12th Risk Summit (2021)

Herman Bril is the incoming CEO of Arabesque Asset Management and the Former Director of the Office of Investment Management at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund.

With 25 years of experience in international financial institutions in multiple countries, Mr Bril possesses a broad level of expertise encompassing asset management, pension funds, life insurance, investment banking, derivatives trading and treasury operations. Herman Bril joined the UNJSPF as Director of Investment Management in June of 2016, departing in March 2021.

Previously, he served as Group CFO and Managing Director of Cardano Risk Management, with postings in London, Rotterdam and Amsterdam for over six and a half years. Prior to Cardano, Mr Bril was Senior Vice President, Head of Treasury and Capital Management at Aegon NV and Head of Asset Management and Chief Investment Officer of Syntrus Achmea Asset Management, where he was responsible for Dutch pension funds with assets under management, totalling Euro 45 billion. Mr Bril spent three years as the Head of Treasury at FGH Bank and trustee of FGH Bank’s pension fund.

He started his career as a fixed income derivative trader for ABN AMRO, Dresdner Bank and Deutsche Bank in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London. Mr Bril graduated from the Free University in Amsterdam with a Masters in Economics. Additionally, he graduated from INSEAD where he earned a diploma in Consulting and Coaching for Change. Mr Bril recently completed a Masters degree in Studies in Sustainability Leadership from the University of Cambridge.

Oliver is a Risk Researcher at the Centre for Risk Studies, where his primary focus is on Project Pandora, which aims to develop a risk analysis framework to understand and model impacts from various natural and man-made global catastrophes.

David is Global Director Sustainability, Environment & Human Rights for RB, the leading global health and home hygiene company which reaches billions of people around the world.

He is responsible for their work on environmental and social sustainability around the world, working with farmers, communities and manufacturers across an international supply alongside RB’s global supply chain and brand teams. His work stems from a personal goal to develop inclusive growth at scale through the organisations and partnerships he is part of.

David has a wealth of leadership experience from major global companies, holding senior roles within Diageo, Kraft Foods and Cadbury, and the UK retailers, Waitrose and the Co-operative Group. With these, he led technical, marketing and sustainability functions to deliver growth through stronger sustainable supply chains, product quality, brand equity and shared value.

David chairs the Business Industry Advisory Council’s Development Committee, leading private sector input to the OECD Development Committee and is a member of the Food Ethics Council.

Andrew Freeman is a risk advisor, NED, investor, author and pensions expert who has been a Fellow of the Centre since 2012. Over a 35-year career he has been a writer and commentator on risk and finance, and has recently enjoyed seven years as a risk manager in the investment industry, notably as Chief Risk Officer of Ardian, one of Europe’s most successful private equity firms. Andrew has written numerous articles and books, first as a journalist on The Economist and later in his role as a Senior Knowledge Expert in Risk at McKinsey. He is the author of ‘What Does Risk Culture Mean to a Corporation? Evidence for business value‘, in Beyond bad apples: risk culture in business (Tuveson, Ralph, Alexander eds. CUP 2020).

In addition to his role with the Centre, he is currently a partner of ndapt, serving pension funds and Boards, and sits as a member of the Advisory Panel for the Association of Corporate Treasurers. In 2014 he co-founded Fairer Finance which campaigns for better consumer outcomes in financial services. Andrew has also done extensive pro-bono work as a trustee, school governor and Managing Director of The Finance Foundation, a not-for-profit think tank that was originally part of Demos.

Andrew is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford and was also elected a Domus Senior Scholar at Merton College, Oxford.

Amelia Pan is a Managing Director in the Strategic Advisory Group at PJT Partners, based in London. Ms. Pan has extensive experience advising global corporations on the impact of ESG on corporate strategy, focusing on areas of greatest business materiality to mitigate risks and enhance value creation.

Prior to joining PJT Partners, Ms. Pan was a Partner in the London office at Brunswick Group, a global strategic advisory firm. At Brunswick, Ms. Pan founded the ESG practice to deliver strategic counsel to multinational companies and international NGOs. Her areas of focus included investor engagement, climate finance, regulatory developments and best practice corporate reporting. Ms. Pan is creator and host of _The ESG Agenda_ podcast, a series of conversations with business leaders, innovators and experts about the evolving ESG landscape.

Prior to Brunswick, Ms. Pan led the International Corporate Access team at J.P. Morgan in New York and London for 13 years. Over the course of her career, she facilitated investment relationships between the world’s leading companies and US institutional investors. Ms. Pan began her career as an equity research analyst at Merrill Lynch and was Press Officer for Médecins sans Frontières, a Nobel Prize-winning international humanitarian medical organisation.

Ms. Pan holds a postgraduate certificate in Sustainability from the University of Cambridge, an MSc from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan.

