Advisory Board

Chair:

Jeffrey D. Sachs
Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed the Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary General António Guterres. He spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, where he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. He has authored and edited numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). Other books include To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (2013), The Age of Sustainable Development (2015), Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair & Sustainable (2017), A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018), and most recently, The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (2020). He was twice named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders and was ranked by The Economist among the top three most influential living economists.

Advisory Board Members:

Sheikh Khalid Bin Mustahail Al Mashani
Chair, Board of Directors, BankMuscat, Oman

Sheikh Khalid bin Mustahail Al Mashani is the Chair of the Board of Directors of BankMuscat, the leading financial services provider in the Sultanate of Oman. He has previously held varied key positions, including Advisor of International Trade Organisations to the Minister of Commerce and Industry in Oman. His responsibilities included review and implementation of International Trade Organisations treaties with Oman, thereby attracting and facilitating foreign direct investment in Oman. He holds a BSc. in Economics from Buckingham University (UK) and a Masters Degree in International Boundary Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (UK). He has also attended various executive training development programmes in banking, finance, investment, economics and management, including Strategic Finance and High Performance Leadership at the Institute of Management Development in Switzerland. He also serves as Director and Chair of several other leading companies in Oman and is well-known for his efforts in the field of human resource motivation.

Rabah Arezki
Director of Research, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Rabah Arezki is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Prior to that, he was Chief Economist and Vice President, Economic Governance and Knowledge Management at the African Development Bank. Previously, he was Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank, Chief of the Commodities and Environment Unit in the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund, and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Joseph Bell
Pro Bono Senior Council, Hogan Lovells

Joseph Bell is Pro Bono Senior Council at Hogan Lovells. His focus since 2004 has been on natural resource issues—policy and commercial. Working mostly pro-bono and principally in Africa and Asia, he has represented governments in mining and agricultural concession negotiations and has advised regarding tax and royalty policies, stabilization agreements, and other economic issues related to large concessions. He has also advised with respect to the establishment of natural resource management funds and general issues of transparency and governance. He was one of the authors of the initial draft of the Natural Resource Charter. He was an advisor in 1989-1990 to the Polish Ministry of Finance. In the same period, he co-founded the Project for Economic Reform in Ukraine. In 2014 the Polish government awarded him the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit for his support and work “at the initial and most difficult stage of [Poland’s] transformation.” He is the former chair of the International Senior Lawyers Project, a founding director of the Polish American Freedom Foundation, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2010 he received the American Lawyer Life Time Achievement Award.

Joan Carling
Co-Convenor, Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group (IPMG) for Sustainable Development

Joan Carling is an indigenous activist from the Cordillera, Philippines. She has been working on indigenous issues at the grassroots to international levels for more than 20 years. Her field of expertise includes human rights, sustainable development, environment, and climate change, as well as on the principles and application of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). She served as the Secretary General of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP)– a coalition of 50 indigenous organizations across Asia, from 2008 to 2016. She gained further experience, knowledge and skills in networking and policy advocacy work including with the UN system, on business and human rights, development and environmental issues. She was appointed by the UN ECOSOC as an expert-member of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFii) for 2014-16. She is currently the co-convenor of the Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group (IPMG) for Sustainable Development and works directly with indigenous organizations and networks across the globe for the promotion of indigenous peoples’ rights, and their contributions and aspirations for sustainable development. She is also an active Board member of the International Indigenous Women’s Network, Advisory Board member of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and AIPP.

Alexandre S. D'Ambrosio
Executive Vice President, Corporate and Institutional External Affairs, Vale S.A.

Alexandre S. D'Ambrosio has been with Vale since 2018 and holds the position of Corporate and Institutional External Affairs Executive Vice President. His responsibilities include the Legal, Taxation, Institutional Relations and Communications, as well as Corporate, Intellectual Property, Trade Compliance, and Data Protection sectors of the company. He also works as Director of Vale International S.A. From 2016 to 2018, he was the Executive Vice President of Banco Santander (Brasil) S.A. He was also a member of the board of directors of Santander Security Services Ltda (“S3”). From 2003 to 2016, he was the Corporate Legal Director of the Votorantim group. He was a board member of Aracruz Celulose S.A. (later Fibria S.A.) from 2004 to 2013, of Cimentos Itambé S.A. from 2006 to 2016, and of Citrosuco S.A. from 2009 to 2016. In the United States, where he remained from 1985 to 1996, he worked as an associate and partner in large law firms, in Washington, D.C. and New York, in the areas of international trade, mergers and acquisitions, project finance, and cross-border finance. He obtained an LLB from the University of São Paulo Law School in 1984, an LLM from Harvard Law School in 1986, and the equivalent of a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University’s National Law Center in 1989.

