GSSF - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Professor of Finance and Accounting at the University of Texas at Dallas
Ashbel Smith chaired professor of finance and accounting at the University of Texas at Dallas
Caroline Flammer is an Associate Professor and Dean's Research Scholar at Boston University, and a Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She is an expert in sustainable investing and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards.
Her research examines how, and under which conditions, firms can enhance their competitiveness and long-term profitability while strengthening-instead of undermining-the very system in which they operate and hereby play a critical role in addressing climate change, inequality, global health, and other grand challenges related to society and the natural environment. The Web of Science ranked her among the top-100 Highly Cited Researchers in the economics and business profession in terms of impact over the past 10 years.
Among other roles, she serves as the Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee of the United Nations' Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the largest network of responsible investors to date. Moreover, she serves as Associate Editor for both Management Science and the Strategic Management Journal. At Boston University, she serves as the Academic Director of the Social Impact MBA program and the university-wide Minor in Sustainable Energy. For further information: https://sites.bu.edu/cflammer/.
Job Titles:
- Group Chief Executive Officer
Christian Mumenthaler started his career in 1997 as associate with the Boston Consulting Group. He joined Swiss Re in 1999 and was responsible for key company projects.
In 2002, he established and headed the Group Retro and Syndication unit. Christian Mumenthaler served as Group Chief Risk Officer between 2005 and 2007 and was Head of Life & Health between 2007 and 2010. In January 2011, he was appointed Chief Marketing Officer Reinsurance and member of the Group Executive Committee and became Chief Executive Officer Reinsurance that October. In July 2016, Christian Mumenthaler was appointed Group Chief Executive Officer.
Job Titles:
- Sustainable Investment Research & Strategy at Lombard Odier Asset Management ( LOIM )
Foort joined Lombard Odier in 1999 where he co-setup the Quant franchise, managing equity and fixed income portfolios in a fully systematic way.
Ten years later he joined the newly created Fiduciary Management team in the Netherlands as Portfolio Constructor, integrating quantitative approaches at the assets and liabilities sides of pension funds and insurance companies. Since 2017 Foort is responsible for integrating LOIM's sustainability expertise within tailor-made equities and fixed income solutions for large institutional clients, including pension funds and insurance companies.
Next to his position at LOIM, Foort is also a part-time Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, where he is lecturing in Finance and Real Estate, with a specific focus of sustainable finance.
Foort earned a PhD in finance from the University of Geneva in 1997, holds a master's degree in economics and finance and a bachelor's degree in econometrics.
Job Titles:
- Economist and Environmental Scientist at the Center for Sustainable Finance
Dr. Julian Kölbel is a 35 year old economist and environmental scientist at the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (CSP) at the University of Zurich.
His research covers the real-world impact of sustainable investing, analysis of environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics, as well as the effects of climate change on risk and return.
Julian has studied at ETH Zurich, the University of Oxford, and has worked as a Post-Doc at MIT Sloan. Professionally, he has worked at Bank Vontobel, RepRisk AG, and is currently a member of the investment committee at the Swiss pension fund Abendrot.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research
Luigi Zingales' research interests span from corporate governance to financial development, from political economy to the economic effects of culture. He co-developed the Financial Trust Index, which is designed to monitor the level of trust that Americans have toward their financial system.
In addition to holding his position at Chicago Booth, Zingales is currently a faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow for the Center for Economic Policy Research, and a fellow of the European Governance Institute. He is also the director of the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. Zingales also serves on the board of ProMarket and is the co-host of the podcast Capitalisn't. In 2014 he was the President of the American Finance Association.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Finance at Imperial College London
Marcin Kacperczyk is a Professor of Finance at Imperial College London with research interests in the areas of investments, information economics, climate risk, financial intermediation, and artificial intelligence.
His interests in climate finance include the pricing of carbon risk, incentives of portfolio managers to divest carbon-intensive assets, and the role of global regulation and technological changes therein.
He is a Research Associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research, and former Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the Editor of the Review of Finance, and Associate Editor for Financial Management, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Management Science. He is a current holder of the European Research Council research grant and former President of the European Finance Association. He is also a research advisor at the European Central Bank and the Deputy Head of the Finance Department at Imperial.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Finance and Accounting at the University of Texas
Umit Gurun is . He received his PhD from the Michigan State University. He is a past visiting professor at University of Texas at Austin (2010-2011) and Harvard University (2014).
He is an associate editor of Management Science and a research economist at NBER. Professor Gurun's research focuses on a variety of issues in empirical asset pricing and corporate finance, including the impact of financial media and advertising on asset prices; impact of counterfeit products on brand images and firm valuation, among others. He is particularly interested in the ways that networks affect firm values and investor portfolio allocation. His research has been published in top journals, including Science, American Economic Review: Insights, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Accounting Research, Management Science, and Harvard Business Review. His recent research relates to the effects of patent litigation on corporate innovation. In this vein, he has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to investigate the effects of patent litigation policy on innovation outputs. He received distinguished associate editor awards from Management Science six times between 2015 and 2020, and a distinguished referee award from Review of Financial Studies in 2019. Finally, his research has also attracted attention in the popular press, with cites in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Institutional Investor, and the Economist.
Job Titles:
- CEO of Ethos Foundation and of Ethos Services
- Ethos in 2004 As a Corporate Governance Analyst
Vincent Kaufmann (1980) has been the CEO of Ethos Foundation and of Ethos Services since June 2015. Since October 2020, he is also Head Proxy Voting, Swiss ESG and Engagement ad interim.
Vincent Kaufmann joined Ethos in 2004 as a Corporate Governance Analyst, later becoming a Senior and Deputy Head Corporate Governance. He has been member of Ethos Services' management in charge of investment since 2011 and deputy CEO since 2013. He also participates in Ethos' dialogue with the management of Swiss listed companies in the field of corporate governance and sustainability.
Since 2014, he has been a member of the board of directors of the proxy voting consultant Proxinvest (Paris) and, since June 2019, of the board of Swiss Sustainable Finance.
Vincent Kaufmann, a Swiss certified Expert for Accounting and Controlling since 2009, holds a Master's degree in Business Economics of the University of Geneva (2004).