Picking up the pace

My role is fast-moving, as our work is expanding all the time. When I started, I was doing the job alone, but now have two other team-members reporting to me – a responsibility I really enjoy.

Our team votes and conducts engagements with companies within our investment portfolio and other stakeholders to help drive the transition towards a sustainable and climate resilient economy.  The overriding mission is to promote practices and behaviours to maximise long-term value creation.

My role is fast-moving, as our work is expanding all the time. When I started, I was doing the job alone, but now have two other team-members reporting to me – a responsibility I really enjoy.

We draw on stewardship tools such as proxy voting and using our shareholder rights to file resolutions with investee companies. I personally lead, or am involved in, several initiatives on biodiversity, zero-deforestation, climate transition and water management.

Much of my work is externally facing, talking directly to clients about our stewardship activities. We demonstrate how and why their money is being invested and the sustainability outcomes it helps create. Clients are really interested in hearing these stories and the concrete achievements notched up.

We are also developing investment stewardship as a service for a broader range of clients. These are businesses which lack the necessary resources and expertise in-house and will then be able call on us to provide that oversight of their investment activities.

No room for complacency

Ten years ago, ESG and sustainability were seen as niche, before becoming firmly part of the mainstream – it has been fast-growing and exciting. Over the past couple of years, there’s been a level of backlash, some of it politically motivated, which has put sustainable investment into an existential crisis.

It’s essential that we push through these headwinds to continue to help businesses transition – to protect the long term value of our portfolio, the economy and society as a whole. We always need to return to the ‘why?’.

Cardano is working hard to provide innovative or alternative data – satellite or geodata, for example – to bolster our engagements with investee companies. Reliable, granular information provides powerful insights into what’s happening within, say, supply chains and highlights global impacts.  One striking example is the bioacoustics project we’ve recently co-led in Indonesia. The evidence we collected from this clearly shows the loss of biodiversity in areas where palm oil is being produced.

For us, innovation and thought leadership are about pushing the market forwards. When we’re able to plug a gap in meaningful biodiversity measurements, it’s not just for our own benefit, but for the whole of the broader market.

For us, innovation and thought leadership are about pushing the market forwards. When we’re able to plug a gap in meaningful biodiversity measurements, it’s not just for our own benefit, but for the whole of the broader market.

Thinking ahead

I’m sure I’ll still be in this role in a few years’ time, as I find it highly rewarding. I’m very pragmatic about what we can achieve. It’s about balancing what is possible to move forwards, doing the best with what we’ve got. My own contribution is bringing focus and a constructive approach to the work we’re doing day-to-day. It isn’t just a job to me. I’m passionate about the work and the topics we cover because the issues are so critical. That urgency is what gives me my motivation and drive.