Sarah Bratton Hughes is the Head of Sustainability, North America. Her responsibilities include leading the sustainability strategy and ESG integration in North America. She joined Schroders in 2011 and is based in New York.
Previously, Sarah was an Investment Director at Schroders which involved supporting and representing the Schroders Sustainability Team as well as the Schroders US Small Cap and Schroders US Small & Mid Cap investment capabilities to clients and prospective clients. She was also responsible for ESG integration in North America.
Sarah was an Associate Product Manager at Schroders from 2014 to 2017, which involved supporting the US Equities teams and representing the Schroders US Small & Mid Cap and Schroders US Large Cap investment capabilities to clients and prospective clients. She was a product executive on the same team from 2011-2014.
Prior to joining Schroders, Sarah was a Senior Analyst Investment Performance at JP Morgan Asset Management from 2010 to 2011, which involved supporting investor and client inquiries relating to investment performance reviews. She was also a Client Service Associate at JP Morgan Chase from 2007 to 2010, which involved monitoring and implementing new account openings as well as maintenance of existing accounts. Qualifications: BA in Economics from St. Francis College; BSc in Business Management from St. Francis College.

Tate has been an investment industry media publisher and conference producer since 1996. In his media career, Tate has launched and overseen dozens of print and electronic publications. He is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial, which was established in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The company hosts more than 20 conferences and events globally each year and publishes three digital publications, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors Top1000Funds.com, Professional Planner for financial planners, accountants and private bankers in Australia and Investment Magazine for Australian superfunds and institutional investors. One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium attended by global asset owners and hosted in the Americas and Europe.

Conexus Financial’s events aim to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes.

Tate served for seven years on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity, The Wayside Chapel; and he has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project. In 2021 was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) for significant service to the community through charitable initiatives.

Bess Joffe is head of responsible investment for Church Commissioners for England and has just completed natural capital mapping of their portfolio.
The asset owner co-founded the Nature Action 100+ initiative, which is a biodiversity programme yet to be launched and modelled based on Climate Action 100+
As a member of the Science Based Targets Network Corporate Engagement Programme, the Church Commissioners will also play a role in co-designing nature targets.

Eva Cairns is the Head of Climate Change Strategy at Aberdeen Standard Investments and responsible for leading ASI’s climate change agenda to ensure a consistent and rigorous climate change approach is applied to our investments, solutions and communications. Eva leads the internal cross-asset class Climate Change Strategy Group and is responsible for TCFD reporting. She has published a number of climate related papers including ‘Investing in a changing climate’, ‘Climate change – Our approach Investments’ and more recently, she co-authored ASI’s climate scenario analysis white paper. Eva joined Standard Life Investments in 2010 from Halcrow Group Ltd (now CH2M Hill), a global engineering consultancy, where she worked as an Economist focused on environmental and socio-economic impact assessment of energy and transport projects. Eva graduated with an MSc in Economics with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh where her dissertation focused on the social cost of carbon.

Dominic Tighe is a policy advisor in the COP26 Private Finance Hub at HMT. This is small team of people supporting Mark Carney in a mission to build a private finance system for net zero, and make climate change a part of every financial decision, in the lead up to the COP26 summit in Glasgow.
Since joining early this year, Tighe has advanced the work of the hub on portfolio alignment metrics, and is a co-author of the TCFD technical paper on portfolio alignment metrics.
He is now playing a leading role in the engagement around the work, coordinating talks with industry, academia, policy makers and industry. He has spoken at numerous events to promote the use of alignment metrics including at the World Bank, UNFCC and NGFS.
Prior to joining the Hub, Tighe worked at the Bank of England, initially in data analytics and later on the policy around ‘too big to fail’. He completed an MSc in Central Banking & Financial Regulation from Warwick Business School during his time at the Bank of England, with his dissertation research on the green bond market.

Adam is the director of ethics and engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, as well as co-chair of the Transition Pathway Initiative and a board member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, (IIGCC). He is also the co-lead, on behalf of CA100+, for engagement with Royal Dutch Shell that led to the 2018 joint statement on climate targets agreed between Shell and institutional investors.
He founded and now co-chairs the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) an asset owner-led and asset manager-supported global initiative which assesses companies’ preparedness for the transition to the low carbon economy (and publishes this through the London School of Economics). He is also the lead for the Church of England on the Mining and Faith Reflections Initiative (MFRI) a forum that convenes dialogue between mining company CEO’s and Church leaders.
Matthews also serves as a member of the Royal College of Physicians investment advisory board and on the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) stewardship advisory group.

