Directors' Dialogues: Stewardship in the Boardroom

Welcome to Directors' Dialogues with Alexandra Bolton and Matthew Moss

• Climate Governance Initiative • Episode 1

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Welcome to Directors' Dialogues, a podcast from the Climate Governance Initiative. In this trailer episode, you will meet our podcast hosts Alexandra Bolton and Matthew Moss, who bring their expertise and passion for climate action to the forefront of this episode. They discuss the amazing guests coming up in this series, including a board director from a Chinese lithium mining company, an audit committee chair from Mumbai, a director from the American fashion industry, and a Brazilian director who is on the board of a family company and a financial services company.

Listen on to hear the board directors' personal motivations for taking action on climate and how these climate leaders are navigating the intricate landscape of climate governance in their boardrooms.

For more information on what we do, visit climate-governance.org.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Directors Dialogues, a podcast series in which we discuss climate action in the boardroom.

Speaker 2:

I'm Matthew Moss.

Speaker 1:

And I'm Alexandra Bolton.

Speaker 2:

I've really, really enjoyed talking to the board directors we've been able to interview so far. They are absolutely wonderful individuals. They are from all over the world. They're passionate. They are from all over the world. They're passionate, they're experienced. They're committed personally to driving climate positive action within their boardrooms. Many of them sit on the boards of all sorts of different companies. Mostly they're in companies that share their view that climate is vital. Some of them are lone voices. Some of them have taken a journey to get to where they are and they teach us a lot about how boardrooms and board directors need to grasp this nettle. They know that it's important to deal with that topic but also to focus on the bottom line.

Speaker 1:

We've been super lucky with our guest. Amongst the first, we've got a director for a Chinese lithium mining company, an audit committee chair from Mumbai, an American boardroom director in the fashion industry and a Brazilian director who's on the board of a family company out of Santander, Brazil, who's on the board of a family company out of Santander, brazil.

Speaker 2:

We're from the climate governance initiative, which has a particular remit to focus on board directors. We know that it's the private sector that is responsible, obviously enough, for the vast majority of the world's carbon emissions. We know that, within any particular company, it's the board of directors that has the responsibility for climate policies and for seizing the opportunities that come from dealing with climate, and within any one board of directors, it's the independent director, it's the non-executive director that is particularly carrying that responsibility to ask the difficult questions, to be awkward if necessary, and to hold their companies to account.

Speaker 1:

And we know that by engaging with them, by equipping them, by empowering them to ask those difficult questions and to understand the answers, that we can shift the mindset and the culture and the actions of the board to make a real climate difference. We work through a network of chapters. Currently we've got 32 chapters worldwide and operating in 73 countries. We cover about a third of the world's carbon emissions and more chapters are being launched all the time. But we're not resting on our laurels. We want to see 100% of the carbon emissions covered. Before we introduce any of our guests and we move on to the podcast series proper, let's introduce ourselves a little.

Speaker 1:

I trained as an engineer. I've worked in a variety of institutions, sectors and jobs, most of them not in engineering, but I came to Climate through my work in the National Digital Twin Programme and as the Executive Director of the Centre of Digital Built, britain, where we came to see that tech is only part of the answer and that things are systems-based, everything is connected and, importantly for climate, that the planet is the ultimate system of systems. We know we need to change the way we work and the way we do things. We know we need to break down those silos and that we need to work together. In fact, antonio Guterres talked about cooperate or perish, because we know when we collaborate, we can do amazing things, and that's why I came to join the initiative.

Speaker 2:

And I joined the initiative earlier this year, a few months behind Alexandra. I've worked most of my career in the University of Cambridge. I have majored in communications. Really, during that time, I was head of the Vice-Chancellor's office for 10 years as Chief of Staff and in that position I think I've written over 400 speeches for Vice-Chancellors and Chancellors of the University explaining this complex beast to the outside world, and the complexity is something that I really got to enjoy. Something that I really got to enjoy Apart from straight communications, it was a masterclass in how to understand a complex ecosystem with stakeholders in business, in government and in academia.

Speaker 1:

And that's what made you so perfect for this role, because you got that experience at a really senior level across, as you say, say, industry, academia and policy and that communications experience so we can talk with board directors, but also, more importantly, we can help them talk with each other, communicate with each other and find out how they can change the culture in the boardroom so that climate action can happen. So now you know a little bit about us and I hope you're excited to hear what our guests have to say. In our first episode, we speak to someone who has made sustainability an economic imperative in the boardroom. Listen to our first podcast to hear what he has to say.