Sustainable Finance Forum 2024

Gilles Roth was born on 1 March 1967 in Luxembourg.

After graduating from the Athénée de Luxembourg in 1986, Gilles Roth studied law at the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg and the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium, where he obtained a degree in law. He then completed his university studies in 1991 with a degree in business administration and management from the Institut d’Administration et de Gestion of UCL.

Following the legislative elections of 8 October 2023, Gilles Roth was appointed Minister of Finance on 17 November 2023 in the coalition government formed by the Christian Social Party (CSV) and the Democratic Party (DP).

Gilles Roth was elected municipal councillor in 1993 and became mayor of Mamer in 2000. Gilles Roth joined the Parliament in April 2007 and in 2013 he became Chairman of the CSV political group. Successively re-elected to Parliament, he co-chaired this political group from 2021 until he joined the Government. From 1991 to 1994, Gilles Roth practised as a lawyer, then as Avocat à la Cour at the Luxembourg Bar. In 1995, he became a government attaché at the Ministry of Finance, before being seconded to the Luxembourg Court of Auditors and the Permanent Representation of Luxembourg to the European Union in Brussels. In 1998, he returned to the Ministry of Finance and became government advisor (Conseiller), then senior government advisor (Premier Conseiller de Gouvernement). He also held the position of Government Delegate to the Administrative Jurisdictions until 2007.

Mark Carney is the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Co-Chair for the Glasgow Finance Alliance for Net Zero, a practitioner-led coalition working to increase the financial sector’s ambition on climate change and accelerate the transition to a net-zero economy. Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, and Head of Transition Investing at Brookfield Corporation. Across these roles, he is focused on developing tools, guidance, and products for investors that will combine positive social and environmental outcomes with strong risk-adjusted returns.

Mark is Co-Chair of  the Industrial Transition Accelerator (ITA), as well as Chair of  the Group of Thirty, Chair of Chatham House and Chair of Bloomberg LP’s Board of Directors. He is also an external member of the Board of Stripe, a member of the Global Advisory Board of PIMCO, Harvard University, Rideau Hall Foundation, Bilderberg,  the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Hoffman Institute for Global Business and Society at INSEAD, Cultivo, Senior Counsellor of the MacroAdvisory Partners, Advisor of the Watershed and Advisory Board Chair for Canada 2020.

Previously Governor of the Bank of England (from 2013 to 2020) and Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008 to 2013). Internationally, Mark was Chair of the Financial Stability Board (2011to 2018), Chaired the Global Economy Meeting and Economic Consultative Committee of the Bank for International Settlements (2018 to 2020), and served as First Vice Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board (2013 to 2020). Prior to his governorships, Mark worked at Goldman Sachs as well as the Canadian Department of Finance. He is a long-time and well-known advocate for sustainability, specifically with regard to the management and reduction of climate risks.

Judith Bogner is a television presenter, event facilitator and commentator for international finance, business and geopolitics based between the UK and Germany. For more than ten years she was one of the main European anchors of the financial news channel Bloomberg Global Television in London. Since 2012 Judith runs her own business, offering event and business facilitation, client advisory boards and strategic consulting. She is also a UK accredited mediator.

Judith regularly leads public and private events for corporate and institutional clients in the financial sector and beyond. Her list of clients include the Federation of German Industries, the Euro Finance Week (Frankfurt), Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of New York Mellon, The Brewers of Europe, Luxembourg for Finance, the Dutch Development Bank FMO, Ergo Insurance, State Street, Scope Ratings, the Institute of Culinary Art, Allianz Global Assistance, Wacom and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Born in Germany, Judith has lived in Switzerland, China, Ukraine, France and Italy. She is bilingual in English-German and also speaks Italian, French and Mandarin Chinese. Judith holds a degree in International Business Management and Chinese from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen.

Harriet Agnew is asset management editor at the Financial Times, overseeing a London-based team whose coverage includes investment managers, hedge funds and pension funds. She also writes FT Asset Management, a weekly newsletter on the movers and shakers behind a multitrillion-dollar global industry.

Before her current role, Harriet was a news editor on the companies desk, with responsibility for financial services coverage. She also spent three years as Paris correspondent for the Financial Times, covering the luxury, consumer, retail, telecoms, media and tech industries.
Harriet joined the Financial Times in 2014 as City correspondent, and launched its City Insider column. Before that she covered hedge funds at Financial News and at Euromoney Institutional Investor.

Tim joined HSBC in 2022 and serves as Chief of Staff for the Global sustainability function at the bank.

Tim is a climate change expert with over 20 years of experience in delivering climate and sustainability strategies, policies and projects, such as designing policy instruments, developing climate programmes and setting up clean tech innovation hubs. During this time he worked with the UK Government, the management consultancy arm of PwC and the international not for profit organisation The Climate Group.

