Secretariat

Sony Kapoor
CEO

Sony Kapoor is an influential economist, finance professional, sustainability expert and development adviser, whose career spans the financial sector, civil society, academia and policymaking across three continents. Alongside his role at Re-Define, he is Managing Director of NIFTYS and Senior Adviser to Worthwhile Capital. Mr Kapoor chaired the stakeholder board of the European Banking Authority and has been an adviser to the European Commission, the European Parliament, the World Bank, UN, OECD and several governments on financial, macroeconomic and sustainability policy. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the IMF, and at the LSE where he has held multidisciplinary roles at the Systemic Risk Centre, the European Institute, the Development Department and the Government Department.

His leadership in tackling the eurocrisis and promoting financial reform as well as substantial impact on sustainable finance and development has been widely recognised. The World Economic Forum and Friends of Europe have honoured him as a Young Global Leader and a European Young Leader and George Soros, Chairman of Open Society Foundations, has awarded him an honorary fellowship in recognition of his policy contributions. Mr Kapoor studied at the Indian Institute of Technology and the London School of Economics.

Jon Worth
Communication

Jon Worth is a Berlin-based consultant, teacher and writer. His focus is on the party political and power dynamics of EU politics (particularly Brexit), and online communications in EU politics. He is a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, where he runs courses about Negotiation and Decision-Making in the European Union and Online Communications in EU Policymaking. He also runs workshops for the Graduate Institute (Geneva), the University of Maastricht and Quadriga Hochschule (Berlin). He is one the best-known bloggers about the EU and commentators about the EU on Twitter (@jonworth). He is a member of the Europe Policy Group of World Economic Forum and the Advisory Board of Transparency International EU. He holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Merton College, Oxford, and a MA in European Politics and Administration from the College of Europe, Bruges. He speaks English, French and German.

 

Meenoo Kapoor
Finance, Law and Accounting Fellow

Meenoo Kapoor is a management professional, an accountant, and a lawyer specialized in finance. She has over two decades of wide-ranging experience across firms in Asia and Europe and has worked in senior roles in finance, hospitality, consulting, audit and accounting. In the past she worked with E&Y (S.B. Billimoria &co.), Hilton Hotels, DefineSolutions, ReDefine and others. Her work profile spans from audit, finance and accounts to working on projects for the European Parliament, the German Finance Ministry, DfID, the International Monetary Fund, Central Banks, Asset Managers, international Banks, the United Nations Environment Program and several Development Finance Institutions. Her cross-disciplinary education as scientist, chartered accountant, lawyer and company secretary give her a uniquely insightful approach to problem solving.

 

Asgeir B Torfason
Policy Fellow and Research Lead

Asgeir B. Torfason (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Business Ethics and Economics of Money and Banking in Finance and Accounting at the School of Business at the University of Iceland. Asgeir was a post-doc researcher at Gothenburg Research Institute in Sweden. He has been a member of the Fiscal Council in Iceland since 2016. Asgeir’s current research focuses on central banks, bank management, accountability, and financial regulation. His previous research focused on real estate, asset values and long-term investment, a field where he has extensive practical experience after being responsible for the Nordic countries as Vice President for a Real Estate Investment Trust. Previous to this, Asgeir worked in the energy industry and university management. He has an MBA from Norwegian Business School in Oslo and a degree in Philosophy and Economics from University of Iceland.

 

Dr Ulrich Volz
Development and Sustainability Fellow

Dr. Ulrich Volz participated in the development of Bpifrance, which oversees public sector financing and capital investment activities in French companies. Since 2017, he is a fixed income portfolio manager at the Banque de France, part of the managing team of the foreign exchange reserves of the European Central Bank. Adrien’s works focus on financial regulation, European integration and international macroeconomics. He has worked on subjects such as sovereign debt and the consultation on MiFID II at ReDefine. After graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique and the London School of Economics in Finance and Economics, Adrien TENNE started working in the Directerate General of the Treasury at the French Ministry of Finance. He focused on macroeconomics and global financial regulation analysis. He then joined the French Government Shareholding Agency (Agence des Participations de l’État). There, he worked within the Finance and Service department, following in particular the orderly resolution plan of the bank Dexia, as approved by the European Commission.

