Kate Daly is a Managing Director at the investment firm Closed Loop Partners, and leads their Center for the Circular Economy, an innovation centre for research, analysis and collaboration to accelerate the transition to a circular economy where materials are shared, re-used and continuously cycled.

Before joining Closed Loop Partners, Kate served in New York City government for more than a decade, most recently as Senior Vice President at the NYC Economic Development Corporation. At NYCEDC, Kate led a team launching innovative business development programs to foster the growth of entrepreneurship, strengthen New York City’s anchor and emerging industries and create new jobs. She managed a portfolio across sectors including smart cities, healthcare, cleantech, fashion, tech, media and advanced manufacturing. Kate previously served as the Executive Director of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. He served as Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal of Europe, and has published in top scientific journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. He has been elected a Fellow of the Financial Management Association and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and his work has been cited over 17,000 times.

Alex’s research focuses on the business case for sustainable business: why sustainability is not only good for society and the environment, but also for the long-term success of a company. He uses the highest-quality academic evidence on both sides to help companies and investors navigate the complexities associated with sustainable business, such as trade-offs, diminishing returns, and conflicting priorities. Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given the TED talk “What to Trust in a Post-Truth World” and the TEDx talks “The Pie-Growing Mindset” and “The Social Responsibility of Business” with a combined 2.8 million views. He serves as non-executive director of the Investor Forum, on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing, and on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee. Alex’s book, “Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit”, was a Financial Times Book of the Year for 2020 and has been translated into nine languages, and he is a co-author of “Principles of Corporate Finance” (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen). He has won 25 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS and was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021. His latest book,  May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It will be published by Penguin Random House in April 2024.

David Livingston currently serves as the inaugural Innovation & Sustainability Practitioner in Residence at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, teaching a course on innovation & competition in the global energy transition, and advising the University ecosystem on synergies in its core innovation portfolio, including the Frontiers of Computing initiative focused on excellence in AI and quantum research. 

Before coming to USC, Livingston served as senior advisor to Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry. During his time in the Biden administration, he was instrumental in the creation of several flagship public-private partnerships focused on cleantech and innovation.

Prior to joining government, Mr. Livingston previously worked at the Eurasia Group, a consultancy, focusing on energy, climate, trade and technology issues, and as a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council. He has also served as a Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as the inaugural Robert S. Strauss Fellow for Geoeconomics at the Office of the US Trade Representative during the Obama administration. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford, and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Lord Prior is Deputy Chair UK and Global Senior Advisor at Lazard.

He was educated at Cambridge University and subsequently qualified as a barrister. He trained in finance at Lehman Brothers and Lazard Freres in New York before holding a number of senior positions within the industrial sector, including British Steel, where he was Commercial Director. He was elected MP for North Norfolk in 1997 and became CEO and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party. 

He served as Chair of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust from 2002 – 2012 before becoming Chair of the Care Quality Commission. In 2015, he was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health and created a Life Peer. In December 2016, he was appointed as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, with specific responsibility for developing industrial strategy. He stepped down from this role in October 2017 to become Chair of University College London Hospitals and subsequently became Chair of NHS England and a member of the UK Life Sciences Council from November 2018 to March 2022.

He is an advisor to Healthcare UK, providing strategic input into the Department of International Trade’s healthcare international exports work. He is also Chair of Protas, a not-for-profit clinical trials business, Chair of the Cambridge Life Sciences Council and Tympa Health and is a member of the Cleveland Clinic Board of Trustees and the Novo Nordisk Sustainability Advisory Council. 

"I passionately believe that the model of healthcare in the developed world is irretrievably broken; it has become a late-stage sick-care system with high costs and poor outcomes. We must move rapidly towards prevention, prediction, early diagnosis and early treatment."

Katherine Richardson (dual citizen of Denmark and USA) is a professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen, leader of the Sustainability Science Centre, principle investigator in the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, and Leader of Queen Margrethe’s and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir´s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ocean, Climate, and Society (www.ROCS.ku.dk). Her research focuses on the importance of biological processes in the ocean for the uptake of CO₂ from the atmosphere and how ocean biology, including diversity, contributes to ocean function in the Earth System, including climate development.

Richardson is a core developer of the Planetary Boundaries framework that attempts to identify a safe operating space for humanity in its impact on global resources. Richardson holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College (1976), a PhD from the University of Wales (awarded while on a Marshall Fellowship) and a D.Sc. from the University of Copenhagen. She was Chairman of the Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy and is currently a member of the Danish Climate Council. She was a member of the 15-person Independent Group of Scientists appointed by Ban Ki Moon to draft the 2019 UN Global Sustainable Development Report. Richardson is or has been a member or Chair of numerous national and international committees and organizations relating to research, science policy and/or sustainability and has recently been appointed Chair of the EU high level Expert group on the economic and societal impact of research and innovation (ESIR). She has been awarded the Danish Order of the Dannebrog (1^st level). 

Until his retirement in early 2021, Dr Runge-Metzger’s responsibilities covered developing climate neutrality strategies and the governance of EU climate policy, regulating emissions from non-ETS sectors and supporting innovation in the EU's energy and industrial sectors (e.g. Innovation and Modernisation Fund). He served on the Boards of the European Environment Agency and the European Fund for Strategic Investments. From 2003 until the conclusion of the Paris agreement in 2015, he led international climate negotiations for the EU. He co-chaired the working group preparing the Paris agreement in 2013/14 and was a Member of the UNFCCC Bureau from 2010 to 2012.

