When it comes to corporate transparency, the United States is at a crossroads. To one side is maintaining the status quo, with a patchy reporting landscape for environmental, social and governance (ESG) information. On the other side is an opportunity to take action to create an ESG disclosure system that provides consistency and delivers quality […]

An Examination of Proposals to Improve Environmental, Social, and Governance Disclosures I thank the Subcommittee for inviting me to appear at today’s hearing. This Subcommittee has an integral role in ensuring that financial markets, international trade, and banking remain stable and strong for all Americans, and the policy being considered today is a crucial part […]

An FT article on 2 April carried sweeping claims by Hans Hoogervorst, chair of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), that ‘greenwashing is rampant’ in sustainability reporting. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the leading independent sustainability standards body, categorically refutes this assertion. Mr Hoogervorst’s arguments misrepresent the role of standard setters such as GRI, and […]

In the last two decades, sustainability reporting has gone from an exercise for the largest companies to a necessity to attract investors and meet local and international regulation. But the main benefit of sustainability reporting remains that companies best understand their impacts and can improve their bottom line along with the world around them. Read […]

I have always believed that business has the power to help us solve society’s most pressing challenges. That’s why I worked in corporate responsibility functions in the private sector for more than 20 years. It’s also the reason I became the Chief Executive of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), developer of the world’s most widely […]

The transparency that comes from corporate responsibility reporting can help us create a better world. That was my message to the people I met at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual meeting in Davos. As a first time WEF participant, I was amazed at the concentration of leaders, from all over the world, who are […]

The headline to this article is a sobering assessment, but it’s accurate. In the last issue of ESG Magazine, I wrote about how we can get more investors engaged with the SDGs. In that piece, I gave a simple description of the divide between how investors typically want to receive environmental, social and governance (ESG) […]

When we think about companies and the work they do, we often lose sight of a simple fact: a business is just a collection of people. And, all groups of people tend to build a culture, a collective way of viewing the world. It may seem like an obvious point but it’s all too often […]

After two decades working as a CSR professional and just three months leading GRI, I’m more convinced than ever that transparency is a powerful force for change. But I’m also just as convinced that we are still far from end goal: sustainable development. We must evolve sustainability reporting in order to get from here to […]