We have assembled an Advisory Board representing a wide range of ESG expertise from law firms, in-house counsel, climate scientists, IT, corporate governance practitioners, academics, auditors and accounting. Our Board members provide ongoing feedback on the PracticalESG.com experience, marketplace developments and contribute original expert content.
Rhonda Brauer is the President and Founder of RLB Governance LLC, where she provides strategic environmental, social and governance (ESG) consulting services to investors, companies, non-profits and NGOs. She combines her more recent experience spearheading investor engagement campaigns with over two decades of directly advising public company boards and management on ESG issues across a wide range of industries.
Most recently, Rhonda served as the Associate Program Director, Climate & Environmental Justice, for the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), where she helped to launch and manage their Climate Lobbying Initiative. She also served nearly two years as Director of Corporate Engagement for the Bureau of Asset Management in the Office of New York City Comptroller, where her strategic initiatives included spearheading the Boardroom Accountability Project 2.0, which focused on improving board quality and diversity in order to create long-term sustainable growth for the NYC pension funds.
Rhonda is a securities lawyer, who has provided strategic advice to boards and management teams on ESG and shareholder engagement issues, as Secretary & Corporate Governance Officer for The New York Times Company and as Senior Managing Director for Corporate Governance at Georgeson (a leading proxy solicitation firm). At both firms, she was also a member of the senior leadership team. Rhonda began her career with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton as a cross-border transactional corporate lawyer in New York, NY and Brussels, Belgium.
Rhonda has been a Senior Fellow at The Conference Board’s ESG Center (formerly the Governance Center) and served four years on the Board of Directors of the Society for Corporate Governance (formerly the Society of Corporate Secretaries & Governance Professionals).
She received her AB, magna cum laude, in History from Cornell University, and her JD, magna cum laude, from Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington.
Jeff Civins, senior counsel at Haynes Boone, has practiced environmental law since 1975, assisting clients in regulatory compliance, transactions, and litigation. Civins also has been an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law for over 30 years. He is standing chair of the State Bar of Texas’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Section Section’s annual Texas Environmental Superconference–now in its 34th year. For the past several years, he also has chaired the EarthX Law Advisory Council, which puts on the Law & Nature TV series and an annual symposium. Civins also is a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers and a member of the Advisory Council of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law & Business.
Dr. Donato Calace is the Vice President of Innovation and Accounts at Datamaran. He advises on the prioritization of business-critical R&D projects, understanding and anticipating the competitive landscape. He also engages and cooperates with the academic world. Since 2017 Donato has been in charge of Datamaran’s Technical Advisory Committee consisting of international technical experts in ESG, AI and risk management. He speaks frequently at expert-conferences world-wide.
Recently, he has participated in the invite-only European Commission DG FISMA expert session on materiality (November 2019), and has been invited by ESMA to report to the Narrative Reporting Working Group (NRWG) on Datamaran’s innovative approach to materiality assessments. He is a member of the EFRAG Task Force on reporting of non-financial risks and opportunities and linkage to the business model.
During his PhD, he focused on the relationship between non-financial disclosure and environmental performance; reporting and market value; national culture and non-financial risks reporting. His areas of expertise and research include materiality analysis, ESG integration, and risk management associated to non-financial issues. His definition of materiality for the Encyclopedia of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals edited by Springer has been downloaded more than 1000 times.
Douglas K. Chia is the sole owner and President of Soundboard Governance LLC and Fellow at the Rutgers Center for Corporate Law and Governance. Mr. Chia was previously Executive Director of The Conference Board ESG Center and continues to contribute to The Conference Board as a Senior Fellow. He is also a Fellow at the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program, Advisor to Foresight BoardOps, and Advisory Board Member of PracticalESG.com.
Before joining The Conference Board, Mr. Chia served as Assistant General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Johnson & Johnson. Previously, he served as Assistant General Counsel, Corporate of Tyco International and practiced law at the global firms Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Clifford Chance in New York and Hong Kong.
Mr. Chia has held a number of central leadership positions in the corporate governance field, including Chair of the Board of the Society for Corporate Governance, President of the Stockholder Relations Society of New York, and member of the New York Stock Exchange Corporate Governance Commission. He is currently a member of the Corporate Laws Committee of the American Bar Association, American Law Institute, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and Ascend Pan-Asian Leaders. Mr. Chia has received numerous awards and recognitions in corporate governance and has frequently appeared in the news media, including CNN, NPR Marketplace, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Fortune, and The New Yorker.