 

Frances Coppola
Finance Fellow

Frances Coppola has a long and diverse career in financial management, communication and technology. She has spent many years working for banks, where much of her work was concerned with settlement, accounting and risk management systems. She is an experienced writer and commentator with significant expertise in banks and regulation, financial analysis, macroeconomics, monetary & fiscal policy, and political economy. She has written extensively about banking and finance, international payments and foreign exchange, the future of the Euro, and digital currencies for a wide range of media and industry publications including the Financial Times, American Express, the Independent, Open Democracy, CapX and CoinDesk. Frances is also a commentator for the BBC and Jazz FM and is in demand as a speaker at economics and finance conferences. Her blog Coppola Comment is widely read in the finance & economics community. Her Book “The Case for People’s QE” was Bloomberg’s Book of the Month in September 2019 and was listed on Martin Wolf’s summer reading list at the Financial Times. She is an Associate of the Royal College of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She is also a Visiting Fellow at Sheffield University’s Faculty of Law.

 

Namik Richard Immelback
Finance Fellow and Research Co-ordinator

Namik Richard Immelback is an expert in global macro investment management spanning research strategy and Portfolio construction. He has significant experience of developing and implementing investment processes and presenting to clients. In the past he has brought the business development and oversight role as a consultant in sectors outside of finance. He has worked and lived in different countries and cultures like the Philippines, Italy, USA and Sweden.

 

Dimpal Kapoor
Finance and Operations Fellow

Dimpal Kapoor is an accomplished operations professional and project manager with extensive experience building and managing international teams across financial services, consulting, business process outsourcing, and technology companies. She has a two-decade track record of having improved productivity, reduced costs and increased customer satisfaction, and leading successful change management initiatives at a range of global firms across three continents. At GE Asset Management, for example, Dimpal was responsible for building and managing the global team to support a USD 70 billion asset portfolio. At Netlink, an IT hardware and service startup, she oversaw operations and helped build the company through a period of 2500% expansion. More recently, she led multiple change management operations at Kemper Insurance in Austin, Texas.

 

Kate Mackenzie
Sustainability and Communications Fellow

Kate Mackenzie is an independent consultant advising organisations pursuing the Paris Agreement goals on climate change, particularly in relation to finance and economics, strategy, and communication. She is also a regular contributor for Bloomberg Green, where she writes the “Stranded Assets” column. She has a particular interest in financial regulation, and has worked with CDP on this topic, co-authoring the “Climate Horizons” guide to finance-climate scenarios, which was awarded “Best non-broker research” by the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia, and convening with financial regulators APRA and the Reserve Bank of Australia. Kate was formerly director of Finance, Policy and Decision Metrics at Climate-KIC Australia, Head of Finance & investment at The Climate Institute and a financial journalist, winning awards at the Financial Times and The Australian.

She is a member of several advisory committees relating to the application of climate science, including the federally funded NESP Climate Hub, and is an associate of Climate-KIC Australia.

 

Dr Ulrika Stavlöt
Sustainability Fellow

Ulrika Stavlöt’s career spans research, analysis and teaching in various areas of policy; European economic policy at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS); climate and entrepreneurship policy at Forum for Reforms, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (FORES); and most recently, growth policy at the Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis. She has also been participating in a project for the OECD Development Centre, covering policy coherence of aid and trade in Uganda. Ulrika holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm University and a B.Sc. in environmental and natural resource economics at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

 

Dr. Raj Thamotheram
Sustainability and Finance Fellow

Dr Thamotheram is a pioneer in the field of long-term, sustainable investing and a serial entrepreneur – most recently, as the Founder & Executive Chair of Preventable Surprises, a think-tank and advocacy network that focuses on institutional investors. Raj has worked in the investment industry in senior positions at a large UK pension fund (Universities Superannuation Scheme) and with a global fund manager (AXA IM). At USS, he specialised in cutting edge collaborative stewardship projects. He was part of the core group that designed and launched the UN Principles of Responsible Investment and he was the founder/co-founder of Pharma Shareowners Group, the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), the Enhanced Analytics Initiative (EAI), PharmaFutures and “Managing Pension Funds as if the Long Term Matters” competition (with Hewitt Associates). He is recognized as a well-informed iconoclast. Global Proxy Watch named him “one of the 10 most influential figures in the corporate governance field” in 2004 and 2008, and he has been voted one of the top 10 “Most positive contributors to SRI & CG” in the Independent Research in Responsible Investment (global) poll in 2017 and again in 2018. Raj writes a monthly column for Investment Professionals Europe (IPE) called “Long Term Matters”, lectures widely and is a champion for “positive mavericks” in the investment community. Prior to this, Raj worked with NGOs and corporations in various roles (Head of International Advocacy, ActionAid and Director, Ethical Trading Initiative).