Olivier De Schutter
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights

Olivier De Schutter teaches International Law at the University of Louvain (UCL, Belgium) and at Sciences Po (Paris), and is also a member of the Global Law School Faculty at New York University. A specialist of economic and social rights in the context of economic globalization, he was between 2008 and 2014 the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, and between 2015 and May 2020 a Member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. He has held visiting positions at various universities, including Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and Yale University. His work focuses on the intersections between human rights law, international trade law and investment law, and on the governance dimensions of the ecological transition.

Rohitesh Dhawan
President and CEO, International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM)

Rohitesh Dhawan was appointed CEO of ICMM in April 2021. He is passionate about the transformative power of mining, particularly in emerging markets where he has spent two-thirds of his life. His career has been at the intersection of sustainability, resources, and geopolitics and his prior roles have included Managing Director for Energy, Climate & Resources at Eurasia Group and Global Head of Sustainability for the Mining Sector at KPMG. He is a Fellow and faculty member of the Africa Leadership Initiative, a Raisina Fellow at the Asian Forum on Global Governance, and a member of the Advisory Board of Concordia. He also serves on the expert panel on climate change for the UK government’s Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions (PACT) programme and has been named one of South Africa’s climate change leaders for his work with the country’s mining industry. He is also Chair of the Board of Trustees of the BecomingX Foundation which strives to create a world in which all young people can realize their full potential. He holds a Masters of Science in Environmental Change & Management from the University of Oxford in the UK, and a Bachelor of Commerce in Economics from Rhodes University in South Africa. 

Jonathan T. Fried
Senior Advisor, Albright Stonebridge Group; Senior Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Jonathan T. Fried is a Senior Advisor with Bennett Jones, LLP in Ottawa and the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington, DC, Senior Associate to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, and Advisor to Llewellyn Consulting in London, UK. Prior to his retirement from the Government of Canada in August 2020, he was Coordinator for International Economic Relations, with a mandate encompassing Canada-Asia and international trade and economic policy. He was the Personal Representative of Prime Minister Trudeau for the G20 from 2017-2020. He was Canada’s Ambassador to the WTO 2012-2017, where he was Chair of the WTO’s General Council (2014) and Chair of the Dispute Settlement Body (2013). Formerly Canada’s Ambassador to Japan; Executive Director for Canada, Ireland and the Caribbean at the IMF; Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister; Senior Assistant Deputy Minister for the Department of Finance and Canada's G7 and G20 Finance Deputy, and earlier Chief Negotiator on China’s WTO accession; and chief counsel for NAFTA. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Foundation and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Health Standards Organization and the Advisory Boards of the World Trade Board and the Central and East European Law Institute. He was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by Japan in November 2022. He received his B.A. and LL.B. from the University of Toronto, and LL.M. from Columbia University.

Gabrielle Kaufmann-Kohler
Professor of Law, University of Geneva; Partner, Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler

Gabrielle Kaufmann-Kohler is Professor, Geneva University Law School (since 1997); Director, Geneva LLM in International Dispute Settlement (MIDS), a joint program of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and Geneva Law Faculty (launched in 2008); Director, Center for International Dispute Settlement (CIDS) launched in 2015; and Partner, Lévy Kaufmann-Kohler, Geneva. She practices in international commercial and investment and sports arbitration and has acted in over 200 international arbitrations, mainly as arbitrator. She appears on numerous institutional arbitration panels (including ICC, ICSID, AAA, LCIA, SIAC, CIETAC); conducts arbitrations under the rules of all major institutions; chaired the ad hoc division at the Olympic Games from 1996 until 2000; and is regularly ranked among the top ten arbitrators worldwide. She is honorary President of the Swiss Arbitration Association and President from 2001 to 2005; member of ICCA’s Governing Board, HKIAC Advisory Board, President of FIAA Board; former member of ICC Court, LCIA Court, AAA Board; and member of Swiss delegation to UNCITRAL Working Group II and Commission on Transparency in Investment Arbitration (2010 – 2013). Formerly, she was Assistant Professor (private international law), University of Geneva Law School, (1993-1997); Partner, Schellenberg Wittmer (1996-2007), and Partner (1985-1995) and Associate (1981-1985), Baker & McKenzie, Geneva and New York. After studies at the University of Geneva (law degree 1974) and a doctorate from the University of Basle (1979), she was admitted to both the Geneva Bar (1976) and the New York State Bar (1982). Numerous publications in the area of her specialization are available on www.lk-k.com.

