About - The ESG Exchange

Global network of ethical, influential active collaborators

Championing best-practice comparable, assurable, decision-useful sustainability information

Organisations around the world have limited access to trustworthy sustainability information

on which to make important risk decisions.

The ESG Exchange (ESGx) is a global knowledge platform purposed to rapidly build capacity using How To Playbooks (Playbooks)

which are designed to promote the adoption and implementation of organisational practices

for the delivery of decision-useful sustainability information.

The problem

A global lack of access to

sustainability expertise.

The lack of access to expertise is constraining access to decision-useful sustainability information, a crucial component to pragmatic responses to planetary crises and societal needs.

Our purpose

Build capacity quickly and at scale.

We build capacity by providing freely accessible, and consumable, knowledge on “how-to” deliver decision-useful sustainability information.

Our product

How-To Playbooks and certifications.

Our Capacity Building Units recognize levels of understanding for all organizational roles in all organizations – any type or size operating in any country or industry.

We use innovative technology solutions, including AI, and community building platforms to do this.

Our target

10 million people by 2030.

Using the “theory of 30%”, 10 million people, from countries classified low or middle income, with certified sustainability capacity can create a global shift.

Our service

Continually improving know-how.

Use today’s expertise and crowdsource “what is working and not”, to rapidly evolve to international best practices. Supporting educational organizations, consultancies and academies to provide best available know how.

Our goal

Global understanding and recognition.

Rapid individual consumption of available know-how and recognition through certification.

We are a non-profit organization, growing in line with our multi-stakeholder funding.

relying on corporate sponsors, multilaterals, and other NGOs for our funding; and volunteers for support,

we have been operating since June 2022 and will continue based on the availability of funding:

Governance

Our Governing Council guides and oversees our organization

such that it fulfils its purpose and strategic objectives according to the defined values.

Technical Committee

Our Technical Committee is comprised of global sustainability experts

who recommend content and curate How-To Playbooks,

overseeing the development of global sustainability capacity building units.

Advisory Committee

Our Advisory Committee provides support and guidance, and promotes our work.

The committee is broadly categorized into four stakeholder groups:

Sustainability reporting standard setters;
Multilateral organizations and regulators;
Non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, learning institutions and professional bodies; and
For-profit companies including consultancies, legal and accounting firms and experienced corporations.

Asian Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability

Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure

Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative

International Sustainability Resilience Centre

Institute of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka

Integrated Reporting Committee of South Africa

South African Business Schools Association

South African Institute of Chatered Accountants

We value:

We are:

Unique and unprecedented in our global stakeholder collaboration.
Independent and unbiased of any one industry, standard or sponsor.
Driven by mandated mandated sustainabilty reporting requirements.
Recognized for our global expertise and power of convenorship.
Collaboratively reducing industry noise and increasing ease of access.
Truly global in our approach and participation.

We do:

We do not:

Sustainable development through effective corporate reporting is an imperative for people, planet and prosperity.

The world needs all organizations:

Equipped and publishing value-adding sustainability reports
Developing and thinking in an integrated manner
Accessing the best available expertise
Delivering valuable business impacts

The Problem is that there is limited access to expertise around the world to help all organisations to do this.

I founded The ESG Exchange, a non-profit initiative, to collaborate (SDG 17) global expertise and make quality education (SDG 4) accessible for this purpose.

Original intellectual thinking

The name ‘The ESG Exchange’, the How-To Playbook Objectives Framework and its Methodologies are original intellectual thinking developed by the Good Governance Academy.

Professor Mervyn King is a senior counsel and former Judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa. He is the founding Patron of The Good Governance Academy and The ESG Exchange which enable access to global thought leadership on critical business issues as a public good using SDGs 4 and 17.

The ESG Exchange is an initiative of the Good Governance Academy

Wits Business School, 2 St Davids Place, St Andrew Road, Parktown,

Johannesburg, 2193, South Africa

+27 11 717 3300
info@theesgexchange.org

Robert B. Hirth, Jr.