White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. She is responsible for directing the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes. She is the editor of conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 20 years and has edited industry journals including Investment & Technology, Investor Weekly and MasterFunds Quarterly. She was previously editorial director of InvestorInfo and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Australian Financial Review, CFO, Asset and Asia Asset Management. She has a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Technology, Sydney. She was previously a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. White is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program consists of 22 fellows and seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.

Innes McKeand is head of strategic equities at USS Investment Management, the investment management arm of the Universities Superannuation Scheme. He is responsible for all of USS’s listed equities portfolios across developed and emerging markets and is a member of the asset allocation committee. McKeand was previously head of equities at AustralianSuper, the largest superannuation scheme in Australia. His roles during his more than 30-year career have included head of equities at Kames Capital, chief investment officer at AIB Investment Managers in Dublin, and CIO at Scottish Life Assurance.

Barbara Zvan is the president and chief executive at University Pension Plan Ontario.
Formerly, she was chief risk and strategy officer for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP). Under her leadership, the strategy and risk team supported the plan’s sponsors in weighing plan design decisions, its board in setting appropriate benchmarks and risk tolerances, and its Investment division in designing a long-horizon total fund strategy. She crafted OTPP’s responsible investing and climate risk management strategy and directed its enterprise and operational risk management approach. After nearly 25 years, Zvan left OTPP in 2020 to pursue new opportunities.
Zvan is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and the Canadian Institute of Actuaries, and holds an Institute of Corporate Directors designation and a Master of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo. She is on the board of the Global Risk Institute and the advisory board of the Queen’s University Smith School of Business Institute of Sustainable Finance. She has chaired the International Centre of Pension Management and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board’s Investor Advisory Group, and sat on the boards of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance, Cadillac Fairview, and the Chilean water utilities Esval (Essbio) S.A.
She was one of four appointees to the Government of Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance, which delivered its final recommendations in June 2019. She also played a significant role in creating the G7 Investor Leadership Network, which represents over $6 trillion in AUM. Zvan is an honouree of Canada’s 2020 Clean50 and one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 for 2008.

Tate has been an investment industry media publisher and conference producer since 1996. In his media career, Tate has launched and overseen dozens of print and electronic publications. He is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial, which was established in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The company hosts more than 20 conferences and events globally each year and publishes three digital publications, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors Top1000Funds.com, Professional Planner for financial planners, accountants and private bankers in Australia and Investment Magazine for Australian superfunds and institutional investors. One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium attended by global asset owners and hosted in the Americas and Europe.

Conexus Financial’s events aim to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes.

Tate served for seven years on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity, The Wayside Chapel; and he has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project. In 2021 was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) for significant service to the community through charitable initiatives.

Carsten Stendevad joined Bridgewater in 2017, and serves as co-cIO for Sustainability, overseeing Bridgewater’s overall sustainable investing efforts including the design and oversight of investment solutions with both financial and sustainability impact objectives. He is also a member of the operating committee and co-chairs the firm’s sustainable investing committee. Stendevad is a board advisor to GIC and its investment strategies committee, a board member of Novo Holdings, and a board member of the Danish Recapitalization Fund.
Prior to joining Bridgewater, he served as the CEO of ATP, Denmark’s national pension plan. Previously, Stendevad was a managing director in Citi’s investment banking Division in New York, with global responsibility for Citi’s corporate finance advisory team. Earlier in his career, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and an analyst at the Central Bank of Denmark. He served on the global steering committee for the Blended Finance Taskforce, and on the Danish Committee for Corporate Governance, where he led the development of a Stewardship Code for institutional investors. Trained as an economist from the University of Copenhagen, he also holds a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. She is responsible for directing the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes. She is the editor of conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 20 years and has edited industry journals including Investment & Technology, Investor Weekly and MasterFunds Quarterly. She was previously editorial director of InvestorInfo and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Australian Financial Review, CFO, Asset and Asia Asset Management. She has a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Technology, Sydney. She was previously a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. White is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program consists of 22 fellows and seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.

Jaap van Dam is the principal director of investment strategy at PGGM in The Netherlands, responsible for benchmarking and enhancing PGGM’s investment practice.
He is also the owner of VIA, VanDam Investment Advisory which helps asset owners and their investment managers to improve the way they invest in a strategical way – both the set up of the investment value chain and the conduct of the people who are part of the investment process.
He has a broad knowledge and experience in the field of investment strategy, investment policy formulation, asset allocation and value chain design. His other activities include chair of the VBDO, the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development, chair of European Chapter of the 300 Club and member of the research committee of the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM). Together with Kees Koedijk and Alfred Slager he authored Achieving Investment Excellence: A Practical Guide for Trustees of Pension Funds, Endowments and Foundations.