Making Connections Across Professions

September 27, 2023

Authors

David Wei

Managing Director, Climate and Nature, BSR

David Wei

Managing Director, Climate and Nature, BSR

New York

David works with companies to develop and implement credible environmental goals, manage climate and nature risks, integrate justice into environmental action, and incubate collaborations to build a net-zero economy.

He strives to maximize the impact of our applied research, collaborative initiatives, and work with individual companies. This often means innovating how companies credibly align with the Paris Agreement, adapt to inbound climate disclosure regulation, and take advantage of growing interest in science-based nature goals. David also directs BSR’s Transform to Net Zero collaborative initiative.

Before joining BSR, David was a climate diplomat for the Marshall Islands with the advisory group Independent Diplomat and led on emissions reductions and transparency in the UN climate negotiations for the Alliance of Small Island States. As an international lawyer with the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development, David built up the environmental treaty expertise of governments across the globe. He began his career as a securities litigator with Fried Frank in New York and a commercial litigator with Cassels Brock in Toronto, before focusing on climate change.

David holds a LLM in International Law from New York University, a JD and MA in International Relations from the University of Toronto, and a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University.
Christine Diamente

Managing Director, Transformation, BSR

Christine Diamente

Managing Director, Transformation, BSR

London

Christine leads BSR’s Business Transformation team, helping companies to manage sustainability throughout their business and across their supply chains and to develop resilient business strategies that leverage insights from BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab. She works with companies across sectors and geographies to structure a sustainability management approach that mitigates risk and captures emerging opportunities, creating strategic advantage for their businesses, while contributing to a more just, sustainable world.

She brings over 20 years of experience in leading brand, sustainability, public affairs, communications, and reputation management with multinational corporations at the executive leadership level. This also includes overseeing corporate relations with external stakeholders, such as the World Economic Forum, the UN, European institutions, and investors.

Previously, Christine was Head of Brand Strategy at Nokia. She has also held major roles at Alcatel-Lucent and Alcatel, leading Brand and Corporate Sustainability and European Affairs. Christine has also served on various boards, including as a chair of the Telecoms Industry Dialogue on human rights, as an advisory board member of Reuters Events Sustainability, as a member of the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation, and on the European Internet Foundation.

Christine holds a MA in History and a BA in History and International Politics from the University of Ottawa. She completed the Management Acceleration Program (MAP) at INSEAD, and she achieved the ESG Competent Boards Certificate and Global Competent Boards Designation (2021). She speaks English, French, Spanish, and Italian.
MaryAnne Howland

Director, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, BSR

MaryAnne Howland

Director, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, BSR

New York

MaryAnne is responsible for establishing equity, inclusion, and justice (EIJ) services at BSR as a leading business resource for value-based leadership. She provides insights, strategies, and resources to reimagine and institutionalize global EIJ using an issue-focused approach. She will lead BSR’s EIJ team to provide support to companies across industries through strategic consulting services, thought leadership, and research on issues including, but not exclusive to: economic, health, and racial equity and inclusion; women’s empowerment; PGLE; persons with disabilities, supply chains; board governance; and Indigenous and regional issues.

MaryAnne is the founder of Ibis Communications and the Global Diversity Leadership Exchange, and she also co-founded J.E.D.I. Collaborative. She has extensive experience in working with leaders in corporate, governmental, and non-governmental organizations who are on the front lines of driving justice, equity, dignity, and inclusion (JEDI) at the intersection of sustainability in global markets.

MaryAnne holds a BS in Communications from Boston University.
Jenny Vaughan

Managing Director, Human Rights, BSR

Jenny Vaughan

Managing Director, Human Rights, BSR

San Francisco

Jenny leads BSR’s human rights team and portfolio across consulting and collaboration. In addition to directing BSR’s Human Rights Working Group, Jenny leads human rights assessments and partners with companies to develop human rights strategies and stakeholder engagement plans. She works across industries with a focus on energy, technology, and conflict-affected and high-risk contexts.

