BOARD OF ADVISORS
Pavan Sukhdev
Goodwill Ambassador for UN Environment
Pavan has been awarded the 2011 McCluskey Fellowship by Yale University as well as the 2013 Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development.
Special Adviser and Head of UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative and Lead author of their “Green Economy Report.” He was appointed to lead TEEB in 2008 by the EU Commission and Germany and acted as the Study Leader for the G8+5 commissioned project on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (“TEEB”).
While at Deutsche Bank, Pavan had founded and then chaired Global Markets Centre - Mumbai, a leading-edge front-office offshoring company. During 2009-2011, Pavan chaired the World Economic Forum's "Global Agenda Council" on Biodiversity, and was a speaker at Davos in 2010 and 2011. He serves on the boards of Conservation International and the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Dr. Pushpam Kumar
Chief, Ecosystem Services Economics Unit, Division of Environment Programme Implementation| UN Environment Programme
Dr. Pushpam Kumar works on mainstreaming natural capital, including ecosystem services, into development policy. Currently, he provides leadership to a number of initiatives.
Dr. Kumar holds the Position of Honorary Research Scientist at the Earth Institute of Columbia University in New York, Extra Ordinary Professor, University of Pretoria, and is member of UNEP Steering Committee-led ‘New Enquiry on Greening the Financial Systems’. He is also a member of the UN Committee of Experts on Environmental Accounts New York, Advisory Board member of the Gulbenkia Ocean Initiative (Lisbon) and is closely involved in designing and conceptualizing UNEP’s Green Economy.
In the past, Dr. Kumar has served as the scientific coordinator of the conceptual framework for the ‘Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity' and as a member of ‘Expert Panel of the National Ecosystem Assessment ’. Dr. Kumar was closely associated with the 2007 Nobel peace prize winning IPCC, where he served as the Lead Author for the Fourth Assessment of the IPCC (on Mitigation). He was lead author and coordinator of ‘Responses Working Group’ of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
Since 1991, his research has been focusing on the design and implementation of economic response options for the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Dr Kumar has published numerous articles and written over eight books. He has been elected Member of the Board of International Society for Ecological Economics and European Society for Ecological Economics.
Meenakshi Menon
Chairperson | Spatial Access
Meenakshi Menon has over 30 years of experience in Advertising, Marketing and Media.
She started her career in 1980 with Lintas Media Group in Account Management & Account Planning.
She joined Zee TV in 1994 to head the Sales & Marketing function and left as Managing Director. In 1997, Meenakshi joined Aegis Group Plc to set up Carat India, the first media independent in the country.
She Launched Spatial Access Solutions in 2003 – India’s first Audit & Advisory in Marketing Services. Meenakshi was selected by Ad Age Global as one of the 17 women worldwide who were changing the face of the advertising industry across the globe.
Prof. Giles Atkinson
Professor of Environmental Policy |London School of Economics and Political Science
Dr. Giles Atkinson is an expert in the fields of the economics of sustainable development and green national accounting. He has worked on numerous research projects and consultancies for research councils, governments, industry and international organisations.
Dr. Atkinson has immense expertise in topics such as green accounting, agricultural sustainability and the relationship between international trade and sustainability. He is an expert in evaluating the benefits of environmental policies and has worked on projects which examine the importance that the public attaches to different understandings of environmental equity.
Giles joined the London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Geography and Environment in the year 1999. His teaching and training experience cover a range of topics related to environmental policy and environmental economics including cost-benefit analysis and project appraisal. He is Honorary Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE), and is currently a member of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Environmental Economics Academic Panel.
Sanjeev Sanyal
Principal Economic Advisor | Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India
Sanjeev Sanyal is one of Asia's leading financial economists and environmentalists. He has spent seventeen years working in financial markets and was Deutsche Bank's Global Strategist. He was nominated as Principal Economic Advisor at the Department of Economic Affairs, GoI, on 3rd February 2017.
He is the Founder of the Sustainable Planet Institute and was named "Young Global Leader" for 2010 by the World Economic Forum. Sanjeev has had many other attachments including Steering Committee Member of Urban Age at the London School of Economics, Honorary Senior Fellow at WWF, Adjuct Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies (Singapore) and an Advisor to Aavishkaar Micro-Venture Capital Fund (which won the UN's World Business Award in 2006).