Between 1993 and 2003, Dr Runge-Metzger worked as a European Commission official in Sarajevo, Brussels and Harare. Until 1993, he conducted research in West Africa and lectured at the University of Göttingen. He holds a doctoral degree in agricultural economics.

“The healthcare industry needs to step up action in four areas: access, prevention, CO2, and plastics. This can happen through critical reflection on what has been achieved and developing more granular implementation plans. My hope is that Novo Nordisk will succeed and lead in setting an example for the wider industry and the supply chain.”

Seth Schultz is the CEO of Resilience Rising, a new global non-profit consortium innovating to accelerate a safe, resilient, and sustainable future for all.  He has a long track record of building consensus, initiating change in sustainable development, and raising international awareness of the role of cities in tackling climate change.

Over the past two decades, Seth has worked with many of the most leading and innovative organisations in this space to turn theory into practice, including the Louis Berger Group, the US Green Building Council, the Clinton Foundation, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, the Global Covenant of Mayors, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Resilience Shift.

"Healthcare represents 18% of the U.S. economy and 10% of the world economy. Healthcare leaders have an opportunity to directly address the industry’s environmental footprint while simultaneously improving the health and well-being of the neighbourhoods and communities they serve in the face of potential climate change threats. A resistant public is one of the biggest barriers to implementing vital changes to the way healthcare is administered worldwide."

Prof. Jacob C. Seidell was appointed as full professor (2002-present) and head of the Institute for Health Sciences (2003-2013) at the VU University in Amsterdam. Since 2013 he is appointed as ‘university professor’ at the VU University and co-director of Sarphati Amsterdam, a multidisciplinary research institute that focuses on healthy development of children through healthier lifestyles and environments.

He obtained his MSc (1983) and PhD (1986) at the Department of Human Nutrition at the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands. He was awarded a senior research fellowship by the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for the period 1988-1992. From 1992-2002 he was head of the Department for Chronic Diseases Epidemiology at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. He also worked as a researcher in Sweden, the United States and Canada.

Jaap’s research focuses on the understanding of determinants of food choice and the effectiveness of (policy) interventions in  the context of the prevention and management of non-communicable diseases in general and of obesity in particular. He (co)-authored well over 600 scientific papers and chapters in books on these topics. His h-index according to Web of Knowledge is 99 (in Google Scholar 144).  Besides this Jaap also writes columns and op-eds for leading national newspapers and he published four books on nutrition for the general public. He has chaired numerous committees which produced dietary guidelines for the general population as well as for people with diabetes or obesity and he has been a frequent consultant to the World Health Organization on these matters. He is a principal advisor to national and local governments as well as NGOs on public health and prevention.

Jaap has served as president-elect and as president (1992-2000) of the European Association for the Study of Obesity and was editor-in-chief of the "European Journal of Clinical Nutrition" (1996-2006) and “Public Health Nutrition” (2006-2014). He is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) .

Andrea is a US-trained attorney and international human rights lawyer with over 20 years of experience in Business and Human Rights.

She began her Business and Human Rights career as a Legal Advisor at Amnesty International UK and the International Commission of Jurists before taking on the role of Legal Advisor to John Ruggie, the-then UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Business and Human Rights (SRSG). There, Andrea led the SRSG’s work on investment contracts and treaties, advised him on international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law issues, and participated in developing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Andrea established and led the Investment & Human Rights Project at the London School of Economics until 2016, where she remained as a Visiting Fellow until 2019. She has been an Advisor to the Global Business Initiative on Human Rights, a global, cross-industry, business-led organisation focused on advancing corporate respect for human rights, since 2011. Since 2020 Andrea is also GBI Chair, and she regularly teaches Business and Human Rights and guest lectures at law schools and business schools in the US and Italy.

"Beyond corporate ‘purpose’, corporate sustainability strategies need to reflect the external context in which the company operates—taking on international standards of responsible business conduct as a baseline expectation of what is a ‘responsible company’ will be key.  Large companies will eventually need to do this anyway because regulation will catch up with them. The question is whether they are going to lead the change and shape that change or whether they will just react to what is imposed on them."

Prashant Yadav is a globally recognised scholar in healthcare supply chains and access to medicines. He is an Affiliate Professor at INSEAD, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, and Lecturer at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of many peer-reviewed scientific publications, and his work has featured in prominent print and broadcast media such as the BBC, New York Times, CNN, Financial Times, WSJ and NPR.

In addition to his roles in academia and think tanks, Prashant serves on the boards of many health and development focused companies. In his previous roles, Prashant has worked as Strategy Leader-Supply Chain at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Vice President of Healthcare at the William Davidson Institute and Faculty at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan; Professor of Supply Chain Management at the MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program and Research Affiliate at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics.

Yadav has been asked for expert testimony on medicine supply chains in the US Congress and Parliament/Legislative bodies of many countries. He works closely with and advises many country governments and philanthropic organisations on healthcare supply chain strategy.