Kerry Kennedy
President, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights

Kerry Kennedy is the President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Since 1981, she has worked on diverse human rights issues including child labor, disappearances, indigenous land rights, judicial independence, freedom of expression, ethnic violence, impunity, women’s rights and the environment. She founded RFK Compass, which convenes biannual meetings of institutional investors who collectively control $5-7 trillion in assets to address the impact of human rights violations on investment outcomes. She is the author of Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World (2008) and New York Times Best Seller Being Catholic Now (2000). Speak Truth has grown to include a photography exhibit, Broadway play, award winning website, PBS documentary, and a twelve week education and toolkit for action packet now being taught to millions worldwide. She appears regularly on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and PBS as well as on networks in countries around the world, and her commentaries and articles have been published in The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, among others. She served as Chair of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council for over a decade. She serves on the boards of the U.S. Institute of Peace, Human Rights First, and the Kailash Setyarthis Children’s Foundation as well as several public companies. A graduate of Brown University and Boston College Law School, she has received numerous awards and honorary degrees.

Sheila Khama
Policy Advisor and Non-Executive Director

Sheila Khama is a non-executive director of listed companies, an independent mineral, oil and gas policy advisor, author, and podcast host with more than two decades’ work experience in extractives. She is a former executive of Anglo American Corporation and De Beers Groups in Botswana. She has extensive knowledge of the mining industry, the African business environment and sustainability challenges in mineral, oil and gas industries. She worked for the World Bank and African Development Bank’s mineral, oil and gas policy advisory units, leading teams of experts advising governments in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia. She is a non-executive director at Tullow Oil, an FTSE 250 company, The Metals Company, listed on the NASDAQ, and the Audit Committee of the UN Office of Operations. She served on the Sustainability Panel of LafargeHolcim and the Advisory Boards of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. She is a former CEO of De Beers Botswana and served as a non-executive director of several companies including Debswana, the world’s largest producer of gem diamonds by value. She has served on the Sustainability Panel of AngloGold Ashanti and the Technical Committee of Oxford University’s Natural Resources Charter among others. She has lived and worked in Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, the UK, and USA. She holds an MBA from the University of Edinburgh.

Iris Krebber
Head of Agriculture, Food Security, Agriculture and Land Policy and Programmes, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)

Iris Krebber is the Head of Food Security, Agriculture and Land Policy and Programmes at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Her responsibilities include global policy, programs, evidence and engagement around DFID’s Agriculture Policy, Economic Development Strategy, land governance, and responsible investments. She also leads the UK’s investment in the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP). She co-chaired its global Steering Committee and chaired the Private Sector Donor Committee until May 2022. Prior to her current role, she was Head of Agriculture at the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), where she led flagship land governance and responsible investment programs, including “Land – Enhancing Governance for Economic Development” (LEGEND). In 2014, she led the UK in the negotiations of the global Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems (RAI) which place strong emphasis on better managing risk and securing positive impacts from primary agriculture and investments along agricultural value chains. Prior to joining DFID, she was the Regional Director in East Africa for Welthungerhilfe, the largest INGO headquartered in Germany working on global food security, agriculture and rural development. Prior to working in humanitarian assistance and development, she spent seven years working in the private sector, across a range of industries, including defense, automobile, and IT. She holds post-graduate degrees in humanitarian and development management, international law, and languages from the US, EU, and Germany.

Justin Yifu Lin
Director, Center for New Structural Economics, and Honorary Dean, National School of Development, Peking University

Justin Yifu Lin is Director, Center for New Structural Economics, and honorary dean, National School of Development at Peking University. He was the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, 2008-2012. Prior to this, he served for 15 years as Founding Director of the China Centre for Economic Research at Peking University. He is the author of 23 books including Against the Consensus: Reflections on the Great Recession, the Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off, Demystifying the Chinese Economy, and New Structural Economics: A Framework for Rethinking Development and Policy. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for Developing World.

Maria Luiza de Oliveira Pinto e Paiva
Executive Vice President, Sustainability, Vale S.A.

Maria Luiza de Oliveira Pinto e Paiva is Executive Vice President, Sustainability, Vale S.A. She has been working in Sustainability for 34 years and before coming to Vale, she was Suzano's director of Sustainability. She also served as Executive Director of Sustainability, Communication and Corporate Relations at Fibria Celulose from March 2015 to December 2018. She was an executive at Banco ABN AMRO Real/Santander and Banco Nacional - with a trajectory focused on cultural transformation and leadership development. As Executive Director of Sustainable Development at ABN AMRO Real/Santander, she led the creation and implementation of the sustainability strategy that became a national and international benchmark. She led multicultural teams and projects in the periods in which she directed the HR area for Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. She is a psychologist with a specialization in Human Resources from the University of Michigan, USA and is currently studying Business and Sustainability at Cambridge University, England.