Tamsin Ballard is Chief Initiatives Officer at the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), a UN-supported organisation with over 5,000 members representing more than $120 trillion of assets under management.

Tamsin joined the PRI in 2022 as Director of Climate and Environment, before taking on responsibility for leading the organisations’ strategic and implementation work on investor collaborations such as the UN-convened Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, and Climate Action 100+.

Prior to joining PRI, Tamsin was a Senior Civil Servant with the UK Government, working across areas including climate change, the environment, finance and international development. In her most recent role in the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs she was responsible for a portfolio of international climate finance programmes and policies to help address the triple challenge of poverty, biodiversity loss and the climate emergency.

Tamsin has over 20 years of experience in international policy and programme design and delivery. She is an economist by background and was a contributing author on Lord Nicholas Stern’s seminal report on the Economics of Climate Change.

Silja Baller is a PhD economist and Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the New Economy and Society. She is a member of the Centre’s leadership team and has in-depth expertise in the economics of international trade, competitiveness, digitalization, and inclusion.

She is passionate about working towards more sustainable economic progress. Her current work places diversity and inclusion at the core of the economic agenda, building on 20 years of experience across international organizations, in the private sector as well as policy and academic research.

Silja holds a DPhil (PhD) and MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford; a Master’s in International Economics with minors in Public International Law and History from the Graduate Institute Geneva and a BA in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Julie Becker has been at the helm of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) since April 2021. She joined LuxSE in 2013 and was appointed to its Executive Committee in 2015, before being named Deputy CEO in 2019, and CEO two years later.

Her career in the financial sector in Luxembourg spans over two decades and includes positions at the Central Bank of Luxembourg and Dexia. In 2016, Julie Becker founded the Luxembourg Green Exchange (LGX), the world’s leading platform for sustainable securities. A recognised expert in the field of sustainable finance, Julie Becker has represented LuxSE and LGX at numerous, international expert forums and conferences over the past years, including the EU High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance from 2017 to 2019 and the United Nations High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development in 2023.

Julie Becker is a member of the board of directors of several Luxembourg-based financial industry associations and the Chairwoman of LuxCMA, a capital markets industry association established in 2019. She was awarded The inventor” by Global Landscape as part of their campaign “16 Women Restoring the Earth” in 2019 and was named the “Most Influential Economic Decision Maker in Luxembourg” in the 2022 edition of the Paperjam Top 100.

Julie Becker played a crucial role in the founding of the Luxembourg Women in Finance Charter. She is a member of the Luxembourg Gender Finance Task Force, launched in 2023, and the EIB’s Women Climate Leaders Network, launched in 2024. She was appointed as a member of the University of Luxembourg’s Board of Governors in 2023.

Julie Becker specialises in regulatory and legal matters linked to capital markets. She holds a Master’s Degree in European & Comparative Law and a Master’s Degree (DEA) in Private Law from the University of Nancy II, France. She is also an alumna of the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Matt Christensen joined AllianzGI in 2020 as Global Head of Sustainable and Impact Investing. He is responsible for accelerating the growth of Impact Investing as part of the company’s private markets platform; he leads the continued integration of ESG factors across AllianzGI’s existing range of public markets products, including stewardship activities; and supports the development of new sustainable investment products. Additionally, he oversees the company’s impact investments.  Matt was elected in 2022 as GRESB Foundation Board Member.

Previously Matt was the Global Head of Impact and Responsible Investment at AXA Investment Management which he joined 2011. Prior to this, he was the Founding Executive Director of the think-tank Eurosif (European Sustainable Investment Forum).  He holds MBA and MA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania through the Wharton/Lauder programme.

Jamie Ezefili is Chief Sustainability Officer at Northern Trust. In this role she is responsible for understanding the emerging Sustainability and ESG trends, risks, and opportunities to inform the corporate strategy and demonstrate how this impact the organisation. She also oversees the execution of the annual Sustainability report, the Northern Trust Net Zero Strategy and the Modern Slavery Program. Her team is responsible for responding to assessors and rating agencies including CDP, Dow Jones Sustainability Index and FTSE4Good.

Prior to joining Corporate Responsibility, Jamie served as a Senior Consultant in Northern Trust’s Global Fund Services Product Development. Prior to joining Northern Trust, Jamie managed the Transfer of Accounts Department at Mesirow Financial and during her career has also worked as an analyst in the Transfer Agency at Boston Financial Data Services.

Jamie has a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Kansas, a certificate in Design Thinking from Emeritus Institute of Management and is a Certified Corporate Responsibility Executive through The University of Notre Dame and holds a certificate in Sustainable Business Strategy from Harvard University.

She represents Northern Trust on the BPI Climate Working group and Investment Company institute’s diversity and inclusion committee.