Member of the Governing Council

Bob Hirth is a Senior Managing Director of Protiviti, a global business consulting firm that operates in more than 25 countries. Prior to that, he was Executive Vice President, global internal audit and a member of the Firm’s six-person executive management team for the first ten years of Protiviti’s development.

Bob was appointed to the standard setting board of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) upon its formation in 2017 and served as Co-Vice Chair of the board until August 2022 when SASB was acquired by the IFRS Foundation. He also chaired SASB’s Technology and Communications sector committee. He is a 2021 NACD Directorship 100 Governance Professional honoree, a current member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) Standards and Emerging Issues Advisory Group as well as the AICPA ASEC Sustainability Assurance and Advisory Task Force.

He is a co-author of COSO’s latest guidance: Achieving Effective Internal Control Over Sustainability Reporting (ICSR). Serving as COSO Chair from June 2013 to February 2018, his activities included leading COSO’s project on revising its Enterprise Risk Management Framework which was released in September 2017, issuing COSO’s Guide on Fraud Risk Management, and actively promoting COSO’s 2013 Internal Control Integrated Framework around the world and through the Media. Bob initiated COSO’s guidance on ERM/ESG integration which was issued in 2018. He has worked on assignments and made presentations in over 20 countries, serving more than 75 organizations and working closely with board members, C-level executives, University professors, finance and accounting personnel as well as public accounting firm partners and employees.

In 2012, Bob was appointed to serve a two-year term on the Standing Advisory Group of the PCAOB and was re-appointed to serve a three-year term ending December 31, 2016.

Bob started his career in public accounting and became a global equity partner of Arthur Andersen in 1988. During his tenure there, he worked in the Dallas, Melbourne Australia, San Jose and San Francisco offices, serving as a partner in both the audit and advisory practices of the firm. For over 20 years, he practiced as a CPA in Texas and California and also qualified as a chartered accountant and registered company auditor while working in Australia. In 2013, Bob was inducted into The American Hall of Distinguished Audit Practitioners. In 2014 and 2015, he served as the Chairman of the IIA’s IPPF re-look task force. Bob graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, with a concentration in accounting.

Caroline Rees

President and co-founder of SHIFT

As the President and Co-Founder of Shift, Caroline leads the organizational strategy and development. She drives the organization’s thought leadership work on key challenges and opportunities in advancing corporate respect for business and human rights. Caroline speaks extensively at events around the world and frequently facilitates dialogue and debate amongst companies, governments, investors and civil society.

In recent years, Caroline has focused on improving corporate human rights reporting as a catalyst for better human rights risk management, and on improving the data and methods used in evaluating companies’ social performance as part of ESG (environmental, social and governance) analysis. She has written and spoken extensively on the relevance of business respect for human rights, and the UNGPs specifically, to movements that seek to advance sustainability, equality, ESG investing, stakeholder capitalism, and human and social capital.

Caroline previously:

Spent 14 years with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
From 2003 to 2006 she led the UK’s human rights negotiating team at the UN and she ran the negotiations to establish the mandate of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on business and human rights. The success of this initiative led to Professor John Ruggie’s appointment
From 2007-2011 Caroline was a lead advisor on John’s team and deeply involved in the drafting of the Guiding Principles
From 2009 to 2011 Caroline was also the Director of the Governance and Accountability Program at the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and she remains a Senior Program Fellow there

Caroline is a Commissioner on the BUSINESS COMMISSION TO TACKLE INEQUALITY, a member of the ADVISORY COMMITTEE OF THE INVESTOR ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, the Advisory Group to the Workforce Disclosure Initiative, the Advisory Council to Harvard Business School’s Impact Weighted Accounts Initiative and the Advisory Panel of the Capitals Coalition.

Caroline’s prior British foreign service career covered Iran, Slovakia, the UN Security Council in New York and the European Union in Brussels.

