Joanna is an international expert in sustainable living & a respected voice in sustainable business.

She is Chief Sustainability Officer for the M&C Saatchi Group (the world’s largest independent creative solutions company) & Founding Partner of M&C Saatchi LIFE – a strategic creative consultancy making sustainable living mainstream. She is also NED at sustainable placemaking company Human Nature (designing & places that make sustainable living easy & attractive) & sits on P&G’s global sustainability advisory board.

With over 25 years’ experience in applying sustainability principles to projects ranging from household makeovers to multinational business strategies, Joanna brings confidence, humour, vision & clarity to the challenges of net zero, ESG & healthy, sustainable living.

Jake White trained at a regional commercial law firm and then moved into the City to practise intellectual property. However that didn’t suit hence he joined government where he had 10 very stimulating years in the Government Legal Service advising on a range of areas from outer space, State aid to nuclear energy. Jake left government to join the third sector in 2012 where he worked first with Friends of the Earth and most recently at WWF where he is head of legal advocacy.

He has a particular interest in equality and human rights and has worked with NGOs in the Middle East and for Britain’s equality and human rights regulator (the Equality and Human Rights Commission). He is particularly interested in exploring this intersection in his work including in relation, for example, in relation to the great forests of the world and the peoples that live in them.

As an Advisor at Shift, Francesca works with companies and financial institutions to support their implementation of the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs).

Francesca was previously Principal Consultant at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), where she led ERM’s UK human rights team, and global technical community on modern slavery and human rights. Francesca advised multinational companies to assess and address human rights risks, build internal capacity and develop and implement fit-for-purpose policies and management systems. She also worked closely with financial institutions including development finance institutions (DFIs), commercial banks, export credit agencies and private equity on assessing and managing human rights risks in accordance with international standards including the UNGPs, IFC Performance Standards and Equator Principles IV.

She has international work experience across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America including on-the-ground experience conducting stakeholder consultation, human rights impact assessments (HRIA), environmental and social due diligence (ESDD) and monitoring. Francesca is also experienced in designing and delivering training and capacity building on social performance, human rights and sustainable finance.

Francesca holds an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and a MA in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University. She is from Trinidad & Tobago.

As an Advisor at Shift, Zuzana works with companies and other strategic partners to support their implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

Prior to joining Shift, Zuzana worked as an independent business and human rights consultant, and as Principal Consultant at Labor Solutions, a social enterprise using technology to advance human rights throughout company value chains. In these roles, Zuzana supported businesses across different sectors to use worker voice tools and developed training content on effective grievance mechanisms in line with the UNGPs.

Prior to being a consultant, Zuzana was Head of Ethical Trade and Human Rights at Stella McCartney for over 7 years. In this role, Zuzana led the practical implementation of the UNGPs across the full due diligence spectrum and traveled extensively throughout the company’s sourcing regions in Europe and Asia. Here she gained hands-on experience working with suppliers, workers and local experts to identify root causes of human rights risks and design and deliver capacity building programs. This included carrying out stakeholder engagement, improving purchasing practices and encouraging company participation in collaborative industry programs. Zuzana has particular expertise in small, artisanal and informal fashion supply chains.

Zuzana holds a Master of Applied Human Rights from the University of York. In her thesis, she researched participatory approaches to addressing discrimination against the Roma minority population in Slovakia. Zuzana is a Slovak and British national.

Jade Saunders is the Executive Director of World Forest ID, an international non-profit, with the mission to build a global reference database of forest risk commodities including timber, to aid verification of species and harvest origin of products in global trade.

Jade has over 20 years of experience working on forest governance, trade and environmental crime, most notably as an Associate Fellow of the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House and as Senior Policy Analyst at Forest Trends. She has also served as strategic advisor to ForestMind and policy analyst at the European Forest Institute FLEGT Facility.

At World Forest ID, in addition to developing the organization's overall strategy, Jade's main focus is on overseeing the data science and machine learning workstream. She works closely with governments and industry on mainstreaming scientific testing for supply chain traceability and promoting the practical application of the World Forest ID reference database.

As Supply Chains Manager at the We Mean Business Coalition, Lydia Elliott works across supply chain climate action and net zero strategy. For the SME Climate Hub, a core initiative of the We Mean Business Coalition, Lydia works to enable large companies value chain action and helps to develop the tools that small and medium sized businesses need to take climate action.