Mr. Chia received an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College and a J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. Mr. Chia is a Trustee of the Historical Society of Princeton. He lives with his wife and four children in Princeton, New Jersey.
Tamara Close is the Founder and Managing Director of Close Group Consulting, which is a boutique ESG strategy advisory firm that uses in-depth capital markets and ESG expertise to assess, design and implement tailored end-to-end ESG integration practices across asset classes for asset managers, asset owners and corporates. She was previously the Head of ESG Integration for KKS Advisors, a global ESG Advisory firm and has over 20 years of combined experience in capital markets and ESG strategy. Tamara has held various investment management positions for the Bank of Montreal and Credit Lyonnais in the global derivatives and foreign exchange markets and was previously the head of research and risk for a start-up fixed income asset management firm in Montreal. Before founding Close Group Consulting, she spent 10 years in senior management roles within the risk and public markets investment groups of PSP Investments. She is also the founder and creator of the Sustainable Risk Assessment Framework.
Tamara holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification and is a council member of the Canadian Advocacy Council for CFA Societies Canada. She is also a Board director for CFA Montreal and Chair of the ESG Committee as well as a member of the Investment Committee for the JGH Foundation. Tamara is an Advisor to the Veristell Institute, a globally focused think-tank on ESG and Corporate Purpose, as well as PracticalESG, a source for ESG thought leadership. She earned a Bachelor in Economics from McGill University and a Master of Science degree in Finance from the John Molson School of Business. She is fluent in French and English.
Sarah E. Fortt is a partner at Latham & Watkins. Sarah is the Global Co-Chair of the ESG practice at Latham & Watkins. Before joining Latham, Sarah was the mind behind the creation of one of the first cross-functional ESG groups at a U.S.-based global law firm, where she also served as the firm’s dedicated corporate governance expert.
Sarah is a key thought leader in U.S. corporate governance and on matters regarding environmental and social corporate risks and opportunities, including those relating to climate change, human rights and corporate culture. She regularly helps clients create consistent, effective and meaningful stakeholder communications (both required and voluntary). Sarah has worked with companies across multiple industries in times of calm and in times of crisis, as well as during key strategic transactions.
Sarah has created a unique perspective on and approach to corporate cultural wellness that connects an in-depth understanding of leadership, governance, the ethics and compliance functions, employee incentives and initiatives, and corporate risk and crisis management. She has a sophisticated understanding of incentive structures and how they function across various levels of an organization given an organization’s strategies, goals and “sacred cows.”
Daniel Goelzer is a retired partner in the law firm of Baker McKenzie. He is a member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and advises a Big Four accounting firm on audit quality issues. He prepares a bi-monthly newsletter, Audit Committee and Auditor Oversight Update, which focuses on regulatory issues affecting audit committees. From 2002 to 2012, Dan was a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and served as Acting PCAOB Chair from August 2009 through January 2011. From 1983 to 1990, he was General Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Goelzer is a CPA and a lawyer. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin (BBA 1969; JD 1973).
Michael Littenberg is a senior partner at Ropes & Gray. Michael is the global head of the firm’s ESG, CSR and Business and Human Rights practice. As part of his practice, for more than 30 years, Michael has been active in advising leading public and private companies on ESG, corporate social responsibility and business and human rights compliance matters, and he is widely viewed as one of the leading practitioners in this emerging area.
Rob Main, CFA, is managing partner and COO at Sustainable Governance Partners (SGP). Rob specializes in strategy development, board related matters, investor engagement, and executive compensation. He is a thought leader in the industry and a frequent participant on panels and roundtables. Rob was previously the Head of Investment Stewardship for the Americas and Asia at Vanguard. His responsibilities included company engagement, ESG research, proxy voting, and policy development. Rob played a leadership role in analyzing and evaluating contentious and complex situations, including proxy contests and mergers & acquisitions. He earned a B.S. from the University of Richmond, and an M.B.A. from Villanova University, where he graduated as part of both the Phi Kappa Phi and Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Societies. He is a CFA charterholder and is a member of the CFA Society of Philadelphia. He currently serves as adjunct faculty in Villanova University’s M.B.A. program and has guest lectured at Harvard University, Drexel University, and at Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law. Rob previously served on the Corporate Governance Advisory Council of the Council of Institutional Investors (CII). Rob lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He enjoys reading, racquet sports, and is active in the Unionville youth sports community.