Caroline has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from Oxford University and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Caroline is a British national and speaks English, French and German.

Koushik Chatterjee

Group Executive Director, Finance and Corporate, Tata Steel Limited

Member of the Governing Council

Mr. Koushik Chatterjee joined Tata Steel in 1995. During his stint in the Company, he worked in the areas of Corporate Finance and Planning. Mr. Chatterjee was appointed the Vice President (Finance) in August 2004. During his tenure, Mr. Chatterjee has led the first overseas acquisition of the Company – NatSteel Asia in South East Asia. He subsequently led the acquisition of Millennium Steel (now Tata Steel Thailand) in Thailand followed by the acquisition of Corus Group in 2006-07, the Country’s largest acquisition of that time.

With the announcement of the new Tata Steel Group post the acquisition of Corus, Mr. Chatterjee was appointed as Group Chief Financial Officer in January 2008. He was inducted into the Board of the Company as a full time Director in 2012. He has been responsible for Group Financial Reporting, Investor Relations, Financing Strategy including debt and equity raising, Corporate M&A, Risk Management and Compliance, Taxation Strategy and planning and co-ordination of statutory and management reporting.

He is on the Board of Tata Steel Limited and its Group companies, in India and abroad and has been recently appointed as Executive Director for Tata Steel Europe Limited.

Mr. Chatterjee was declared one of India’s best CFOs by Business Today Magazine in 2005 and 2006 and by CNBC in 2007. In March 2012, he has been awarded the Best Performing CFO in the Metals Sector by CNBC TV18. He was declared India’s “Best Executive” for 2009 by Asia Money Magazine. He is also a frequent speaker in various conferences in India and abroad including the McKinsey Global CFO Forum 2008, Economist Conferences, London Business School and CII organized conferences.

He is a member of the Primary Market Advisory Committee on Capital Markets of SEBI and was a member of the Takeover Regulations Advisory Committee of SEBI, which drafted the new Takeover Code of India. He is also a member of the International Integrated Reporting Council, Global Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, Switzerland and ‘B20 Task Force’ to advise G20 countries on Trade & Investments under the Chairmanship of China.

Harry Broadman

Harry Broadman, and Faculty Member, Johns Hopkins University

Member of the Governing Council

Dr. Harry G. Broadman is a Partner at the Berkeley Research Group (BRG) LLC, a global consultancy, where his practice is focused on structuring cross-border operational transactions and strategies of businesses worldwide, as well as serving as an expert witness testifying in international litigation and arbitration on global commercial disputes.

Harry chairs BRG’s Emerging Markets Practice and BRG’s National and Economic Security Practice. His clients are C-suite executives and boards of directors of multinational corporations, private equity firms, pension funds, institutional investors, and sovereign wealth funds. He is also a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and serves as a non-executive director on four boards—all international firms—serving as Board Chair (The ESG Exchange); Audit Committee Chair (Partners Global); and Compensation Committee Chair (Strategic Ratings PLC). He is a Board Leadership Fellow at the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and a Commissioned NACD Board Advisory Services Faculty Member. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Global Business School Network.

Harry is an expert on multinational corporate investment; ESG, sustainability and corporate governance; global supply chain management; cybersecurity; innovation and R&D; international investment treaties and trade agreements; and antitrust and economic regulation. His industry sector expertise spans international finance, private equity and banking; global infrastructure services, particularly shipping and logistics, aviation and land transport, utilities, informatics, telecoms, and construction; and renewable and conventional energy, mining, and natural resources. He has worked on the ground in 85+ emerging markets spanning 5 continents, especially in China and East Asia; India; Latin America; Eastern and Central Europe and Russia and the CIS; Northern and sub-Saharan Africa; the Middle East; Turkey and the Balkans.