Prior to joining BSR, Jenny worked at Mercy Corps for over a decade in field management and advisory roles to prevent and mitigate conflict, promote inclusive economic development, and build civil society capacity. As the organization’s first Peace and Governance Director in Myanmar and later as the Director of the Peace and Conflict technical advisory team, she designed and implemented programs to reduce violence, promote peace and development, and address critical and emerging threats like climate change, disruptive technology, and poor governance. She has experience in context analysis, stakeholder engagement, negotiation, project design and implementation, and strategic planning. Jenny has lived and worked in countries including Myanmar, Indonesia, Nepal, Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Central African Republic, and Cameroon.

Jenny holds a MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a BA in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

One of BSR’s three core principles for putting our mission into action is to “make connections between issues.” Recent developments in the field of just and sustainable business are re-enforcing the importance of this principle.

BSR has long emphasized that addressing impacts on the environment, people, enterprise value, and the economy requires holistic approaches.

However, this point of view has not always been matched by the various initiatives, guidelines, and standards that shape day-to-day work of the just and sustainable business field. These have often been the realm of specialist and distinct professional communities, such as those in human rights, social justice, climate change, and sustainability reporting.

Encouragingly, there has been an acceleration of alignment among initiatives, guidelines, and standards over recent years. We’re optimistic about these developments and believe they will be sustained by a deliberate joining up of these previously separate domains.

Examples of greater connection between the fields of reporting and disclosure, business and human rights, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), social impact, and climate change are increasingly common.

The “impact materiality” principle in the new European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) clearly states that “the materiality assessment of a negative impact is informed by the due diligence process defined in the international instruments of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.”

The ESRS and the new IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standard General Requirements both adopt and build on the four-part “governance – strategy – risk – metrics” framework first introduced by the Taskforce on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCDF).

The climate disclosure standards recently published by the IFRS and ESRS are significantly ahead of their social counterparts and serve as a holistic model for other issue-specific standards to build from.

However, achieving this progress in practice requires that we address some challenging methodological questions and spread best practices across professions. For example:

How do we take the concepts of scope (number of people), scale (gravity of harm), and remediability (ability to reverse harm) that are well-understood in the field of human rights and apply them to environmental impacts such as climate change, as is required by the ESRS and GRI?
Given they both now use the same prioritization criteria, should previously separate materiality and salience assessments be combined? If so, how, and what are the risks and opportunities of doing so?
How do we ensure that we are addressing inequities in outcomes and opportunities, and promoting diversity, equity and inclusivity in systems and infrastructure designed to address environmental impacts?
How can best practices in DEI and human rights due diligence inform new methods of environmental due diligence and support integrated due diligence efforts?
How do expectations for accuracy, reliability, and comparability of quantitative data transfer to the often more qualitative realm of social impacts?

Are quantitative forward-looking targets always the gold standard, or are other approaches (such as qualitative or normative statements of ambition) sometimes more appropriate?
How might scenario analysis, common in the climate change field, improve the quality of DEI and human rights due diligence and understanding of social impact across the value chain?
How do we undertake DEI and human rights due diligence of the energy transition?
How can we work with boards, executive management, and sustainability experts to facilitate greater collective understanding, action and governance of material risks, opportunities, and their impact on long term business value?
How do we effectively engage affected stakeholders in all our efforts without causing significant fatigue?

We know that the answers to these questions and many more will only be resolved by multi-disciplinary teams taking collaborative approaches and addressing shared challenges together.

Many of our company members are joining up functions and collaborating among finance, risk, compliance, supply chain, strategy, DEI, and sustainability teams to apply the various new requirements of impact materiality in a combined corporate approach.

And we at BSR are equally joining experts from our teams on projects together and sharing insights across different functions and teams to better partner with our member companies.

We look forward to opportunities to collaborate with other organizations—outside counsel, large consulting companies, and audit firms—in multi-vendor arrangements where we can achieve more together than we could alone.

Making connections between issues is easy to say, but hard to do in practice. However, this moment demands nothing less in our mission to work with business to create a just and sustainable world.