Madhuri Pavamani is the Director of the Sustainability & ESG Advisory Practice at Paul, Weiss. Madhuri Pavamani is the Director of the Sustainability & ESG Advisory Practice at Paul, Weiss. She advises leading companies in the private equity, transportation, technology, and insurance industries on their public disclosures, corporate governance practices, and diversity and inclusion initiatives. Prior to joining the ESG practice, Madhuri was a senior staff attorney in Paul, Weiss’s litigation department, where she focused on regulatory and employment investigations and anti-trust matters. A graduate of Barnard College and Brooklyn Law School, Madhuri was a recipient of the Edward V. Sparer Public Interest Law Fellowship and an editor for the Journal of Law and Policy. She volunteered for several years for Leonard Weinglass as he worked the Mumia Abu-Jamal death penalty case, is a published poet, certified yoga instructor, and an Advisory Board member at The Elisabeth Haub School of Law’s Sustainable Business Law Hub.
Sophie Waskow Rifkin is Sr. Director, Sustainability at Banza, a food company that makes comfort food like pasta, mac & cheese and pizza out of chickpeas. She previously served as the Director of Corporate Research and Engagement at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business, where she led work with companies on the Center’s Return on Sustainability Investment (ROSI) methodology. She is also an adjunct professor at NYU Stern, teaching coursework in sustainability strategy. Sophie has over 14 years of experience working with organizations to grow and implement sustainability programs. As a member of the advisory services team at BSR (Business for Social Responsibility), Sophie worked with consumer sector companies to develop and implement sustainability strategies. She previously served as project manager at the George Washington University where she helped launch the university’s inaugural sustainability program, and began her career in sustainability at the consulting firm, SustainAbility. She holds an MPA from George Washington University and an A.B. in English from Brown University. She currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Pembroke Center Associates Council of Brown University.
Christine Robinson is a Partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP. As a former financial statement auditor, Christine is a CPA that has spent the last 11 years working with various clients on sustainability materiality assessments, data processes and controls, reporting, assurance, supply chain initiatives, and impact investing. She has worked with clients on disclosures using leading standards and frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), UN Principles for Responsible Investing (UN PRI), Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She holds SASB’s Fundamentals of Sustainability Accounting (FSA) credential.
Puvan J. Selvanathan is Founder of Bluenumber, a 501c3 and public benefit corporation, delivering Digital Equality and Data Equity. He was formerly a UN Special Rapporteur on Business and Human Rights for the UN Human Rights Council (Geneva) and Head of Food & Agriculture at the UN Global Compact (New York). Puvan is an Architect by profession, with an MBA and a doctorate in Corporate Sustainability. Before joining the UN, Puvan was Chief Sustainability Officer at a Malaysian diversified conglomerate and helped set global standards to certify commodities including sustainable palm oil. Bluenumber is a rights-based digital identity, with data and property rights, for local communities, global networks and supply chains.
Angie Snavely is VP, Chief Corporate and Governance Counsel and Assistant Secretary at Teradata Corporation (TDC) where she has global oversight for a variety of legal areas, including Corporate Secretary and Board of Director matters, securities law, mergers and acquisition, and corporate finance. She also supports TDC’s ESG program and serves as the Co-Chair of its internal ESG Committee. Prior to her role at TDC, Angie was Assistant General Counsel and Assistant Secretary at The Toro Company (TTC) where she influenced, developed, and led its formal ESG initiative. Angie served as TTC’s first Sustainability Committee Chair and led the TTC team that developed TTC’s internal ESG strategy, designed its cross-functional and division Sustainability Committee and broader Sustainability Pillar Teams of Product, Process, Planning and People, and publicly launched TTC’s first formal ESG initiative, Sustainability Endures, and first ESG Report. Angie has lived through the triumphs and struggles of a public company’s ESG journey, particularly at companies that do not have dedicated ESG resources and/or might be at the very beginning phases of their ESG journey. Angie is thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute her time, talents, and passion to such an important and impactful endeavor and considers it a great privilege to work with, and learn from, the passionate and talented individuals advancing ESG both internally at TDC (and formerly TTC) and in the PracticalESG.com community.
Dr. Mark C. Trexler founded the first business climate risk consultancy in the United States in 1991, working with companies around the world on all aspects of the evolving climate change problem, from Boards of Directors on down. He is Director of Climate Change Advisory at The Climatographers and is Co-founder of The Climate Web – a knowledge management solution for climate risk decision-support. He has extensive legal and expert witness experience on climate change and energy topics.