Advisory Board

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment is privileged to have an Advisory Board consisting of distinguished experts, academics and practitioners. The Advisory Board provides advice on the overall direction of the Center, its activities and its priorities.

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.

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.

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.

Jonathan T. Fried
Personal Representative of the Prime Minister for the G20 and Coordinator for International Economic Relations, Global Affairs Canada

Jonathan Fried is the G20 “Sherpa” for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and leads government-wide strategic planning regarding Canada-Asia and other trade/economic issues. As Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the WTO, 2012-2017, he played a key role in multilateral trade negotiations, including as Chair of the WTO’s General Council in 2014 and chair of the Dispute Settlement Body in 2013. He Co-Chaired the G20’s Trade and Investment Working Group with China in 2015, and was “Friend of the Chair” for Germany in 2016.  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. He was Canada’s Chief Negotiator on China’s WTO accession and chief counsel for NAFTA.  He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Trade and Investment, the Steering Committee of the e15 initiative on Strengthening the Global Trading System, and the International Advisory Board of the Central and East European Law Institute. He was named in 2015 as the inaugural recipient of the Public Sector Lawyer Award by the Canadian Council on International Law to honour his service and contribution to public international law.

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
Practice Manager, Energy and Extractives, World Bank Group

Sheila Khama is Practice Manager, Energy and Extractives at the World Bank Group, responsible for oil, minerals and gas projects in Latin America, East/Southern Africa, East/Central Europe and South Asia. She is a natural resources policy advisor and a former private sector executive with 20 years’ experience in and out of Africa. She was a member of the senior management team of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) and headed the AfDB’s African Natural Resources Center established in 2013. Previously she led a gas, oil and minerals capacity building program of support to subSaharan policymakers at the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) in Ghana. She worked as a mining and banking sector executive for Anglo American Corporation, De Beers and First National Bank in Botswana. She is a seasoned negotiator of mineral concessions and commercial agreements. She serves on the Technical Advisory Group of the Natural Resources Governance Institute and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network on extractives and land resources. She is chairperson of AGAMAL, a nonprofit entity financed by the Global Fund to contain malaria infection in Ghana. She serves on the Sustainability Advisory Panel for Lafarge and is a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the joint Oxford University and Revenue Watch Institute – Natural Resources Governance Institute. She holds an MBA from the University of Edinburgh and is a citizen of Botswana.

Meg Kinnear
Secretary-General, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes

Meg Kinnear is currently the Secretary-General of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) at the World Bank. She was formerly the Senior General Counsel and Director General of the Trade Law Bureau of Canada, where she was responsible for the conduct of all international investment and trade litigation involving Canada, and participated in the negotiation of bilateral investment agreements. In November 2002, she was also named Chair of the Negotiating Group on Dispute Settlement for the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement. From October 1996 to April 1999, she was Executive Assistant to the Deputy Minister of Justice of Canada. Prior to this, she was Counsel at the Civil Litigation Section of the Canadian Department of Justice (from June 1984 to October 1996) where she appeared before federal and provincial courts as well as domestic arbitration panels. She was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1984 and the Bar of the District of Columbia in 1982. She received a B.A. from Queen’s University in 1978; an LL.B. from McGill University in 1981; and an LL.M. from the University of Virginia in 1982. She has published numerous articles on international investment law and procedure and is a frequent speaker on these topics. She is a co-author of Investment Disputes under NAFTA (published in 2006 and updated in 2008 & 2009). She also co-authored texts on Canadian legal procedure including Federal Court Practice (1988-1990, 1991-1992, and 1993-2009 annually) and 1995 Crown Liability and Proceedings Act Annotated (1994).

Iris Krebber
Head of Agriculture, UK Department for International Development (DFID)

Iris Krebber is the Head of Agriculture at the UK Department for International Development (DFID). Her area of responsibility includes global policy, programmes, evidence and engagement around DFID’s Agriculture Policy, its Economic Development strategy, land governance, and responsible investments. For example, a key flagship programme is “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 German INGO working on hunger and poverty. She ensured that all programmes, from pre-design stage onwards, focused strongly on maximising the benefits for poor local people, created linkages and leveraged added value from the private sector as much as possible. Prior to working in humanitarian assistance and development, she spent seven years working in the private sector, across a range of industries, including defence, automobile, and IT. She holds advanced 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.

Luiz Eduardo Osorio
Executive Director, Sustainability and Institutional Relations, Vale S.A.

Luiz Eduardo Osorio was appointed Vale’s Executive Director for Sustainability and Institutional Relations in July 2017. He has extensive experience in the areas of international relations, corporate affairs, sustainability, law, ethics and compliance. He previously held senior management posts at several large domestic and multinational companies, including AmBev, Diageo, Shell and Raízen. At the latter company, he was based in London, where he also served as legal and institutional relations vice president of CPFL Energia, a board member of CPFL Renováveis, and a board member of the CPFL Institute. He has an undergraduate degree in law from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a Master of Science degree in development management from American University in Washington, D.C. He has also completed the following executive training courses: Corporate Social Responsibility at Harvard Business School, Identifying Challenges and Building General Management Skills at Insead in France, From Strategy to Execution, Leading in a High Performance Organization at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and Leadership in Corporate Counsel at Harvard Law School

Antonio M.A. Pedro
Director, Sub-regional Office for Central Africa, 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 August 2016, he is the Director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)’s Sub-regional Office for Central Africa in Yaounde, Cameroon; previously, he was the 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; 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 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.

César Rodríguez-Garavito
Director, Open Global Rights and Visiting Professor of Clinical Law, New York University

César Rodríguez-Garavito is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner. He is currently Visiting Professor of Clinical Law at NYU. He is the Director of Open Global Rights and the founder of JustLabs, a space for incubating innovations and collaborations in the human rights and social justice fields. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford, Brown, University of Melbourne, European University Institute, University of Pretoria, the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil), and Central European University. He has served as a strategy advisor to leading international and national human rights organizations around the world. He has been an Adjunct Judge of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, an expert witness of Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and a lead litigator in climate change, socioeconomic rights and indigenous rights cases. He serves in the executive boards of WITNESS and the Business and Human Rights Resource Center. He is the founder of the Program on Global Justice at the University of Los Andes, as well as co-founder and former director of Dejusticia. He has published widely on human rights, environmental justice, globalization and social movements. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. in Law & Society from NYU, an M.A. in Philosophy from the National University of Colombia, and a J.D. from Los Andes.

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.

Marcio Senne de Moraes
Director of External Affairs – Vale SA

Marcio Senne de Moraes is Vale’s external affairs director. Previously, he was external affairs head for Europe and North America based out of Switzerland, external affairs general manager in Rio de Janeiro and sociopolitical risk assessment and mitigation manager. He has also supported Vale’s projects and interests globally through issues management, stakeholder engagement, risk assessment and proposal of mitigation strategies. He is currently vice-president of the China-Brazil Business Council and is a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network working group on transparency in the extractive sector. Before his experience with Vale, he worked as assistant editor, reporter and senior international politics analyst for the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. He also had work experience at UNESCO in Paris and the United Nations Organization in New York. He holds a Master’s degree (MSc) in Political Science focused on International Relations from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and a Bachelor’s degree (BSc) in Business Administration, focused on marketing, from Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo, Brazil.

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.

CCSI Emeritus Advisory Board Members