Prior to his current posts, Harry was Senior Managing Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he founded and led PwC’s Global Business Growth Strategy Management Consulting Practice, and also served as PwC’s Chief Economist; Managing Director at Albright Capital Management, the international private equity firm Chaired by Madeleine Albright, where he served on the Investment Committee; a senior official at The World Bank, overseeing the bank’s largest sovereign and enterprise restructuring loans, including in China, Russia, and Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, and serving as the Economic Advisor for Africa.

Earlier he served in the White House, first as Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and then as United States Assistant Trade Representative, leading negotiations across all the services industries for the establishment of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the WTO and NAFTA; all negotiations of U.S. Bilateral Investment Treaties; and all negotiations of all U.S. International Science and Technology Agreements. He also served as a Member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). Before coming to the White House, he was Chief Economist, of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Previously, he served on the Harvard University Faculty; the RAND Corporation; The Brookings Institution; and Resources for the Future Inc.

He is a monthly Business Leadership Strategy Columnist for Forbes; a quarterly National Security Columnist for the International Financial Law Review; and a frequent columnist for the Financial Times. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in professional economics, finance, foreign policy and law journals. Broadman’s most recent books are Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier; The State as Shareholder: China’s Management of Enterprise Assets; and From Disintegration to Reintegration: Russia and the Former Soviet Union in the Global Economy.

Harry was educated at Brown University, from which he graduated with an AB in economics magna cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan.

Stefano Zambon

Professor of Accounting and Business Administration at University of Ferrara

Member of the Governing Council

Stefano Zambon holds:

A BSc in Business Economics from the University of Venice
MSc and PhD in Accounting and Management Studies from the London School of Economics.
Financial analyst with the Italian Association of Financial Analysts (AIAF) since 2010
Chartered accountant and State-registered auditor since, respectively, 1986 and 1995

Stefano is a Professor of Accounting and Business Economics at the University of Ferrara, Italy and previously taught at the Universities of Venice and Padua. He has taken up visiting appointments in universities in four continents, including Waseda School of Management (Tokyo), Stern Business School (New York University), Christchurch (New Zealand), London Business School, HEC, CNAM and ESCP in Paris, Metz, Reading (UK), Melbourne, and Passau (Germany).

Stefano has more than 110 publications in books and international scientific journals in the areas of management and reporting of intangibles, international financial reporting, accounting theory and history, integrated reporting. He is also a Member of various editorial boards of international journals, as well as a Member of the Board of the European Accounting Association from 1997 to 2003.

Since 2005, Stefano has organized the academic European (EIASM) Conferences on “Intangibles and Intellectual Capital”. Also since 2005, he has been a Member of the EIASM professorial Faculty in Brussels. Stefano has been the keynote speaker on topics linked to intangibles at OECD, United Nations, European Parliament, European Commission, and French, Chinese and Japanese Governments’ events.

From April 2014 to 2018, Stefano was the President of the official Expert Group on Intangibles set up by the French Government (Ministry of Economy and Finance). In May 2020, Stefano was appointed as President of the “Jury” for the evaluation and assignment of the 1st edition of the “French Company Awards for the Intangible” (“Trophées de l’immatériel”) granted by the Observatoire de l’Immatériel. From 2002-03, Stefano coordinated the Study for the European Commission (DG Enterprise) on “The Measurement of Intangible Assets and the Associated Reporting Practices”.

Over the years, Stefano has been a member of various EC Expert Groups on intangibles, intellectual capital, and intellectual property. In February 2020, he coordinated and was the main author of the “Academic Literature Review on Intangibles” on behalf of EFRAG (European Financial Reporting Advisory Group). Stefano is a founding Member of the International Network “World Intellectual Capital/Assets Initiative” – WICI, and was the Global Chair from 2015 to 2019. From 2012 to 2018, he was the Secretary General of the Italian Network for Business Reporting (NIBR/WICI Italy), and since July 2019 to date has been the Secretary General of the new Italian Foundation for Business Reporting (O.I.B.R. Foundation).

