Lex Kloosterman

Lex Kloosterman began his career as a management associate with ABN in the United States in 1983 after gaining a Master’s degree in Law from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

He held a series of international senior management positions at ABN AMRO in areas including treasury, corporate credits, structured finance, private clients, consumer finance and cards business. His final post was that of CEO of the Europe – Private Clients business unit.

Lex joined Fortis in October 2006 as Chief Strategy Officer – a member of the Executive Committee whose responsibilities also take in Fortis Investments. More recently, he has become Member of the Group Executive Committee responsible for Private Banking and Asset Management (Investor Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility also report to him). And he has been confirmed as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fortis Bank Nederland, in which post he will coordinate efforts to strengthen governance.

Lex is a Dutch national, born and raised in Schiedam. He is married and has three children.

Prof. Michael Braungart

Prof. Michael Braungart is founder of EPEA International Umweltforschung GmbH, Hamburg, Germany and co-founder of MBDC McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville. His work has been widely published in Europe and the US.

Having studied Process Engineering in Darmstadt and researched industrial production techniques at Konstanz, Michael initiated and later headed the Chemistry Section of Greenpeace International. He received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Hannover in 1985. Michael is currently Professor of Process Engineering at Leuphana University Lüneburg and Guest Professor at the Darden Business School in Charlottesville and the University of Wales Institute.

In 1987, Michael founded the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency in Hamburg, the main focus of which is the ‘Intelligent Products System’. He is also Scientific Manager of the Hamburg Environmental Institute, a non-profit research centre which publishes the ‘Top 50 Study’ – a ranking of the environmental quality of chemical companies.

Prof. Braungart is currently focusing on McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry and EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung, working with major industrial producers like Nike and Aveda to improve the environmental quality of their products.

The Science Museum in London recently devoted an exhibition to the work of Michael Braungart and William McDonough.

Stephen Brenninkmeijer

Stephen is a descendent of celebrated Dutch entrepreneurs Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer, founders of the European clothing chain, C&A. He joined the family business in 1975. Stephen graduated from the European Business School in Germany in 1982, and then worked for several years in Minnesota and Tokyo before settling in England as a main Board Director for C&A Europe in 1987.

Stephen Brenninkmeijer became a Non-Executive Director of Xchanging UK in 2000, since when he has moved into private equity and social investments, founded Andromeda Fund BV – an investment fund by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs – and joined the Board of the Schwab Foundation. Most recently, he has started to work as a private Investor and has become a member of the Advisory Board at Cofra (the C&A group’s holding company).

Stephen is a founding Trustee and Chairman of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE UK), a charity based in London which teaches unprivileged young people to build businesses. NFTE UK and Business Dynamics created the Enterprise Education Trust, of which Stephen is Deputy Chairman, in 2006. He also chairs NFTE Germany and is on the advisory committee of NFTE Holland.

Stephen Brenninkmeijer is an active family man, musician and sportsman.

Jermyn Brooks

Jermyn is Private Sector Programmes Director at Transparency International.

Before coming to TI, he was Chairman of Price Waterhouse Europe and later of PriceWaterhouse’s combined US and European operations. He was responsible in the latter post for the merger in some 150 countries between Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand to form PwC.

He joined TI in Berlin in 2000 as Executive Director and CFO. Jermyn acted as Managing Director for six months, prior to his election to the TI Board in 2003. He currently focuses on TI’s private sector initiatives: the anti-money laundering standards of the Wolfsberg banking group; chairing the Steering Committee of the generic business standard Business Principles for Countering Bribery; specific industry-focused initiatives, including expert input to the World Economic Forum; and support of the Global Compact and GRI projects.

Jermyn also sits on the Board of International IDEA, Stockholm, an intergovernmental organisation that promotes democracy. He chaired the international student organisation AIESEC, is a non-executive director of UK engineering consultancy Mott MacDonald Group Ltd and a member of the World Economic Forum’s PACI initiative. Jermyn is a frequent writer and speaker on corporate sustainability and integrity issues and advises companies seeking an independent view on management policies and systems in that area.

