CDSB Board Members

Director of Research and member of the Senior Management Team
International Labour Organization

Richard Samans is Director of Research and a member of the Senior Management Team of the International Labour Organization. He is a former Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and Director-General of the Global Green Growth Institute. At the Forum, he played a principal role in developing the organization’s large portfolio of multistakeholder partnership initiatives, while managing its relations with governrnents, international organizations and civil society. He served previously as Special Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy and National Security Council Senior Director for International Economic Affairs in the US White House, and as economic policy advisor to US Senate Democratic Leader Thomas A. Daschle.  The author of numerous publications on international trade, finance, labour, environment, and development as well as global and corporate governance, he has been a member of the UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals, ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work and UNEP Inquiry on the Design of a Sustainable Financial System. 

Deputy Director of Climate Program; Global Director of TRAC Initiative
World Resources Institute

Pankaj Bhatia is the Deputy Director of WRI’s Climate Program and Director of WRI’s Tools, Reporting and Analysis for Climate (TRAC) Signature Initiative. As Deputy Director, he helps manage one of WRI’s largest programs and oversees two additional Signature Initiatives – US Climate Action and International Climate Action as well as the GHG Protocol. In addition, Pankaj is one of the leading experts and authority on the GHG Protocol standards and tools, particularly in the areas of corporate, scope 3, mitigation action, and city accounting.

He launched and led the three-year global process that involved more than 2,300 stakeholders to develop the new GHG Protocol Scope 3 and Product Standard released in October 2011. Currently, he is leading a WRI team working to develop new global standards in the financial, agriculture, mitigation action, and city sectors and to implement new GHG programs in key major economies including China, India, and Brazil.

Corporate Partnerships Director
The Climate Group

Mike leads The Climate Group’s portfolio of global campaigns that are designed to secure climate commitment and action from the world’s most influential companies: from growing demand for renewable energy (RE100), electric vehicles (EV100) and low carbon steel (SteelZero), to investing in smart energy systems (EP100) including cooling technologies and LED lighting. 

Mike has worked with companies across the world on climate and sustainability issues for over 20 years, spending more than a decade at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), including as Director of Executive Programmes and Director of Strategy and Communications. Before joining CISL, he was Chief Operating Officer of AccountAbility where he led the development of the AA1000 framework for sustainability accounting and reporting. 

Mike started his career as a business consultant for the COBA Group, following studies in politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Oxford, and international relations at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. 

President and CEO
International Emissions Trading Association

Dirk Forrister is CEO and president of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). He previously served as managing director at Natsource LLC, the manager of one of the world’s largest carbon funds, and served as chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force in the Clinton Administration during the Kyoto Protocol negotiations. Earlier in his career, he was assistant U.S. secretary of energy for congressional, public and intergovernmental affairs and legislative counsel to Congressman Jim Cooper. Forrister also served as energy program manager for the Environmental Defense Fund.

Managing Director, Redefining Value & Education
World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Rodney Irwin is responsible for a portfolio of projects designed to advance corporate reporting taking sustainable development into the mainstream reporting of an organization. He is the link between WBCSD members and standard / regulation setters and he is leading projects in risk management, taxation, mandatory reporting and is developing education programs designed for senior finance staff.

Rodney is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, a Certified Fraud examiner, a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional and a Specialist member of the Institute of Risk Management. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and a member of the IIRC’s Working Group.

President & CEO
Ceres
Director
Investor Network on Climate Risk

Mindy S. Lubber is President of Ceres, a nonprofit organization that leads a national coalition of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change and water scarcity.

Mindy also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a group of over 100 institutional investors managing $10 trillion in assets focused on the business risks and opportunities of climate change.

Executive Director
The Climate Registry

Amy Holm is the Executive Director of The Climate Registry, a non-profit organization that provides guidance, online tools and training to help organizations measure, report, and verify their greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to providing strategic direction for The Climate Registry and overseeing its team, Amy acts as chief liaison with the Board of Directors, which is comprised of representatives from U.S. states and Canadian provinces and territories.

Prior to becoming Executive Director in 2019, Amy served in a variety of roles over eight years with The Climate Registry. She supervised key outreach activities, such as the Climate Leadership Conference and Awards, Cool Planet Project, and TCR’s annual UN COP delegation. She also oversaw The Climate Registry’s greenhouse gas reporting programs – including the Carbon Footprint Registry and the recently launched Water-Energy Nexus Registry – and accompanying technical support and recognition programs.

Before joining The Climate Registry, Amy held a number of roles in the areas of program management, special event planning, member relations, and public education. She worked for numerous organizations in both the non-profit and private sectors, including  the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Foundation, Code Blue Foundation, Orange County Department of Education, and Global Tomorrow Coalition. Amy was also a Board member of the Mono Lake Committee.

Amy received an M.A. in Environmental Policy in International Relations from Claremont Graduate University and a B.A. in International Affairs from Lewis and Clark College.

Chair Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)

Jeffrey Hales teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a professor of accounting at the McCombs School of Business . He is a graduate of the accounting program at Brigham Young University and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

His research interests center on accounting standard setting and regulation, individual decision making, and behavioral finance, using techniques from applied game theory, experimental economics, and psychology. His research has appeared in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics, among other journals. He currently serves as an editor for Accounting Horizons and Contemporary Accounting Research. He also currently serves on the editorial boards of The Accounting Review and Accounting Organizations and Society. At Georgia Tech, he teaches financial accounting and Ph.D. seminars on behavioral accounting and finance, policy-oriented research in accounting, and the psychology of judgment and decision making.

During the 2009-10 academic year, Dr. Hales was a Research Fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in Norwalk, CT. In addition, he currently serves as a member of the FASB’s Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council (FASAC) and previously chaired the Standards Council for the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB).

Chief Executive Officer
CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project)

Paul has been at the forefront of CDP's expansion since its inception in 2000 and has led CDP from a climate specific focus into other environmental areas. He previously worked with Chesham Amalgamations & Investments Ltd, the International Society for Ecology & Culture and is a former director of the Social Venture Network. Paul sits on the advisory panel of Guardian Sustainable Business and the Global Stranded Assets Advisory Council for the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.

Director, Redefining Value
World Business Council for Sustainable Developmen (WBCSD)

Chair of the Technical Working Group
Climate Disclosure Standards Board

As Technical Working Group Chair, Lois is an observer on the Board.

Lois has led the development CDSB’s Technical Work Program including the frameworks for reporting climate change-related and environmental information in mainstream annual reports. Lois also serves on the ACCA’s Global Forum on Sustainability and a member of Carbon Tracker’s Advisory Board. Previously, Lois was Technical Director of the Group Tax Department in Zurich Financial Services, Technical Director to the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and was part of the development of its integrated reporting framework and Technical Director where she was the author of the first CDP questionnaire.