Sanjeev attended Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University and St. John's College, Oxford (UK), where he was Rhodes Scholar (1992- 95). He was awarded the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship in 2007 in recognition for his work on urban systems. He was also profiled as a "Young Turk" by CNBC in 2008, for his contributions to financial markets. He has written numerous articles, editorials and academic papers in national and international publications, as well as books.
Prof. Joan Martinez Alier
Emeritus Professor of Economics and Economic History and researcher | Institute of Environmental Science and Technology
Joan M. Alier has directed the Doctoral Programme in Environmental Sciences since 1997, at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
He has been a research fellow / senior associate member of St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, and visiting professor at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Free University of Berlin, Stanford University and University of California, Yale University, and FLACSO Sede-Ecuador.
His research interests comprise agrarian history, environmental history, ecological economics, environmental policy, political ecology. He is the author of many academic articles, and a member of the editorial committee of Ecological Economics, Environmental Values, Journal of Agrarian Change and Ecología Política among others. Dr. Alier along with Robert Costanza and Olman Segura edited 'Getting down to earth: practical applications of ecological economics (1996)'. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency and is a founding member and former president of the International Society for Ecological Economics.
His prominent books (in English) include Ecological Economics: Energy Environment and Society, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South, The Environmentalism of the Poor: a Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation, Rethinking Environmental History: World-Systems History and Global Environmental Change.
Herman Mulder
Expert in sustainable finance
Herman Mulder was Director-General and Head of Group Risk Management of ABN AMRO Bank, Amsterdam, Netherlands from 1998 -2006. In the period 1995-1998, he worked at ABM AMRO as Head of Global Structured Finance.
Since he retired from ABN AMRO, he has been able to dedicate himself as an independent advisor to all dimensions of sustainable development: voluntary business codes of conduct, climate, value chain, microfinance, social entrepreneurship, development finance and fair trade.
He advises Global Compact, WBSCD, Club de Madrid, Taellberg Foundation, OXFAM NOVIB, Earth Charter International, Youth Employment & Sustainability (YES). Herman Mulder is a member of a number of boards including: Global Reporting Initiative, Utz Certified/Good Inside, Dutch National Council for Development Co-operation and Sustainable Development, Dutch National Contact point for OECD Guidelines, Business in Development, ABN AMRO Foundation India, Business Steering Committee for the UN Finance for Development conference in Doha in 2008 and the CBI (Consensus Building Institute) in Boston.
He was made a Knight of the Royal Order of Orange Nassau for his work in Sustainable Development.
Prof. Haripriya Gundimeda
Professor of Humanities | Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Haripriya Gundimeda holds a Ph.D. in Development Policy and works on various subjects related to environment and development economics. She is currently working as an Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India.
Before joining her current organization, Haripriya Gundimeda taught at the Madras School of Economics in Chennai. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Behaviour Sciences, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the Ratan Tata Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, and at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. She has also been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Her main areas of research have been green accounting, mitigation aspects of climate change, energy demand and pricing, valuation of environmental resources, and issues related to development in India. Haripriya has been actively involved with the Green Indian States Trust (GIST) and has been the lead author of six of the eight monographs for the GIST. She was also the Joint Local and Regional Policymakers and Administrators Coordinator for the TEEB study.
Late Rajiv Sinha
Former Lonnie Ostrom Distinguished Professor of Marketing | Arizona State University
Late Dr. Rajiv K. Sinha was the Lonnie Ostrom Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, USA.
He taught graduate (MBA and doctoral) courses and Executive Education programs in New Product Development, Marketing Principles and Internet Marketing, at Northwestern University (Kellogg Graduate School of Management). He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick (UK), the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), the Ecole Superieure de Commerce of Toulouse (France), the Grenoble Ecole de Management (France), the Motorola University, Beijing (China), the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Lisbon (Portugal) and the ESAN, Lima (Peru).
He has consulted on new service and product development issues for a variety of companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Honeywell, American Express, Apple Computers, AT&T, MasterCard, Motorola and Raytheon.
His research has focused on econometric modelling of the temporal diffusion of innovations, public policy issues related to tobacco addiction, pricing of digital products and their impact on piracy as well as on environmental economics.