IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award

Tim Brooks is the Vice President for Environmental Responsibility at LEGO. Based in Billund, Denmark, he leads a global team responsible for the company’s global sustainability strategy, performance, and the impact of its products.

Brooks established and co-leads the new LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre, a $150m project to find and implement sustainable raw materials by 2030, most recently seen in the launch of Plants from Plants, the new bio-based LEGO bricks.

He is also responsible for driving projects addressing renewable energy and sustainability impact in the value chain. The most recent is a commitment to solar power across LEGO factories and working with KIRKBI, who have invested over $800m in offshore wind farms in the UK and Germany to meet the LEGO Group target of 100% renewable energy by 2020.

Prior to joining LEGO, he worked for Tesco, where he led environmental R&D within its property division developing new environmental technologies, processes, and systems.

Brooks has nearly 20 years’ experience in sustainability, focusing on corporate sustainability strategy with particular knowledge of renewable energy technologies, sustainable buildings, and product manufacturing.

He started his career with the Building Research Establishment and has worked for international engineering consultancies, FTSE 100 companies, the Carbon Trust, and as an environmental policy advisor to the Mayor of London.

Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volans

John Elkington is a writer, thought leader, business strategist, serial entrepreneur, and, at heart, an environmentalist. He is the Founder and Chief Pollinator at Volans, a certified B Corporation driving market-based solutions to the future’s greatest challenges.

He is also Honorary Chairman at SustainAbility, and sits on an A-Z of some 20 boards and advisory boards. He has written 19 books, his latest co-authored with Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair, with Sir Richard Branson, of The B Team. The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Today’s Profits with Tomorrow’s Bottom Line comes full circle from his 1997 book Cannibals with Forks, where he first introduced the Triple Bottom Line concept.

Benjamin Firmenich is Executive Director and Head of Investor Relations of Geneva-based Impact Finance. He frequently travels to meet with investors and regularly trains new analysts to conduct financial and social due diligence of companies.

Firmenich sits on the Investment Committee of the Impact Finance Fund which has disbursed $190 million in agricultural value chains in Latin America since October 2011. He also developed Kharmax Impact Monitoring System, the company’s proprietary tool to enable portfolio companies to report on impact.

A member of the Firmenich Global Sustainability Exchange Platform, Firmenich sits on the Next Gen Committee of the Firmenich family. In 2014, he co-initiated the Geneva Nexus Salon, a local meet-up of the Nexus Global Youth Initiative. He also seats on the Advisory Board of the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth of the University of Zurich.

He holds a Master of Science in environmental sciences from Wageningen University and a Master of Arts in political sciences from the University of Geneva.

Dr. Mary Johnstone-Louis is Director of the Ownership Project and a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Mary researches, teaches, and builds programmes on how business leaders create strategy around areas of public good. Her current focus is on how ownership influences impact and sustainability.

She is Head Tutor for Oxford’s Leading Sustainable Corporations Programme, a World Economic Forum Global Future Council Fellow, and Chair of the Board of B Lab UK. She has worked on five continents and conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, South Africa, and across Latin America.

Iris Obermueller is Head of Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Biopharma Global Healthcare Operations at Ares Trading SA, an affiliate of Merck. She joined Merck in 2014.

She graduated as Chemical Engineer from the University of Applied Sciences Isny (Germany) and completed her education with a Diploma of Safety Engineer from the Swiss Insurance Institute for Accident and Prevention (SUVA), as well as an Executive MBA from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW).

Before joining Merck Biopharma, Obermueller held several leading positions in R&D, quality, manufacturing, and EHS functions at Roche A.G. in Switzerland (Basel and Sisseln), in Novartis (Basel), and Givaudan (Geneva).

Gail Whiteman joined the University of Exeter Business School’s Department of Management in July 2020. She was previously the Rubin Chair, Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University, UK, and the Professor-in-Residence at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

An expert on global risk, her research analyzes how business makes sense of complex problems and build resilience across scales given environmental pressures and social inequities.

She is the creator of the Arctic Basecamp at Davos (2017, 2018, 2019), an innovative science-outreach event concurrent with the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which calls for action from world leaders to address global risks from climate change.

Whiteman serves on numerous academic advisory boards and has over 60 peer-reviewed scientific publications in the Academy of Management Journal, Nature, Climatic Change, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Ecology & Society, among others.

She also co-authored an impactful article in Nature with Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, and leading scientists and business leaders: “Emissions are still rising: Ramp up the cuts” This is a follow up to their 2017 essay “Three years to safeguard our climate”, Nature 546, 593-595 (29th June 2017).