Antonio M.A. Pedro
Deputy Executive Secretary (Programme Support), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

Antonio M.A. Pedro is a mineral exploration geologist with more than 30 years of experience in mineral resources development at national, sub-regional, and continental levels. Since October 2021 he is the Deputy Executive Secretary (Programme Support) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Previously he was Director of ECA’s Sub-regional Office for Central Africa in Yaounde, Cameroon, Director of ECA’s Sub-regional Office for Eastern Africa in Kigali, Rwanda, and before that, Chief of Infrastructure and Natural Resources Development at ECA headquarters in Ethiopia. At ECA, he has been at the forefront of mineral policy analysis and formulation as well as industrial development and economic diversification; he has played a leading role in the formulation of the Africa Mining Vision adopted by the African Union Heads of State in February 2009 and coordinated the work of the International Study Group on Africa’s Mineral Regimes. He is a member of the International Resources Panel (IRP), Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and has served as Director-General of the Southern and Eastern African Mineral Centre, a research centre in Tanzania, and Managing Director of several state-owned mining companies in Mozambique. A native of Mozambique, he has a Masters in Mineral Exploration from the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, London.

Karl P. Sauvant
Resident Senior Fellow, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Karl P. Sauvant is Resident Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University; Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia Law School and Guest Professor at Nankai University, China. Until February 2012, he was the Founding Executive Director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment, the predecessor of CCSI. Until July 2005, he was Director of the UNCTAD’s Investment Division. While at the UN, he created the prestigious annual World Investment Report, of which he was the lead author until 2004. He authored a substantial number of publications on issues related to economic development, FDI and services. He is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business and an Honorary Fellow of the European International Business Academy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975.

M Sornarajah
CJ Koh Professor of Law, National University of Singapore

M Sornarajah is CJ Koh Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore and the Tunku Abdul Rahman Professor of Public International Law at the University of Malaya. He was previously Head of the Law School of the University of Tasmania, Australia. He studied law at the University of Ceylon, the Yale Law School, the London School of Economics and King’s College, London. He is the author of several books on international law, including the International Law on Foreign Investment (3rd Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2010). He has been counsel or arbitrator in several leading investment arbitrations. He is an Honorary Member of the Indian Society of International Law. His new book, Resistance and Change in International Investment Law is to be published by Cambridge University Press.

Abigail Abrash Walton
Faculty/Director, Department of Environmental Studies, Antioch University New England

Abigail Abrash Walton holds appointments as an administrative leader and faculty in Antioch University New England’s Department of Environmental Studies, where she directs the Conservation Psychology Institute and co-directs the Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience. Previously, she served as Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program and as program director for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. Her recent engagement includes contributing as invited reviewer for the 2020 U.S. Government Review, Working Group II contribution to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, and as a founding Steering Committee member of Engaging Scientists and Engineers in Policy. Her areas of research, practice and public engagement have focused on extractive industries and affected communities, fossil fuel divestment, mission-aligned leadership, and climate resilience. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and peer-reviewed journals, and she has served as a commentator for The Times, The Post, and PBS News Hour, among other media outlets. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from Antioch University.

Louis T. Wells
Herbert F. Johnson Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Louis Wells is Herbert F. Johnson Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School. He has served as consultant to governments of a number of developing countries, as well as to international organizations and private firms. His principal consulting activities have been concerned with foreign investment policy and with negotiations between foreign investors and host governments. His research interests include multinational enterprises; international business-government relations; foreign investment in developing countries; and foreign investment by firms from developing countries. He was the Coordinator for Indonesia Projects, Harvard Institute for International Development, Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1994-5. He is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a member of the Foreign Advisory Board at the Lahore Business School, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received a BS in Physics from Georgia Tech and his MBA and DBA from the Harvard Business School.

James Zhan
Director, Investment & Enterprise Division, UNCTAD

James Zhan is Director of Investment and Enterprise at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He leads the team that produces the annual UN World Investment Report. He has over two decades of national and international experience in the areas of trade, investment, technology, business facilitation and enterprise development, including directing policy research, international consensus-building and technical assistance to governments, parliaments and institutions in over 160 countries. He holds a number of advisory positions with academic institutions, including Cambridge University, Columbia University, Oxford University and the University of Geneva. He is also Global Agenda Council member of the World Economic Forum. He has published extensively on trade and investment-related economic and legal issues. He is a regular speaker at academic, business and policy forums, as well as parliamentary hearings and appears frequently in international media outlets.