Ethical governance: dilemmas and trade-offs?

Helle is CEO of Competent Boards, which offers the global online ESG Competent Boards Certificate & Designation Program with a faculty of over 100 renowned international board members, executives and experts. Helle developed the Program to help board members, executives, and advisors confidently identify, articulate, and act upon their business's most material environmental, social and governance aspects.

As well as being a board member, Helle serve on His Royal Highness Prince of Wales A4S Global Expert Panel; The Non-financial Digitisation Working Group of the Impact Management Project (IMP); the Reuters Panel of Expert Judges for the Responsible Business Awards; and the Canadian Climate Governance Experts - a Commonwealth Climate & Law Initiative. She was the creator of the world’s first Green Account inspired by life-cycle assessments, as well as the world’s first Integrated Report. Helle also developed the first holistic supply chain program and was the principal organizer for the CEO/Investor-network for Business Ethics and Non-Financial Reporting. She received the 2019 Clean50 award and has extensive experience providing strategic and operational guidance to all organizational functions, including advising at the C-suite and board level.

In 2020, Helle was awarded the Global Impact Award and named one of "5 people in ESG to look out for". She is also a State Authorized Public Accountant (CPA), a business lawyer and holds a Master’s in Business Administration and Auditing.

A social entrepreneur, writer and climate campaigner. Before embarking on the Highlands Rewilding project in March 2020, he founded Solarcentury (1998-2020), one of the world’s most respected solar energy companies, winner of a Queen's Award for Enterprise in Innovation. He also founded SolarAid (2006-2020), an international charity set up with a levy on annual Solarcentury profits, winner of a BITC Unilever Global Development Award. An Entrepreneur of the Year at the New Energy Awards, he was the first Hillary Laureate for International Leadership in Climate Change, has won a Gothenburg Prize, and was the first non-Dutch winner of a Royal Dutch Honorary Sustainability Award. After taking a D.Phil in Earth Science at the University of Oxford, he taught at the Imperial College of Science and Technology (1978-1989).

He was scientific director of the climate campaign at Greenpeace (1990-1996), and has been an occasional lecturer on courses in business and environment at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and St Gallen (Switzerland). He has written four books about the climate crisis, as he has experienced it on the front lines for three decades.

Kim Polman is Co-Founder & Chair of Reboot the Future, whose purpose is to remind us that a better future is possible if we treat others and the planet as we’d wish to be treated.  She curated a book on this very philosophy, Imaginal Cells, Visions of Transformation. The book embraces the Golden Rule as the starting point with which to collectively address the most pressing issues of our time. Her second book, a deeper dive into the Golden Rule, produced with Anthony Bennett, is Values for a Life Economy. She is also Co-Founder and Board Member of the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust based in Kenya, dedicated to improving literacy for blind and visually impaired students in East Africa. She is an Advisory Board Member of The Oxford Character Project as well as The Taylor Institute, Switzerland and a fellow at Aspen Institute UK. In 2022, Kim received The William Howard Taft Medal for notable achievement from the University of Cincinnati.

Loree is a Partner in the EY Financial Services Sustainable Finance practice where she and her team are focused on delivering sustainable Net Zero transition plans and ESG solutions including responsible stewardship, effective governance and enegaement and transparent outcome based disclosures.

Loree has a long-standing interest in the vital role institutional investors (asset owners and asset managers) play in driving long-term sustainable value for society. Loree's experience is focused on the investor's role in championing a more equal balance between the interests of shareholders and broader stakeholders to deliver outcomes. She is highly published in this area and is one of EY’s foremost specialists in investor stewardship.

Loree completed her full time Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) in Sydney, Australia where she majored in international business spending a term studying in China. She continued her post graduate work at Columbia Business School in New York City. 

She was also recently recognised by the EY UK Race and Ethnicity Network (REN) for her commitment to championing racial equality, in 2020 Loree was awarded the inaugural Senior Ally Award.