Impact Conference 2009: Employee Engagement for a Sustainable Future
Charles Middleton - Triodos Bank
Charles Middleton joined Triodos Bank as Managing Director of the UK business in 2003.
He has spent 29 years in banking with 14 of those spent overseas in India, Africa and the Caribbean. He started his banking career with Barclays opening the first Barclays branch in Mumbai in the early 90s and moving on to run the Barclays businesses in Botswana and the Caribbean region. In between he spent time in the UK working on graduate recruitment and management development and managing a product group.
His last position with Barclays was as Director Country Management for the Barclays Africa business. Since joining Triodos in 2003 the focus has been on continuing the growth of the core savings and lending businesses connecting savers who have an interest in what their money is doing with people and projects making a real positive environmental and social difference. Over the last two years he has also helped to develop Triodos’s investment banking business in the UK building on earlier successes with capital raising for Cafedirect, Golden Lane Housing, the Ethical Property Company and the Bank’s renewable energy fund, Triodos Renewables. Bringing different types of investment to those pioneering businesses that need it. Charles is Chairman of the Haller Foundation, and on the Board of the UKSIF.
Jessica Sansom - Innocent Drinks
Jessica Sansom is Head of Sustainability for Innocent Drinks, responsible for meeting the company's mantra to 'leave things a little better than we find them'. She has worked in both the private and public sector, and as an environmental consultant in her home country of Australia. Her work has focussed on the development, implementation and communication of strategic plans to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into everyday business practices. Jessica has an BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science from the Australian National University.
Jonas Ridderstrale
Dr Jonas Ridderstråle is at the forefront of the new generation of European-based business gurus. He cuts through the madness and hyperbole surrounding the global economy and his appeal is truly global. Jonas has attained tremendous media coverage throughout the world. The 2005 Thinkers 50, the bi-annual global ranking of management thinkers, ranked him (and his colleague Nordström) at number nine internationally and as the leading European business guru.
Dr. Ridderstråle holds an MBA and a PhD in international business and has been recognized as Sweden's outstanding young academic of the year. Formerly, he was an assistant professor at the Stockholm School of Economics where he was responsible for the school's Advanced Management Program. Jonas is currently a visiting professor at Ashridge Business School in the UK. His research focuses on new organizational models and leadership styles in the information age and has been published in leading academic journals. Jonas contributed to the best-selling Financial Times Handbook of Management and Business: The Ultimate Resource. He is on the editorial board of The Capstone Business Encyclopaedia.
Liz Bramley - The Co-operative Group
Liz Bramley trained as a Chartered Management Accountant and also gained an MBA before joining the Communications and Engagement team at The Co-operative Group. Liz is now Head of Employee Engagement and harnesses her diverse career history, academic curiosity and co-operative values to drive improvements in peoples’ day to day working lives across a spectrum of retail businesses: lifting levels of employee engagement and also measurably boosting the bottom line.
Paul Rose - Impact and the BBC
Paul is a BBC TV Presenter - credits include Scrapheap Challenge, Take One Museum, Meltdown, Voyages of Discovery, Oceans and live appearances on BBC Breakfast, BBC 24 News, Sky News, Border News, national and local radio, US National radio.
He is a very experienced and popular public speaker, field logistics expert, polar guide, professional diver and instructor, mountaineer and yacht skipper.
He was the Base Commander of Rothera Research Station, Antarctica for British Antarctic Survey for 10 years and was awarded HM The Queen's Polar Medal. For his work with NASA and the Mars Lander project on Mt Erebus, Antarctica he was awarded the US Navy Polar Medal.
His professional diving work includes science support diving in Antarctica, (as BAS Institute Diving Officer) and Indian Ocean (as Diving Ops Advisor to the RGS Shoals of Capricorn project). He ran the US Navy diver training programme at Great Lakes Naval training Centre & trained many emergency response dive teams including the Police, Fire Department and Underwater Recovery Teams.
Paul is a Mountain and Polar Guide leading Greenland Icecap crossing expeditions, polar science support logistics & mountaineering expeditions. He is a Mountain Safety consultant to the oil industry in the Middle East. He advises & provides operational support to expeditions, charities & business in Health & Safety, Fieldwork, Diving Operations & Expedition Training.
Paul was Vice President and Chair of Expeditions & Fieldwork Division 1999 - 2002 at the Royal Geographical Society.
Rob Challis - Man Group
Rob co-founded Quadrant Risk Management (International) Ltd some 17 years ago. He has broad experience with a number of major financial institutions and regulators and is a globally recognised expert in strategic and business planning, corporate governance, compliance, climate change, risk assessment and evaluation and embedding these disciplines into global financial institutions.
He is also a highly respected specialist in risk management training. Over the last 17 years much of his work has been in pioneering bespoke knowledge transfer methodologies and the development of business aligned risk management structures.
Prior to Rob's invitation to join Man, he spent his final 4 years at Quadrant leading and facilitating the creation of Man Group plc's global risk management, governance, compliance and corporate responsibility architectures.
