Short course 6

Speakers and facilitators

Alison Atherton, Research Director ISF

Alison  has a background in social sciences and chartered accountancy and over a decade of experience in sustainability research and consultancy. Alison has worked with many organisations to assist them in measuring and improving their triple bottom line sustainability performance. She has extensive experience in projecting planning, management and implementation, including large, multi-year, multi-partner projects. Alison's primary research interest is in institutional and organisational change and learning for sustainability. Her research projects have covered the areas of energy efficiency and energy productivity, strategies for carbon reduction, energy and climate change policy, electricity market reform, sustainable transport, sustainable buildings, behavioural and organisational change, deliberative democracy, corporate sustainability, packaging sustainability, supply chain sustainability, tools and frameworks for measuring sustainability performance and measurement and monetisation of environmental impacts of organisations. Her clients include all levels of government and government agencies, the not-for-profit and private sectors. Prior to joining ISF, Alison worked for KPMG on corporate sustainability and prior to that, she worked for the UK leading sustainable development organisation Forum for the Future, developing tools for monetising organisations environmental and social impacts. From 2005-2010 Alison also worked part time for the Purves Environmental Fund, a private environmental fund with a focus on climate change and environmental education, managing all aspects of the Fund's grant-giving activities.

The Honourable Bob Carr, Industry Professor (Business and Climate Change), UTS; Former Premier of NSW and Australian Foreign Minister

The Honourable Bob Carr is Industry Professor (Business and Climate Change) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Professor Carr works with the Institute for Sustainable Futures and the UTS School of Business, bringing his unique skills and experience to diverse portfolios, including business and industry, international relations and climate change research and policy. Professor Carr is a former Foreign Minister of Australia (2012-2013). He is also the longest continuously serving Premier in New South Wales history (1995-2005).  Between 2014-2019 he was Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at UTS, the only think tank in Australia devoted to the study of the Australia-China relationship.

Dr Deborah Cotton, Senior Lecturer, UTS Business School, Finance Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney 

Dr Deborah Cotton is a senior lecturer in the Finance Discipline of the UTS Business School and has a Masters of Environmental and Business Management and a PhD in Applied Finance for a thesis titled the Efficacy of Emissions Trading Schemes. Her research interests include environmental, social and governance issues in investment decisions and impact investing. She has worked with the Responsible Investment Association Australasia on an Investor Toolbox on Human Rights for practitioner use and currently on a project incorporating Indigenous issues into investment decisions. Deborah was a member of a working party as part of the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative. She is a founding member of the Investing for Impact Initiative in the UTS Business School and has been lead investigator in a number of successful research projects and grants at UTS including in 2019 an assessment on current renewable energy for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Deborah has also published in academic journals and has chapters in two books on sustainability.

 

Prof. David Karoly, Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Climate Science Centre, CSIRO Climate Resilient Enterprise 

David Karoly is an internationally recognised expert on climate change and climate variability. He is a Chief Research Scientist in the CSIRO Climate Science Centre. He is also an honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne. He was Leader of the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub in the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, based in CSIRO, during 2018-21. Professor Karoly was a member of the National Climate Science Advisory Committee during 2018-19. From 2012 to 2017, he was a member of the Climate Change Authority, which provides advice to the Australian government on responding to climate change, including targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He has been involved in the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001, 2007, 2014 and 2021 in several different roles. He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2019.

 

Donna Lopata, PhD candidate, UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), University of Technology Sydney 

Donna is a PhD candidate at UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) with a research interest in sustainable finance. Her thesis topic is focused on the consideration and mitigation of financially-material carbon risk within Australian superannuation portfolios. Prior to joining ISF, Donna worked at Morningstar Australasia, where she was responsible for reviewing and rating managed funds across a broad range of asset classes. Donna holds a Bachelor of Arts from RMIT University and a Master of Commerce (Finance) from The University of Sydney.

 

Kriti Nagrath, Senior Research Consultant, ISF 

Kriti Nagrath is an environmental scientist with over a decade of experience in public and private sectors focusing on germane issues of sustainability. Her recent research has focussed on understanding and developing decarbonisation pathways at the global as well as local levels. She is working with regional Australian councils to develop EV charging strategies that contribute to their net zero targets. Her past experience includes working in in India and Malawi exploring business models for providing bottom of the pyramid populations access to basic services like water and housing and technology and knowledge transfer. Kriti has worked with local governments in developing favourable policy environments for accelerated adoption of cleaner technologies. Previously she was involved in developing Clean Development Mechanism projects on renewable energy.

 

Dr Sarah Niklas, Research Consultant, ISF 

Sarah Niklas is a researcher with interests in sustainability issues, climate change adaption and the transition towards economies based on renewable energy and social justice.  Over the last year, Sarah has worked on Australian and international projects developing sectoral pathways towards net zero. Her research focused on emission and energy intensive industries including the steel, aluminium and cement sector. Other notable research projects Sarah has been working on include community microgrid applications for bushfire-prone regions and trust building in the electricity market.

 

Gordon Noble, Partnership Manager, Institute for Sustainable Futures; Co-author of Australian Sustainable Finance Roadmap 

Gordon Noble is a Partnership Manager at ISF. For the past 30 years, he has worked across Australia’s financial system in a variety of roles including ones with the Principles for Responsible Investment and Cbus. He has a deep understanding of financial system regulation through policy roles that have included advising Labor’s Shadow minister for financial services.

In 2020 Gordon co-authored the Australian Sustainable Finance Roadmap with the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative. He’s also written chapters in books including the Palgrave Handbook of Climate Resilient Societies, Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business In Association Future Earth and Cambridge Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty.

 

Dr Simran Talwar, Senior Research Consultant, ISF 

Simran is Senior Research Consultant in the Resource Stewardship group at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS. She has over 11 years of research and industry experience in circular economy, policy, and business strategy. Simran’s research areas are cross-disciplinary, spanning circular economy, industrial ecosystems and networks, competitive dynamics, and technological, structural, and institutional transformation for sustainability. Her doctoral thesis was an empirical investigation into the circular economy, with a focus on closed-loop materials, energy and water exchange networks and industrial symbiosis ecosystem emergence. She has undertaken applied research across chemical, pharmaceutical, construction, cement, steel, and bio-products industries.