Haley St. Dennis
Head of Just Transitions, IHRB
Expertise
Haley’s work focuses on people-centred climate action that embeds equity, accountability, and human rights into how businesses, investors, and governments plan, finance, and deliver climate transitions.
Haley brings more than 15 years of experience at the intersection of business, human rights, and climate action: co-leading IHRB’s early work in the global sports sector that led to the creation of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights; incubating the establishment of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business; and co-developing the pilot methodology for the first-ever Corporate Human Rights Benchmark.
Current Work
Haley leads IHRB’s Just Transitions Programme, which has become a leading global reference point for people-centred climate action in practice.
Haley directs initiatives such as JUST Stories, which documents inclusive transition models from communities and industries around the world — from coal closures in Australia and off-grid farming in Gujarat, to social-housing retrofits in Catalonia and agroforestry innovations in Brazil — demonstrating that fair and feasible solutions are already underway and highly successful.
She also leads The Costs of Green Conflict, a multi-country study quantifying the financial, operational, and reputational risks companies face when social opposition arises in renewable-energy projects.
In parallel, she advances international dialogue and action research within and between Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) countries on the role of responsible business in driving decarbonisation — notably in South Africa, Indonesia, and Senegal — to help shape collaboration between governments, companies, and financiers to operationalise equity and participation in transition planning.
Before IHRB
Originally from Utah, Haley's background is in politics, serving in the Utah Attorney General's Office, and later as an Advisor in the Scottish Parliament.
Haley holds a BSc in Business Management from the University of Utah, an MA (Distinction) in Human Rights Law from SOAS University of London, and a Graduate Diploma in Law (Distinction) from the University of Law (London).
I'm keen to engage with practitioners working toward people-centred climate action and net-zero transitions.
