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.

Dr Peter Fantke is Professor and Head of the Quantitative Sustainability Assessment (QSA) section at the Technical University of Denmark. He develops methods for evaluating life cycle impacts of chemical exposure on human and environmental health, benchmarking chemical pollution against absolute environmental sustainability targets, and identifying safer alternatives to harmful substances and materials in products and technologies. He is Director of USEtox, the scientific consensus model for characterising chemical toxicity and ecotoxicity developed under the auspices of UN Environment’s Life Cycle Initiative, and coordinates global task forces on informing environmental and health impact reduction of pesticides, toxic chemicals and air pollutants.

"The healthcare industry needs to offer healthcare solutions that are fully in line with environmental impact reduction targets. For that, science-based, absolute targets need to be defined for benchmarking the environmental performance of healthcare products, especially related to chemical products (e.g. pharmaceuticals) and materials (e.g. plastic packaging) regarding (eco-)toxicity, antibiotic resistance and other effects. This can be done by combining funding for research and internalising absolute sustainability targets into investment decisions and operational production workflows."

Marianne Haahr is Nature-related Finance Lead at Global Canopy where she serves as part of the TNFD secretariat framework and leads nature-related engagement with financial service institutions as well as at Global Canopy. Prior to taking up that role Marianne served as Executive Director of the Green Digital Finance Alliance (GDFA), a not for profit foundation co-founded by UNEP with a mission to scale green finance with digital technologies. At GDFA Marianne developed new models for asset geolocation data to enable more accurate accounting for biodiversity risk by financial service institutions as well as leading work on portfolio ocean risk hotspot assessments, ocean metrics design and corresponding biodiversity related data supply maps for financial service institutions.

Marianne has also served on the Informal Technical Working Group to the TNFD and as a non-executive member of the Finance for Biodiversity Initiative. Marianne has developed input papers for the G-20 Sustainable Finance Working Group, the UN SG’s Task Force for Digital Financing of the SDGs and currently an INSPIRE handbook for central banks on sustainable finance. Marianne has served as advisor to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Denmark on digital finance in emerging markets and she has led the think tank Sustainia’s work with UN Global Compact on transition pathways for corporate and financial service institutions.

Marianne started her professional career building micro finance solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation in West and Southern Africa. She holds an M.Sc. from the University of Copenhagen.

"The healthcare industry needs to start tackling the industry's pollution challenge as one of the sector’s most material drivers of nature loss. This needs to happen by defining time-bound targets for key pollutants accompanied by the formulation of concrete transition pathways that identify the specific technology mix to enable the transition and related technology investment plans."

 

Cajsa Lindberg is a global health advocate, advisor, consultant and public speaker, working with organisations such as WHO, OECD, European Diabetes Forum, International Diabetes Federation, NCD Alliance, University of Gothenburg, Medtronic and Novo Nordisk. She has leadership experience from Swedish, European and international organisations and is passionate about increasing patient involvement in political and healthcare-related decision-making processes. She has lived with type 1 diabetes for 20 years and is a brain cancer survivor living with cancer-related complications and comorbidities.

"Ensuring equitable access to (life-saving) medications is key to a sustainable agenda and reducing the human burden and societal costs. This can be done with a multi-stakeholder approach (including people with lived experience) and by focussing on how relatively small the cost of providing treatment is compared to the cost of complications - both for those affected and society as a whole."

Lord Prior is Deputy Chairman 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 Chairman of the Conservative Party. 

He served as Chairman of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust from 2002 – 2012 before becoming Chairman 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 Chairman of University College London Hospitals and subsequently became Chairman 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 Chairman 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."

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."

Donna E. Shalala is a distinguished educator and Trustee Professor of Political Science and Health Policy at the University of Miami. One of the most honoured academic leaders of her generation, she has been elected to seven national academies including the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Education, The National Academy of Public Administration, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Professor Shalala is one of the country’s first Peace Corps Volunteers (Iran), her public service also includes serving as Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration for eight years. In 2008 President George W. Bush selected her as the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. She was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report (2005), received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights (2010), and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame (2011).

She has led three universities: Hunter College, 1980-87; University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987-1993; and the University of Miami, 2001-2015.

Professor Shalala received her A.B. from Western College for Women and her PhD from The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. 

"The healthcare industry needs to make sustainability an integral part of its business strategy. It cannot be a public relations program. It requires every employee, in addition to senior management, to see sustainability as part of their, and the company’s, future. In other words, a cultural change in the industry."

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.