorate of International Law, dealing with International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights issues. In particular, she was a member of the Swiss Delegation in charge of the implementation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, as well as representing Switzerland in the negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty in the framework of the UN. She started her career in the Swiss Ministry of Foreign affairs as a member of the cabinet of the State Secretary on Foreign affairs.

Prior to joining the Swiss Foreign Service, Sandra worked as an Attorney in one of Switzerland’s leading business law firms, focusing in particular on dispute resolution in international trade matters.

Manoelle Lepoutre

Senior Vice President, Civil Society Engagement, Total SA

Manoelle Lepoutre is Senior Vice President, Civil Society Engagement at Total SA. She previously served as SVP of Sustainable Development and Environment and VP of Research & Development, Exploration and Production. She joined Total S.A. in 1982, having held a variety of positions in the exploration and production business.

She a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Géologie de Nancy (ENSG) school of geology and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Pétroles et des Moteurs (ENSPM) engineering school. Manoelle also sits on various boards of directors, including Eramet, and is a member of the National Academy of Technologies of France.

Manoelle was awarded the rank of Knight in the French National Order of the Legion of Honour.

John Morrison

Chief Executive, IHRB

John Morrison has been Chief Executive Officer of IHRB since its formation in 2009 under the leadership of Mary Robinson. John leads IHRB’s global strategy, fundraising, and outreach. He has advised a number of governments, intergovernmental organisations, and businesses on human rights and wider issues of sustainability, development, and international affairs. His most recent book is "The Social License”, published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2014, and he has published widely on issues relating to corporate responsibility, human rights, refugee protection, and human trafficking.

John also sits on the UK Foreign Secretary's Human Rights Advisory Group and has been a Harkness Fellow to the USA. In 2017, he was named one of the 100 most influential people worldwide on the issue of eliminating modern day slavery.

Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen

Head of Global Trade & Supply Chains, IOTA Foundation

Jens leads the IOTA Foundation’s work to integrate Distributed Ledger Technology (the Tangle) within trade and supply chains – collaborating with both public and private partners.

Jens has created partnerships in global trade and build new venture start-ups. He is an expert advisor on Trade and Distributed Ledger Technology supporting the UK Parliament, World Economic Forum and corporates. He has taken up positions in corporate strategy/business development/sustainability and as an intrapreneur and entrepreneur. Jens is also a pioneer in building public-private partnerships to enable better trade for all, including the co-founder of the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation (www.tradefacilitation.org) and the Logistics Emergency Teams with World Food Programme.

Kumi Naidoo

Secretary-General, Amnesty International

Kumi Naidoo joined Amnesty International as the organisation’s ninth Secretary General in August 2018.

Kumi has held multiple leadership roles, but his time as Executive Director of Greenpeace International cemented his reputation as a bold activist who championed civil disobedience, most notably when he was arrested for scaling a Greenlandic oil rig to hand-deliver a petition in protest of drilling in the Arctic in 2011. A year later he occupied a Russian oil rig in the Barents Sea in the Russian Arctic. 

Kumi’s most recent role has been as a co-founder and interim chair of the pan-African organisation, Africans Rising for justice, peace and dignity. The group, which has forged partnerships across trade unions, religion and civil society, aims to change the fact that while Africa as a continent has benefitted from economic growth, Africans themselves have not shared in that increasing wealth and power.

Greg Priest

Head of Social Impact and Human Rights, Inter IKEA Group

Greg has been a key figure in the development of IKEA sustainability strategy, “People and Planet Positive”.  He leads the development, integration and compliance of sustainability approaches, policies and standards including the IKEA supplier code of conduct, IWAY.  

An ongoing priority is the integration of the United NationsGuiding Principles on Business and Human Rights with a special focus on issues related to the ethical recruitment of migrant workers, living wage and children’s rights.  Greg is also responsible for Inter IKEA’s external engagement on sustainability and for developing partnerships to support the company’s social and environmental goals. 

Greg has been working in the sustainability area for the past 18 years, with both a consumer facing and supply chain focus. He has been on the board of several global sustainability related initiatives. 

Greg has an MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, with a major in Business Sustainability.

Anita Ramasastry

Member, UN Working Group on Business & Human Rights

Anita Ramasastry is a Member of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights. She is also the the UW Law Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle. Her research interests include business and human rights, anti-corruption and law and development. Her current research focuses on the role of business in armed conflict.

Anita has authored numerous scholarly articles and reports focused on emerging issues in business and human rights including Commerce, Crime and Conflict (with Mark Taylor and Bob Thompson) and a recent study for the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable on Human Rights Due Diligence: The Role of States (with Olivier de Schutter, M. Taylor and R. Thompson).

Anita was part of the project team that developed the “Red Flags” Liability Risks for Companies Operating in High Risk Zones. From 2009 – 2011, she served as a senior advisor in the Obama Administration, working in the International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce. She is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School and the University of Sydney.

Anita is a member of IHRB's International Advisory Council.

Mary Robinson

Chair, The Elders, Patron, IHRB

The first woman President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson is a passionate, forceful advocate for gender equality, women’s participation in peace-building and human dignity. Mary has been a member of The Elders since the group was founded in 2007, and was appointed Chair of The Elders in November 2018.

Mary heads the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, and served as the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Climate Change from July 2014 - December 2015, which saw the successful conclusion of the COP21 Climate Summit and the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change. In May 2016, Robinson was appointed as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on El Niño and Climate, along with Macharia Kamau of Kenya, to focus the world’s attention to meet the urgent challenges posed by extreme weather events on the poorest and most vulnerable communities.