Jamie is a 2021 Chicago Urban League IMPACT fellow. She currently serves on the loan committee for Greenwood Archer Capital and serves as mentor the Baumhart Scholars MBA program for Loyola University. She was recognized as a 2023 Notable Leader in Sustainability by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Jamie is a trooper leader and service unit registrar for the Girl Scouts of Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

Since 2016, Ms. Freiner is responsible for global strategy development and integration of sustainability across the Zurich Insurance Group. She also oversees management of the Z Zurich Foundation and is a member of the Zurich Leadership Team. Ms. Freiner joined Zurich in 2013 to set-up the Zurich Flood Resilience Program.

Prior, she was a Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum from 2007-2013. Ms. Freiner sits on the Board of the UNEPFI Principles for Sustainable Insurance.

She holds a M.Sc. in Economics from the Stockholm School of Economics.

Uli Grabenwarter, is Director – Equity Investments at European Investment Fund (EIF). In this capacity he oversees EIF’s equity investment activities across the entire investment spectrum including fund investments in Technology Transfer, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Private Credit, Impact Investing, Infrastructure funds, as well as Co-Investments and Secondaries Operations.

Previously he was responsible for EIF’s strategic development in the equity investment and in this context has led the build-up of the Social Impact Accelerator, the first pan-European impact investing fund-of-funds. From 2010 to 2012 he conducted a 20 months research project on impact investing in collaboration with IESE University of Navarra in Barcelona and the Family Office Circle Foundation based in Switzerland, analysing best-market-practices for impact investing in the private equity and venture capital space.

He is a visiting Professor for Private Equity and Venture Capital at IESE University of Navarra in Barcelona and, in his personal capacity, is an angel investor in life sciences companies. From 2018 to 2021 he served as a Trustees of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, He currently is on the Board of several asset management companies and family office structures. He regularly publishes articles and white papers on venture capital and impact investing. Uli is also member of several expert groups on impact investing and impact metrics across Europe.

Uli holds a master’s degree in business and finance of the University of Graz.

Vincent Gusdorf is a Senior Vice President in the DeFi and Digital Assets team (DFDA), leading Moody’s blockchain technology research at Moody’s Ratings.

Before joining the DFDA team, Vincent worked for the Innovation and Data Science team, managing several machine learning projects and defining the innovation roadmap. Vincent worked as a credit analyst for 16 years and covered investment grade and high-yield corporates. He also contributed to developing Moody’s cyber risk expertise in Europe.

Before joining Moody’s, Vincent worked at Standard & Poor’s, Exane BNP Paribas, and Ernst and Young.

Vincent is a CFA charter holder and holds a Master of Finance from Sciences Po Paris and a Master of Law from Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas. He is a self-trained programmer and developed his blockchain and machine learning expertise by completing multiple online data science and cloud certifications. Vincent is also a Certified ScrumMaster and a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).

Anja Hannerz is Group Head of Sustainability at Nordea, and member of the UNEP FI banking board.

Anja has been in the Nordic financial industry since 2001 and prior to joining Nordea in 2021, Anja had held different leadership positions in Svenska Handelsbanken, most recently as Head of Finance Sweden and before that as Head of Financial Risk infrastructure and Chief Risk Officer in the mortgage institute Stadshypotek.

Anja holds a masters’ degree in Finance from the Gothenburg School of Business, Economics and law and an Executive Management degree from Stockholm School of Economics.

Amantia Muhedini is an Executive Director and Sustainable and Impact Investing Strategist in the UBS Chief Investment Office, Global Wealth Management, based in New York. Amantia supports clients with thought leadership, investment advice and strategy on a range of topics related to sustainable and impact investing. She specializes in topics tied to impact measurement and reporting, sustainable investing strategic asset allocation and portfolio construction, identifying impact objectives, and market trends tied to sustainability.

Prior to joining UBS, Amantia was a Sustainable Investing Fellow with Morgan Stanley’s Investing with Impact Wealth Management team. She also spent time at Working Capital – The Supply Chain Innovation Fund, conducting impact and commercial due diligence. Amantia started her career as an Investments Associate with the Omidyar’s Group Humanity United, where she helped design and implement a strategy to address forced labor in global corporate supply chains.

Amantia is a Board Director for United World Colleges International (UWC), a global education organization, and was a founding board member and acting Executive Director for UWC in Albania.

Amantia holds a BA magna cum laude from Princeton University and a MPA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Simon Mundy is the Moral Money Editor at the Financial Times, covering environmental and sustainability issues for the award-winning Moral Money platform and the wider FT.

He began his reporting career in Johannesburg, where he covered Southern Africa for the FT before a period writing on the London financial sector.

He then spent seven years in Asia, heading the FT bureaux in Seoul and Mumbai, before two years travelling through 26 countries on six continents to research Race for Tomorrow, a book on the global scramble to respond to climate change.

