Editor Director of Sustainability, CCRcorp
Lawrence Heim has been practicing in the field of ESG management for almost 40 years. He began his career as a legal assistant in the Environmental Practice of Vinson & Elkins working for a partner who is nationally recognized and an adjunct professor of environmental law at the University of Texas Law School. He moved into technical environmental consulting with ENSR Consulting & Engineering at the height of environmental regulatory development, working across a range of disciplines. He was one of the firm’s leading environmental compliance and management systems auditors and helped create the company’s first national practice for environmental auditing. Among his professional highlights during this time was developing an innovative regulatory strategy that saved a major petroleum refinery $150 million in waste management costs associated with a new waste listing.
Lawrence became an in-house environmental audit manager with Georgia-Pacific, then a publicly traded Fortune 150 manufacturer. At Georgia-Pacific, he designed and implemented a comprehensive redesign of the company’s internal environmental audit and corrective action program which was later approved without modification by EPA and Department of Justice as part of a $120 million Clean Air Act settlement. He was also one of the company’s primary experts on waste management regulations. It was during this time he was granted a charter Certified Professional Environmental Auditor (CPEA) designation from the Board of Environmental Auditor Certifications during their inaugural year.
Lawrence joined Marsh USA and helped create the Global Environmental Risk Consulting Practice, shifting his focus from compliance to a broader vision of environmental impacts to business and risk management, working with clients to reduce their environmental risk profile by adapting traditional risk management processes and tools. At the same time, he continued to provide regulatory compliance support to clients and was Marsh USA’s primary environmental regulatory expert nationally.
As a partner at Elm Consulting Group, he continued providing international clients support on environmental, health and safety compliance and management systems. He founded subsidiary Elm Sustainability Partners and became an internationally recognized expert in conflict minerals, responsible minerals supply chain due diligence and associated audit programs/practices. He was the only non-financial auditor selected by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to participate as an expert panelist on the conflict minerals rule and provided guidance on non-financial auditing to US Departments of State and Commerce. Lawrence remains one of only a handful of auditors to have conducted Independent Private Sector Audits (IPSAs) of Conflict Minerals Reports submitted to the SEC under Dodd Frank Section 1502. While at Elm, he was voted to the Board of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Environmental, Safety and Health Audit Center.
During his time at the Responsible Business Alliance/Responsible Minerals Initiative, he led an unprecedented period of due diligence standards development, including spearheading an expansion into ESG standards for responsible mineral supply chains.
Lawrence is the author of Killing Sustainability (2018, 2022) and is a former Board Member of ASSET, the anti-slavery organization founded by award-winning actress and former UN Goodwill Ambassador Julia Ormond.
Recent Posts by Lawrence Heim
Oct 8 2024 #climate, #environment, #equity, #esg, #human-rights, #social, #supply-chain Is There More Sustainability Business Value in B2B or B2C? (Part 2)
Oct 3 2024 #assurance, #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #investors EU Publishes Guidelines on CSRD Limited Assurance
Oct 3 2024 #climate, #compliance, #diversity, #environment, #equity, #esg, #human-rights, #investors, #social, #supply-chain What ESG Practitioners Can Learn From Bull Riding and Field of Dreams
Oct 2 2024 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain Why Accounting is Critical for Corporate Climate Programs
Oct 2 2024 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #social, #supply-chain See You at LegalESG in NYC October 15
Oct 1 2024 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain California Governor Signs Amendments to State Climate Disclosure Laws
Oct 1 2024 #compliance, #environment, #esg, #supply-chain New California Responsible Textile Recovery Act Signed into Law
Sep 26 2024 #climate, #compliance, #diversity, #environment, #equity, #esg, #investors, #social Do ESG Executive Compensation Metrics Really Incentivize Performance? Not So Much
Sep 26 2024 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain What the Financial Sector Really Thinks About Net Zero
Sep 25 2024 #climate, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain Betting on Scope 2 and 3 Reductions? Read This
Sep 24 2024 #compliance, #esg, #investors SEC Enforces Against Company Claiming “Biblically Responsible” Investing Strategy
Sep 24 2024 #climate, #compliance, #diversity, #environment, #equity, #esg, #human-rights, #investors, #social, #supply-chain Who To Believe/What to Read in ESG and Sustainability
Sep 19 2024 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg, #investors, #supply-chain What SEC’s Charges Against Company for “Unsupported Hype” Could Mean for Climate Tech
Sep 18 2024 #climate, #compliance, #environment, #esg The First EPA Notice of Violation for a Carbon Sequestration?
Sep 17 2024 #climate, #compliance, #diversity, #environment, #equity, #esg, #investors, #social, #supply-chain More on Keurig’s SEC Enforcement
All Topics
- Assurance 293
- Climate 1105
- Compliance 1037
- Diversity 535
- Environment 1118
- Equity 512
- ESG 1601
- Guest Post 35
- Human Rights 524
- Investors 950
- Social 716
- Supply Chain 768
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