Lawrence Heim – Editor
Director of Sustainability, CCRcorp
Lawrence Heim has been practicing in the field of ESG management for more than 35 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 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) and is a Board Member of ASSET, the anti-slavery organization founded by award-winning actress and former UN Goodwill Ambassador Julia Ormond.
Contact Lawrence if you’d like to submit content or materials to be considered for PracticalESG.com!
Ngozi Okeh – Editor
Ngozi Okeh is an experienced leader with a history of driving efforts to conceptualize, define, assess and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as strategic business processes.
Ngozi is currently the Director of DEI at a leading marketing technology company where she develops and executes enterprise-wide DEI initiatives through rigorous strategic planning efforts, community partnerships, leadership collaboration, strategy evaluation, and careful management of communication and buy-in as well as policies and procedures. Previously, she worked at an independent mortgage bank, where her work resulted in a significant increase in the recruitment, engagement, and retention of employees from underrepresented communities, in addition to increased production of over 10 million dollars by empowering communities of color.
As a consultant, Ngozi also partners with associations and companies to develop clear and actionable strategies that drive internal and external DEI objectives. She develops, implements, and monitors programs to attract, engage, and retain diverse teams and communities by leading organization-wide initiatives. She is also a dynamic educator with extensive experience developing training curriculum for all audiences.
Ngozi has a master’s in human resources management with an emphasis in diversity and inclusion from Georgetown University. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and running half marathons.
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Zachary Barlow – Associate Editor
Zachary Barlow is a licensed attorney. He earned his JD from the University of Mississippi and has a bachelor’s in Public Policy Leadership. He practiced law at a mid-size firm and handled a wide variety of cases. During this time he assisted in overseeing compliance of a public entity and litigated contract disputes, gaining experience both in and outside of the courtroom. Zachary currently assists the PracticalESG.com editorial team by providing research and creating content on a spectrum of ESG topics, focusing on legal aspects of those issues.
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John Jenkins – Managing Editor
John Jenkins is the Managing Editor of TheCorporateCounsel.net, CompensationStandards.com, DealLawyers.com and PracticalESG.com. For over 35 years, he directly advised clients on capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate matters, in the Cleveland office of Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP.
John’s experience includes representing issuers and underwriters of debt and equity securities in more than 100 underwritten public and Rule 144A offerings; negotiation of mergers, stock and asset acquisitions and divestitures involving private and public companies; counseling directors on fiduciary obligations in connection with proposed change of control transactions and disclosure obligations under the federal securities laws; and counseling investment bankers in connection with mergers and acquisitions, fairness opinions, financings and other engagements. He has also represented targets of SEC, SRO and stock exchange investigations and enforcement proceedings, and has served as counsel to corporations and board committees conducting internal investigations involving allegations of misconduct.
He has taught mergers and acquisitions law at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, and has been a guest lecturer at The Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. John also has served as chair of the Securities Law Section of the Cleveland Bar Association, and as a member of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland Budget Committee and the Canisius College Board of Regents. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Western Reserve Historical Society.
John has been recognized as one of The Best Lawyers in America for Corporate law, as well as one of America’s Leading Lawyers by Chambers USA. He is a frequent author and speaker on securities and corporate law topics. His articles have appeared in publications such as Deal Lawyers, The Business Lawyer, Business Law Today, and The Corporate Governance Advisor. He has a BA from Canisius College and a JD from The University of Virginia.
Contact John if you’d like to submit content or materials to be considered for PracticalESG.com!