This conversation explored how global institutional investors are approaching the challenge of balancing financial and impact goals. As co-CIO for sustainability at Bridgewater, former CEO of ATP and current board advisor to GIC and Novo Holdings, Carsten Stendevad brings a broad range of perspectives from both the asset owner and alternative asset manager perspective. He shared insights garnered from his experience building sustainability assessment capabilities to identify current and future sustainability leaders, and engineering strategic and tactical portfolios designed to deliver strong financial and impact results.
Carsten Stendevad joined Bridgewater in 2017, and serves as co-cIO for Sustainability, overseeing Bridgewater’s overall sustainable investing efforts including the design and oversight of investment solutions with both financial and sustainability impact objectives. He is also a member of the operating committee and co-chairs the firm’s sustainable investing committee. Stendevad is a board advisor to GIC and its investment strategies committee, a board member of Novo Holdings, and a board member of the Danish Recapitalization Fund.
Prior to joining Bridgewater, he served as the CEO of ATP, Denmark’s national pension plan. Previously, Stendevad was a managing director in Citi’s investment banking Division in New York, with global responsibility for Citi’s corporate finance advisory team. Earlier in his career, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and an analyst at the Central Bank of Denmark. He served on the global steering committee for the Blended Finance Taskforce, and on the Danish Committee for Corporate Governance, where he led the development of a Stewardship Code for institutional investors. Trained as an economist from the University of Copenhagen, he also holds a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. She is responsible for directing the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes. She is the editor of conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 20 years and has edited industry journals including Investment & Technology, Investor Weekly and MasterFunds Quarterly. She was previously editorial director of InvestorInfo and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Australian Financial Review, CFO, Asset and Asia Asset Management. She has a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Technology, Sydney. She was previously a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. White is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program consists of 22 fellows and seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.
Jaap van Dam is the principal director of investment strategy at PGGM in The Netherlands, responsible for benchmarking and enhancing PGGM’s investment practice.
He is also the owner of VIA, VanDam Investment Advisory which helps asset owners and their investment managers to improve the way they invest in a strategical way – both the set up of the investment value chain and the conduct of the people who are part of the investment process.
He has a broad knowledge and experience in the field of investment strategy, investment policy formulation, asset allocation and value chain design. His other activities include chair of the VBDO, the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development, chair of European Chapter of the 300 Club and member of the research committee of the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM). Together with Kees Koedijk and Alfred Slager he authored Achieving Investment Excellence: A Practical Guide for Trustees of Pension Funds, Endowments and Foundations.
