A Path to Net Zero - Virtual

Stephen Nolan has been at the forefront of the green and sustainable finance agenda in Ireland and internationally for the last decade. He is a Director of the International Sustainable Finance Centre of Excellence and Managing Director and Head of Secretariat of three major UNDP Sustainable Finance initiatives - UNDP Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S), UNDP Sustainable Insurance Forum (SIF), and Asia-Pacific Sustainable Finance Development Network. He is also Chair of Ireland’s Climate Finance Week Ireland series, a member of the international advisory grouping of the Climate Bonds Initiative, and a Sustainable Finance Skillnet Ireland Steering Committee member.

Stephen serves on several international sustainable finance working groups, including the IFSC Authority Sustainable Finance WG in India and the Swiss Building Bridges Committee. In 2021, he served on the Informal Working Group established to explore the development of the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). Stephen received the 2020 Irish Green Leader award, sponsored by Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. He is a former Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the Irish Department of Communications; Advisor to Kofi Annan’s UN ICT Task Force; and founding CEO of the UN-founded Global eSchools Initiative. Stephen has led and delivered initiatives from start-up to scale across both public and private spheres in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Jo Paisley has worked on a variety of risk areas at GRI, including stress testing, operational resilience, model risk management, and climate risk. Jo’s career began at the Bank of England where she worked in various economist roles, ran the Statistics Division, and spent the last part of her career in supervision. Her last role was as a Director of the Supervisory Risk Specialist Division within the Prudential Regulation Authority. This area provided deep technical risk expertise to front line supervisors across all risk disciplines, covering banking and insurance. She was also heavily involved in the design and execution of the U.K.’s first concurrent stress test in 2014.

Jo left the Bank in 2015 and joined HSBC as their Global Head of Stress Testing, where she was responsible for ensuring that they met all their regulatory stress testing requirements around the world. She has also worked as an independent stress testing consultant, advising firms on how to get the most value out of stress testing. Jo studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, before completing her MPhil in Economics at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Damien Pidgeon is responsible for the implementation of the climate change elements of Bank of Ireland’s Sustainability Strategy. Having joined Bank of Ireland in 2001, he has held a range of leadership roles across strategy, risk management, capital management, and analytics. Damien has led the establishment and implementation of key elements of Bank of Ireland’s risk management and analytics framework, including its risk appetite framework, stress testing capabilities, and internal capital adequacy assessment framework.

In his current role he is responsible for the implementation of the Group’s climate strategy to support the green transition which encompasses the achievement of the Group’s science-based emission reduction targets, the development of sustainable finance solutions for customers, and the implementation of climate and environmental risk management practices. Damien is a member of the European Banking Federation ESG Risk Task Force, Central Bank of Ireland Climate Risk Working Group, and UN Environment Programme - Finance Initiative.

Kathy Ryan is Head of Responsible Investment at Irish Life Investment Management (ILIM), and Vice Chair of CDP Ireland. At ILIM, Kathy leads the development and implementation of the Responsible Investment strategy across asset classes. She has a long track record in sustainable investing and has held a variety of roles in asset management, development finance, and the NGO sectors.

Prior to ILIM, Kathy worked at Aviva Investors, where she was responsible for ESG solutions and proprietary score development as well as crafting an ESG policy for the Aviva Life company. She was Executive Director at Global Green Investments (GGI), an independent sustainable consultancy, from 2013 to 2018 where she worked on climate risk methodology development and renewable energy financing with clients such as the World Bank and NGO’s including Carbon Tracker and Climate Policy Initiative. She was a member of the working group on the award-winning, ‘Investor Confidence Project’ to create a standardized methodology for energy efficiency projects and provided thought leadership on topics such as green bonds to the European Commission.

Prior to GGI, Kathy held a range of senior global research and risk management roles at Pioneer Investments, Credit Agricole, and JP Morgan.