Prof. Kees Koedijk

Kees Koedijk studied Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he began his career in 1984 as Assistant Professor of Monetary Economics. After a year as Senior Researcher at the Dutch central bank (DNB), he started teaching Finance and Investments at Maastricht University. He was appointed Professor of Financial Management at the Limburg Institute of Financial Economics (LIFE) in 1992. He co-founded Global Property Research in 1996 (the company was sold to Kempen & Co in 2000) and was appointed Professor of Financial Management at the Rotterdam School of Management in 1999. Kees served as Vice Dean of RSM Erasmus University from 2002 to 2004.

He joined the Council of Economics Advisers to the Dutch lower house on its establishment in 2005, and has chaired it since January 2007. Prof. Koedijk was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEB) at Tilburg University in September 2007.

He has published in numerous Dutch and international journals and belongs to the Editorial Boards of several of them. Kees is Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and a founding director of the European CFO Business Outlook. And he initiated the Global CFO Business Outlook – a well-established measurement instrument in the field of cyclical economics.

Malini Mehra

Malini Mehra is founder and director of the Centre for Social Markets (CSM), an independent non-profit organisation, with offices in India and the UK, dedicated to making markets work for the ‘triple bottom line’: people, planet and profit.

Her professional background includes work with the UN and with charities such as Oxfam and Friends of the Earth, where she was responsible for policy and advocacy at international fora like the WTO, OECD, European Parliament, World Bank, UNCTAD, UN Commission for Sustainable Development and the UNFCCC climate negotiations. A lifelong activist she has initiated campaigns and organised social justice movements around the world.

Malini’s academic training has been as a political scientist and gender specialist at Smith College (USA), the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex (UK), and the Institute of Development Research, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands).

She is the editor of Human rights and economic globalisation: Directions for the WTO (1999) and has published books and articles on subjects including trade and investment, corporate responsibility, sustainable development, human rights, poverty and gender.

Malini speaks six languages and has lived and worked in as many countries. A native of Calcutta, she now splits her time between India and Britain.

Dr S. Prakash Sethi

Prakash Sethi is University Distinguished Professor, Professor of Management at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, The City University of New York.

He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from Delhi University, and an MBA and PhD from Columbia University. Dr Sethi is founder and President of the International Center for Corporate Accountability, Inc. – an independent not-for-profit think tank focusing on enhanced corporate accountability through voluntary codes of conduct. He is currently a Senior Policy Adviser to the UN Global Compact.

Dr Sethi is an internationally recognised scholar in the field of international business strategy, CSR and environmental protection. He has done pioneering work on the drafting and implementation of international corporate codes of conduct and global supply-chain management. His 24 books and 135 articles in professional and scholarly journals cover a wide range of CSR-related topics. Dr Sethi also spent over 12 years studying the impact of the Sullivan Principles on US corporations in breaking down the barriers of apartheid in South Africa.

Dr Sethi regularly advises multinational corporations, governments, regulators and multilateral financial institutions on the implementation and monitoring of codes of conduct. He is also a board member/adviser to NGOs like Funds for Peace, the Centre for Social Markets and Freedom from Hunger.

Tensie Whelan

Tensie Whelan serves as Executive Director of the Rainforest Alliance, with which she has been involved since 1990, becoming executive director in 2000.

Tensie served as the executive director of the New York League of Conservation Voters from 1992 until 1997, prior to which she was Vice President of Conservation Information at the National Audubon Society. She has worked as a journalist and environmental communications consultant in Costa Rica, and was the managing editor of Ambio – an international environmental journal based in Stockholm. For several years prior to coming to the Rainforest Alliance, Tensie acted as a management consultant to various environmental and political groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund, the Hudson River Park Alliance and the Federation of State Leagues of Conservation Voters.

Tensie Whelan’s published work includes one of the first books on eco-friendly tourism, Nature Tourism: Managing for the Environment (1991, Island Press). She is the Chair of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition and has served on the boards of the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund and the Vermont League of Conservation Voters. She holds an MA in International Communication from American University’s School of International Service and a BA in Political Science from New York University.