Shiva Rajgopal is the Kester and Byrnes Professor at the Columbia Business School (CBS).  He is a world-renowned expert on ESG, financial reporting issues, fraud, executive compensation, corporate culture, and corporate governance.

Professor Rajgopal has been internationally recognised for his scholarship on several occasions including the prestigious American Accounting Association (AAA) Notable Contribution to the Literature Award (thrice), Graham and Dodd Scroll Prize given by the Financial Analysts Journal (twice) and the Glen McLaughlin Award for Research in Accounting Ethics (thrice).

Shiva is passionate about bridging academic theory with policy setting and corporate practice.  He writes a regular column for Forbes and has published op-eds in every major outlet. He advises think tanks, asset management firms, advisory firms, and professional and trade associations.

Rosa Sangiorgio is leading the Environmental Social and Governance effort for Pictet Wealth Management.

She has over 24 years experience in structuring, managing and distributing traditional and responsible investment solutions for institutional and private investors globally.

Prior to joining Pictet in 2020, she worked for several major European financial institutions. Since 2012, she is focusing on Sustainability and Impact Investing, most recently leading the Sustainability and Impact Investing effort for Credit Suisse Investment Management.

Rosa is Vice President of the Expert Commission Sustainable Finance of the Swiss Banking Association (SBA), a CEFA charter holder and a TEDx speaker.

Since October 2022, Jean-Paul Servais is the Chairman of the board of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). IOSCO is the membership organisation composed of the world’s financial markets regulators involved in the supervision of 95 % of the financial sector at international level. He is also the Chairman of the IOSCO European Regional Committee.

Jean-Paul Servais is the first Belgian to be elected Chairman of IOSCO. His election was partly in recognition of his efforts and the quality of his work during the six years in which he was already vice-chairman of IOSCO. As IOSCO Chairman, he helped bring about major international breakthroughs in the regulation of crypto currencies and in introducing reporting standards on sustainability.

Between 2017 and 2023, Mr. Servais chaired the IFRS Foundation Monitoring Board, which consists of global financial regulators and provides oversight to the IFRS Foundation. In parallel, he was the co-chair of the Monitoring Group (2021-2023), a group of international financial institutions and regulatory bodies committed to advancing the public interest in areas related to international audit standard setting and audit quality. Within IOSCO, Jean-Paul also led the SPAC network, which successfully delivered a final report in May 2023.

Besides his international responsibilities, Mr Servais is the Chairman of the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA). In this capacity, he is a board member of other international supervisory bodies for the financial sector such as the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), and the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). Besides, he sits on a number of supervisory colleges that coordinate the (cross-border) supervision of financial institutions and infrastructures.

Through these experiences Jean-Paul has accrued a unique blend of supervisory expertise and regulatory acumen in the field of international financial services. Jean-Paul is known for his commitment towards investor protection. Beyond his thorough understanding on the functioning of traditional financial services and markets, Jean-Paul is an engaged and influential figure on sustainable finance and digital regulatory agendas.

Also based on his experiences as a supervisor and from his passion for education, Jean-Paul Servais had become imbued with the importance of financial education. He therefore requested and obtained from the Belgian legislator the power for the FSMA to contribute to the financial education of the population. Under his impetus, the FSMA launched in 2013 the now very successful Wikifin financial education programme. And in 2020, the Wikifin Lab opened in Brussels. This unique centre for financial education has since welcomed thousands of Belgian students and has become a reference at international level.

Jean-Paul teaches at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, University of Brussels), where he is part-time professor in International Business Law and in the specialised Master in Tax Law. He is author or co-author of more than 500 contributions, mostly engaging on European and international systems of financial supervision and regulation issues.

Martin Spolc is the Head of the Sustainable Finance 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 key projects in the area of financial services since the banking 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.

William Wright is the Founder and Managing Director of New Financial, a capital markets think tank and forum.

William launched New Financial in 2014 to make the positive case for the vital role that capital markets play in driving prosperity. New Financial believes Europe needs bigger and better capital markets – and that this represents a huge opportunity for the industry and its customers to embrace change and rethink how capital markets work.

William is a writer and commentator on investment banking and financial markets. He was a member of the launch team at Financial News in March 1996 and was Editor of the publication between 2004 and 2011.

In this time Financial News established itself as one of the most widely-read and respected publications for the asset management and investment banking industries. He played a central role in the sale of the business to The Wall Street Journal in 2007 and in its subsequent integration into Dow Jones.

He is a regular speaker and moderator at conferences and private events, and commentator on TV and radio news programmes, including the Today programme and BBC News.

He studied at Oxford and London universities and INSEAD. Born in the UK, he has also lived and worked in France, Germany and Hungary.