Advisory Board

The Advisory Board plays a critical role in guiding our efforts to align the financial sector with the objectives of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The Advisory Board serves as a strategic body, providing thought leadership, expertise, and high-level advice to support the mission of mobilising private capital in the transition towards a sustainable, low-carbon economy.

Anna Gelderd MP

Anna was elected in 2024 as Labour MP for South East Cornwall. Prior to being elected to Parliament, she was employed as a senior advisor to the non-profit ocean conservation group Oceana.

Arun Kelshiker

Arun is the former Head of Asset Allocation and Portfolio Strategy at Standard Chartered Bank and a senior portfolio manager and country Chief Investment Officer with Allianz Global Investors/Allianz Group.

He brings close to twenty years of multi-asset and ESG career experience, having managed institutional assets and provided investment advisory and ESG consultancy with leading international institutions.

Catherine McGuiness CBE

Catherine is a past Chair of the Policy & Resources Committee at the City of London Corporation. A solicitor by training, she practised in financial services law for several years. Catherine studied PPE at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Catherine is a signatory of the City Corporation’s Members’ Diversity Charter.

Fiona Watson

Fiona is a Senior Director at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) leading their work on Corporate Performance & Accountability (CP&A).

Working closely with WBCSD member companies and partners worldwide, she focuses on collaborative business solutions to enable the integration of sustainability criteria into decision making to drive more aligned capital allocation and transformation at scale. This role leverages her executive experience working on transformative agendas in the finance and business worlds before which she practiced corporate law in New York and London with Davis Polk & Wardell LLP, having started her career in assurance and advisory at PWC in New York. Fiona holds a LLM in International Trade and Business Law (cum laude) from Fordham University in New York and a LLB (hons) in Law with German Law from University College London.

Lord Iain McNicol

Lord Iain McNicol of West Kilbride is a member of the House of Lords, trade unionist and Labour life peer who served as the General Secretary of the Labour Party from 2011 to 2018.

In this role, he was legally and operationally responsible for the Labour Party’s electoral and legal operations in the UK. Prior to that, he held the position of National Political Officer of the GMB Union. Iain is a Senior Adviser to The Investing and Saving Alliance (TISA), Chair of the Advisory Board at Rewired.Earth, Commissioner at the UK Hydrogen Policy Commission, and Strategic Adviser at Astra Protocol.

Rajesh Agrawal

Rajesh Agrawal is an award-winning entrepreneur, community leader and politician. Rajesh served as the Deputy Mayor of London for Business from 2016 to 2023.

During his tenure, he was a dedicated champion for London’s business community, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, attracting tens of billions in international investment, improving the working conditions of hundreds of thousands of Londoners and delivering a six-fold increase in Londoners receiving Living Wage. Prior to that, Rajesh cofounded and scaled up a payments platform revolutionizing international money transfers, making them more accessible and affordable for small businesses and individuals. He serves in leadership positions of charities, not for profit and community organisations.

Sarah Gordon

Sarah Gordon is a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on climate and the environment, where she is leading a research and advocacy project on mobilising private capital for environmental and socioeconomic public policy priorities.

Before starting this role in 2023, she was the founding Chief Executive of the Impact Investing Institute, which was launched in 2019, with a mission to make capital markets fairer and work better for people and the planet. Previously, Sarah spent 18 years at the Financial Times. Sarah is also a non-executive director of Social Finance, an advisor to Better (formerly Big) Society Capital, the Big Issue Group and a number of specialist impact investment firms, and a speaker for Speakers for Schools.

Sarah Kemmitt

Sarah Kemmitt works with the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative where she established and leads the Secretariat for the Net Zero Banking Alliance.

With an earlier career in ecological conservation, agroforestry and soil science, after the financial crisis Sarah took the opportunity to move into financial services regulation, including roles within the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Bank of England. Over time, she brought her environmental expertise to bear on her supervisory work at the Bank, contributing to the UK regulation and supervision of the risks from climate change on the banking and insurance sectors.

Dame Teresa Graham

Dame Teresa Graham is an expert in regulatory affairs advising Government on better regulation and deregulation for three decades.

She is Chairman of the Administrative Burdens Advisory Board of HMRC, a member of the Treasury’s Office for Tax Simplification and was the first Chair of the Regulatory Board of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. She is also the Chair of RSM’s Public Interest Committee and the SME Advisory Group at UK Finance.