How Financial Institutions Can Manage Human Rights Impacts in an Uncertain U.S. Landscape

Date and Time

December 6, 2023
11:00 am-12:15 pm PST

Location

Webinar

Topic

Financial Services | Human Rights

Register

In commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, BSR invites financial services companies to a webinar on rights-respecting finance in an uncertain U.S. landscape.

Recent rollbacks in the protection of reproductive rights, LGBTIQ+ rights, and gun safety laws coupled with a polarized political environment and contradictory regulatory regimes across the U.S are creating new challenges and uncertainties for financial services companies. This undermines their ability to responsibly manage their impacts on people, including customers, employees, and affected stakeholders in their value chains, and poses a range of legal, reputational, and financial risks.

To explore how financial services companies can respond in a rights-respecting manner, we will explore:

• The material risks financial services companies may face in the current fragmented and contradictory legal landscape.
• The actual and potential human rights impacts that financial services companies may cause, contribute to, or be directly linked with as part of their own operations and business relationships.
• How financial services companies may incorporate a human rights framework into their business practices to address salient human rights issues.
• As part of our discussion, we will facilitate a Q&A to address key questions and comments from the audience on the issues.

Scheduled Speakers

• Maura Keaney, Senior Vice President, Director of Client Engagement, Amalgamated Bank
• Susan Morgan, CGRE Project Advisor
• Laura Gitman, Chief Impact Officer, BSR
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Laura Gitman
Chief Impact Officer, BSR
New York
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Laura is a global expert on corporate sustainability, with two decades of experience in strategy consulting and has advised senior executives at global companies across a range of industry sectors and sustainability issues.
As Chief Impact Officer (CIO), the first in the organization’s 30-year history, Laura focuses on maximizing the impact of BSR’s work with its network of over 300 members, both through direct engagement on project work and as a mentor for teams throughout the organization. She also oversees BSR’s collaborative initiatives and the Center for Business and Social Justice. S is a recognized thought leader and innovator in strategic business. 
She has been an instrumental leader in BSR’s organizational growth and impact. She launched BSR’s financial services practice and New York office, and she served as Chief Operating Officer for five years, leveraging her strengths in strategy, organizational change, and people management. Laura works with leading global companies to develop and enhance their sustainability strategies to maximize value for business and society, and she is sought after to facilitate senior-level strategy workshops and multi-stakeholder collaborations.
She previously worked for Deloitte Consulting, where she acquired extensive strategy experience advising multinational financial services companies. She also worked on several community and economic development projects in Latin America.
Laura holds a MBA from Stanford University and a BS in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. She is an adjunct professor in the Bard MBA in Sustainability program, a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and a member of the UN Global Compact Expert Network.
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• Paloma Muñoz Quick, Director, Human Rights, BSR
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Paloma Muñoz Quick
Director, Human Rights, BSR
New York
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Paloma leads BSR’s work at the intersection of finance and human rights. She advises financial institutions on embedding respect for human rights into corporate governance, across products and services, and at each stage of the investment lifecycle.
Prior to joining BSR, Paloma was Advisor to the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and Senior Consultant of the UN B-Tech Project, where she developed an ambitious vision for promoting the uptake of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights among investors and led work on responsible investment in digital technologies. Prior to the UN, Paloma launched and served as Director of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights, where she developed thought leadership on the investor responsibility to respect human rights and supported corporate engagements across sectors. She also worked as Senior Advisor at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, where she advised governments, companies, and civil society on business and human rights.
Paloma is also on the Editorial Board of the Business and Human Rights Journal of Cambridge University, is a Design Team member of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative, and is an Advisory Board member of First Peoples Worldwide.
Paloma is Chilean-American and speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She holds a Master of International Affairs (M.I.A.) in Human Rights from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a B.A. in Political Science, also from Columbia University. 
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