Tom is Senior Sustainable Business Manager at Vodafone Group. Tom is responsible for Vodafone’s global external sustainability reporting and communications as well as leading Vodafone’s approach on enabling customers to reduce their environmental impact. Prior to joining Vodafone, Tom led sustainability reporting and governance at SABMiller (the world’s second largest brewer).

Candida is a sustainability, business and human rights expert with 15 years experience working with NGOs, governments, consultancies, and companies to improve working conditions in global supply chains. She has experience in leading cross-functional, international teams to design and implement high-impact programs that mitigate risk for business and deliver positive change for workers. Candida also has hands-on direct field experience globally, including the UK, Italy, Mexico, US, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, Peru, India and Thailand.

Rabiya joined Migrant Help in 2018. She is the Director of Modern Slavery Victim Care and Refugee Resettlements services responsible for the management and development of Migrant Helps victim support contracts across the UK.
Before joining Migrant Help, Rabiya spent many years setting up and managing the Victim Support Contract across England and Wales and working with subcontracted partners to deliver support services to victims of modern slavery. She has over 10 years’ experience developing and managing services to victims of trafficking and modern slavery.

This includes technical advice and oversight, internal capacity building and pursuing strategic priorities. She manages the GCRF Trade, Development and the Environment Hub, a five-year, £18M project, funded until 2024. It is the first research hub of its kind – bringing together over 50 organisations from 15 different countries to help make trade in agricultural commodities, wildlife and wild meat sustainable for people and the planet. Lisen has led projects on topics including sustainable infrastructure, spatial planning, REDD+ safeguards and multiple benefits aspects of forest management, climate-smart agriculture, and interactions between land tenure and climate change policy. She is an ecologist by training.

Sami Oksa is working as Director in UPM Fibres Business area. He is based in UPM headquarters in Helsinki and responsible on sustainable forestry related issues in all UPM wood sourcing areas. Sami has a long career in UPM that covers climate, biodiversity and social aspects of wood sourcing and forestry.

Sharon supports improved corporate performance regarding nature and biodiversity, working with a range of industry sectors and government institutions around the world. Sharon oversees a portfolio of work on nature related metrics, targets and data for business, with a focus on their application within a supply chain context. Sharon has over 20 years of experience in international conservation, an MSc in Applied Ecology and Conservation, and a PhD in the field of Conservation and Development.

Simon is a Senior Editor at Nature Ecology and Evolution, one of the world’s leading scientific journals publishing research, comment and opinions on all aspects of ecology, evolution and conservation science. He has previously acted as locum Chief Editor at Nature Geoscience, and worked as an editor on a number of other journals published by SpringerNature in ecology, plant science and genetics. He has a PhD in insect ecology from the University of Leeds, and research experience on a broad range of lab and field projects ranging from fungal biology to the evolution of development

Ashley Gordon is Publishing Market Development Manager for the Page Wide Industrial Division of HP Inc. Prior to joining HP, she founded Mockingbird Consulting in 2010 to provide strategic guidance on digital book production and distribution to for-profit and not-for-profit organizations in the trade and education markets. Past clients and projects include the National Association of College Stores’ Textbook Affordability Conference and POD initiatives, Cengage, RedShelf, SIPX, FlatWorld, Library For All, and On Demand Books, among others.

Stephanie is a Senior Partner at Carnstone, a management consultancy specialising in sustainability. She has worked across various sectors including publishing, retail and pharmaceutical industries. She has led elements of the Book Chain Project for the last 6 years and has been the project lead for the last 3. She has a background in marine biology and oceanography where a passion for sustainability and environmental protection arose whilst studying the topic of climate change.

Lara White is the Senior Programme Advisor for the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Migration, Business and Human Rights in Asia programme where she works with programme management, country office teams and senior management to provide strategic direction on how best IOM can promote ethical recruitment, decent work, and safe migration in the region.
Prior to this, Lara worked in Afghanistan where she led IOM’s migration management division and served as the key focal point for the evacuation and settlement of national staff. Previously, Lara was the senior specialist for labour migration and development in Asia and the Pacific as well as in IOM’s Headquarters in Geneva, where she served as the organization’s primary liaison with the private sector and governmental, intergovernmental or civil society stakeholders on improving migration governance. Her key areas of focus were socioeconomic response and recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic, improving development outcomes of labour mobility in the region, and the protection of migrant workers’ rights throughout the labour migration process, including the promotion of ethical labour recruitment and decent work for migrant workers. Before joining IOM, Lara worked for the Government of Canada and the US Government, bringing with her extensive experience in policy development and implementation of labour market programs such as the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and Canada’s Employment Insurance scheme.