As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Robinson integrated human rights into the United Nations system and became renowned as an outspoken voice dedicated to investigating and exposing human rights abuses across the world. She founded Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, which aimed to put human rights standards at the heart of global governance and to ensure that the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable are addressed on the global stage.

Mary is Patron and Founding Chair of IHRB.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Columnist, Inter-Press Service; former United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development; Senior Advisor, Khazanah Research Institute, Malaysia

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is a prominent Malaysian economist. He holds the Tun Hussein Onn Chair in International Studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia, and is Visiting Senior Fellow at Khazanah Research Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and Adjunct Professor at the International Islamic University, Malaysia. 

He is also a member of the Malaysian Council of Eminent Persons who advises the Federal Government of Malaysia.

He served as the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) 2005–2012, and then as Assistant Director-General and Coordinator for Economic and Social Development at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome 2012–2015. He was also Research Coordinator for the G24 Intergovernmental Group on International Monetary Affairs and Development during 2006–2012. During 2008–2009, he served as adviser to Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, President of the 63rd United Nations General Assembly, and as a member of the [Stiglitz] Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.

Jomo is a leading scholar and expert on the political economy of development, especially in Southeast Asia, who has authored or edited over a hundred books and translated 12 volumes besides writing many academic papers and articles for the media. He was founder chair of International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), and sat on the Board of the United Nations Research Institute For Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. 

Currently, he is one of five members of an advisory team called "Council of Eminent Persons" (Malay: Majlis Penasihat Kerajaan) for Malaysian government since 10 May 2018.

Shona Tatchell

Founder & CEO, halotrade

Shona Tatchell is CEO & Founder of halotrade, a blockchain enabled Fintech start up focussed on the delivery of sustainable supply chain financing.

Formerly, she was Head of Innovation for Trade & Working Capital at Barclays, working in partnership with emerging technology companies which will shape the future of the global Trade Finance business.

Shona was a Director with Barclays for six years, and was previously Global Head of Financial Institutions Trade, delivering trade finance, trade services and risk mitigation solutions to bank and non-bank institutional clients globally. She joined from HSBC where she was a senior manager in the European Structured Trade and Advisory team within Global Trade and Supply Chain.

Shona holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford.

Salil Tripathi

Senior Advisor, Global Issues, IHRB

Salil Tripathi is Senior Advisor on Global Issues at IHRB.  He works on human rights themes such as discrimination, protection of human rights defenders, and emerging issues for business and human rights. He is also engaged in researching potential impacts of investments in countries opening up for investment after a long period of political or economic isolation. He also conducts podcasts with human rights experts and practitioners, and writes commentaries. He has also worked on issues related to land, conflict, and the information and communication technologies. 

Before IHRB, Salil was at Amnesty International (1999-2005) where he conducted research missions to Nigeria and Bosnia, and developed policies and thinking on complicity, privatisation, and corruption. He represented AI in the forming of the Global Compact, the Kimberley Process, and the Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights. At International Alert (2006-2008) he worked on projects in Colombia and was part of the team that developed the Red Flags Initiative. He is also an award-winning journalist and author of three works of non-fiction, and chairs PEN International's Writers-in-Prison Committee. Salil graduated with Masters in Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and holds Bachelor of Commerce degree from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics in India.  

Halina Ward

Senior Associate, International Institute for Environment and Development

Halina Ward is a Senior Associate with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) where she has been closely involved in the Institute’s disruptive change initiative. The initiative explores how Southern civil society organisations are impacted by, and address, disruptive change, and the implications for international NGOs and funders.

Halina currently serves as a member of the roster of Experts with the Project Complaint Mechanism of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and is a Visiting Research Fellow with the Policy Studies Institute of the University of Westminster. Her work spans investment governance, monitoring and evaluation, smart cities, civic engagement, and human rights and environment.  

Previous roles include Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development; Director of the Business and Sustainable Development Programme at IIED; and Senior Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House. Halina holds an LLM (Law and Development) from the University of London and qualified as a solicitor in 1992.

Steve Waygood

Chief Responsible Investment Officer, Aviva Investors

Steve Waygood leads Aviva Investors' sustainable and responsible investment (SRI) analysis, engagement and voting. Steve is also Chairman of the SRI Advisory Committee for Aviva Investors.

Steve previously worked for Insight Investment where he was a Director in the Investor Responsibility team. Prior to that, he was a Senior Analyst in the Governance and SRI team of F&C. He started his career at WWF-UK where he chaired its business and industry core group.

Steve was a member of both the expert and advisory groups to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, which helped to found the PRI. He was also on the board of the UK Sustainable Investment & Finance association (UKSIF) from 2003 to 2010, serving as its Chairman from 2006. In 2009 he was among the Financial News Top 100 Rising Stars and in 2011 he received the Yale Rising Star in Corporate Governance Award.

Steve has a PhD and currently lectures in Sustainable Finance at Cambridge University’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership.

Dewi van de Weerd

Deputy Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Italy

Dewi van de Weerd is a Dutch career diplomat, currently based as Deputy Ambassador in Italy. She was Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Albania prior to her current job. From 2011-2015 she worked as Coordinator of the Human Rights Team at the Multilateral Affairs Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague. During that period she was, from 2013 onwards, also President of the Works Council of the Ministry.

Dewi served in various positions for the Ministry since 1997, working at the embassies in Beijing, Bamako and the OECD delegation in Paris. She started her professional career as a journalist at the National Dutch Radio NPO1.

Dewi graduated in Law, specialising in International Relations and Human Rights in 1996 and also took a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences, both at Maastricht University. She studied contemporary European history in Rome at University La Sapienza.