Stefano’s other responsibilities include:

Member of the EFFAS (European Association of Financial Analysts)’s General Assembly and the EFFAS Commission on ESG
Member of the Research Panel of ICAS (Institute of Chartered Accountants)
Member of both the “National Accounting Standards Group” and of the “International Accounting Standards Group” of the Italian Accounting Standard Setter (Organismo Italiano di Contabilità – OIC).

In 2016-17, he was the official Italian Government’s candidate to the Board of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

In 2019 and 2020, Stefano has been the President of the Judging Committee for the Italian Award on the Best Annual Integrated Report.

Prof. Mervyn King

Member of The Good Governance Academy

Founding Patron of The ESG Exchange

Mervyn King is a Senior Counsel, former Judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa, and designated Chartered Director (South Africa). He is Professor Extraordinaire at the University of South Africa, Honorary Professor at the Universities of Pretoria and Cape Town, and a Visiting Professor at Rhodes University. He has honorary Doctorates from Wits University and Stellenbosch University in South Africa, Leeds University in the UK, and Deakin University in Australia.

Mervyn is honorary fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales; the Institute of Internal Auditors of the UK; the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants; the Certified Public Accountants of Australia; the Chartered Institute of Public Relations of the UK, and the Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.

Mervyn is Chair Emeritus of the King Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa, as well as of the Value Reporting Foundation (incorporating the International Integrated Reporting Council and SASB) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards for promoting quality corporate governance globally, from several institutions.

Mervyn chairs the Good Law Foundation and has chaired the United Nations Committee of Eminent persons on Governance and Oversight. He is a member of the Private Sector Advisory Group to the World Bank on Corporate Governance and of the ICC Court of Arbitration in Paris. Mervyn currently chairs the African Integrated Reporting Council and the Integrated Reporting Committee of South Africa and is Patron of the Good Governance Academy.

Mervyn has been a chair, director and chief executive of several companies listed on the London, Luxembourg and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges. He has consulted, advised and spoken on legal, business, advertising, sustainability and corporate governance issues in over 60 countries and has received many awards from international bodies around the world including the World Federation of Stock Exchanges and the International Federation of Accountants.

He is the author of many books on governance, sustainability and reporting, the latest being “The Healthy Company.”

Robert B. Hirth, Jr.

Caroline Rees

President and co-founder of SHIFT

Alan Johnson

President International Federation of Accountants

Veronica Poole

Vice Chair of Deloitte UK and
Deloitte Global IFRS and Corporate Reporting Leader

Koushik Chatterjee

Group Executive Director, Finance and Corporate, Tata Steel Limited

Harry Broadman

Harry Broadman, and Faculty Member, Johns Hopkins University

Paul Druckman

Chairman, World Benchmarking Alliance

Jane Diplock

Professional international company director

Fiona Darroch

Rod Carr

Stefano Zambon

Professor of Accounting and Business Administration at University of Ferrara

Peadar Duffy

Global ESG Practice Lead at Archer Integrated Risk Management

Carolynn Chalmers

William Frater

Prof. Mervyn King

Member of The Good Governance Academy

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Robert B. Hirth, Jr.

Caroline Rees

President and co-founder of SHIFT

Alan Johnson

President International Federation of Accountants

Veronica Poole

Vice Chair of Deloitte UK and Deloitte Global IFRS and Corporate Reporting Leader

Koushik Chatterjee

Group Executive Director, Finance and Corporate, Tata Steel Limited

Harry Broadman

Harry Broadman, and Faculty Member, Johns Hopkins University

Paul Druckman

Chairman, World Benchmarking Alliance

Jane Diplock

Professional international company director

Fiona Darroch

Rod Carr

Stefano Zambon

Professor of Accounting and Business Administration at University of Ferrara

Peadar Duffy

Global ESG Practice Lead at Archer Integrated Risk Management

Carolynn Chalmers

William Frater

Prof. Mervyn King

Member of The Good Governance Academy

Terms and Conditions

Privacy Policy

Vice Chair of Deloitte UK and
Deloitte Global IFRS and Corporate Reporting Leader