Professor Daniel Ralph is a Founder and Academic Director of the Centre for Risk Studies, Professor of Operations Research at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, and a Fellow of Churchill College. Daniel’s research interests include identification and management of systemic risk, risk aversion in investment, economic equilibria models and optimisation methods. Management stress test, via selection and construction of catastrophe scenarios, is one focus of his work in the Centre for Risk Studies. Another is the role and expression of risk management within organisations. Daniel engages across scientific and social science academia, a variety of commercial and industrial sectors, and government policy making. He was Editor-in-Chief of Mathematical Programming (Series B) from 2007-2013.

James holds a BA (Hons) in Geography from the University of Wales, an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College, London and is a Practitioner member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA).

Starting his sustainability career in consulting in 2000, he subsequently spent more than 15 years within corporate sustainability departments within FTSE250 and FTSE100 businesses. The majority of this time (12 years) was at TUI GROUP, working as Group Environment Manager, specifically supporting the six airlines and five cruise lines focussing on carbon reduction strategies. James left to take up the role of Head of Sustainability at London South Bank University, a post he held for more than two years. Returning to consultancy in 2018, James worked at Luminous, a strategic communications agency, where he created and lead the agency’s sustainable business offer to assist clients with their sustainability reporting, disclosure and consultancy needs across the full spectrum of sustainability issues, impacts and risks. At easyJet, James is responsible for reducing carbon emissions by working across the business to set and deliver reduction targets, to accelerate easyJet’s progress towards new lower carbon technology via innovative partnerships and share these stories and successes with colleagues and external stakeholders.

James has extensive experience of devising, developing and delivering corporate sustainability strategies at executive level across a broad range of sectors including tourism, aviation higher education, construction, financial services, retail and healthcare.

Dilara Cagatay is a Specialist in McKinsey London, and is part of the Risk Practice. Dilara mainly focuses on capital & balance sheet management and financial risk management, and serves both financial institutions and corporates. Prior to joining McKinsey, she worked as an analyst in the oil and gas industry and has experience in financial and investment planning. Dilara is a graduate of University of Warwick Business School, and is from Istanbul, Turkey.

Dr Andrew Coburn manages the External Advisory Board of the Centre for Risk Studies, coordinating the inputs of consumers of research into the Centre’s risk agenda. Andrew is the principal coordinator of the research programme on ‘System Shock’ at the Centre.

Andrew is one of the leading contributors to the creation of the class of catastrophe models that over the past 20 years has come to be an accepted part both of business management in financial services and of public policy making for societal risk. He has extensive experience in developing models and using them for business decision support. Andrew has also provided research inputs into government policy, such as House of Congress legislation on terrorism risk management policy and urban planning for disaster mitigation in Mexico, Metro Manila, and Southern Italy.

Dr Andrew Coburn is a member of the senior management of Risk Management Solutions, the leading provider of catastrophe risk models to the insurance industry.

Tamara Evan is the Editorial Associate for the Centre for Risk Studies and oversees the completion, production and final delivery of the Centre’s research publications and risk scenario reports.

Hildagarde McCarville is the CEO of Veolia in the Netherlands, and a non-executive director of Veolia in Ireland.

Veolia, is a world leader in optimised resource management. For over 160 years, Veolia has actively supported cities and industries in becoming more sustainable and resilient whilst reducing their carbon footprint by optimising key resources such as air, water, energy and materials. Prior to joining Veolia in 2008, she spent a decade within the IT services market.

In her spare time, she is the Vice President of the Ireland Netherlands Business Association and also an Advisory Board member of the Polymer Science Park (a Dutch Research & Innovation Institute).

Hildagarde is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and holds an IEMBA from the Smurfit Business School, with a BA in Finance & Accounting from Dublin City University.

Aleksander Petrov is Senior Risk Partner at McKinsey & Company and leader of the London Risk Advanced Analytics Group. He has broad experience in capital markets, derivatives pricing and portfolio management, supporting clients on a variety of risk topics focused on asset analysis, stress testing and real estate. Prior to joining McKinsey & Company in 2009, Aleksander spent approximately ten years in various quantitative and trading roles within the European fixed income and structured finance industry.

Harald Walkate is Head of Responsible Investment (ESG) at Natixis Investment Managers. Previously, he worked for Aegon for fifteen years in different capacities, lastly as Global Head of Responsible Investment at Aegon Asset Management. His work in ESG has included working with portfolio managers and analysts to integrate ESG considerations into investments, active ownership, policy and organisational issues, and identifying positive impact investment opportunities within different asset classes, with a particular focus on blended finance.

He is also an advisor to the Impact Management Project and on the board of the AIF Center for ESG and Sustainable Finance. Harald regularly speaks at conferences and seminars on the topics of responsible investment, impact investment and social enterprise.

A former corporate attorney with Allen & Overy, Harald also has significant experience in international business development and M&A and holds a law degree (Leiden University, the Netherlands) and an MBA (University of Chicago – Booth School of Business).