After several years in fundraising at World Wildlife Fund Canada, and then managing customer care in B2B electronics and working as a senior analyst at Manulife Financial, I noticed things were not right with mainstream business.

Seeking positive impact through my work, in 2003 I entered the emergent field of “corporate social responsibility.” I began consulting for large companies, first as a senior manager at Canadian Business for Social Responsibility in Toronto. Then in 2010, I became a director at SustainAbility in New York.

I worked with numerous global players in banking, mining, energy, chemicals, food, agriculture, retail, tech, media, and more – leading what had become “ESG” strategy, investor communications, stakeholder dialogue, and executive engagement. I worked across regions, putting my French, German, and Portuguese language skills to work.

Striving for more impact than consulting company culture encouraged, I became an independent advisor in 2016. I collaborated with change agents such as Volans. I advised ESG leaders such as Suzano. And I led numerous cross-industry disclosure and reporting projects for BuzzWord.

Still, after two decades working with leaders and well-meaning teams, I saw that not only were we not solving the problems, we were making them worse.

I stopped working in mainstream sustainability and ESG in 2021. Now I tell the truth without the constraint of misguided ESG frameworks or truth-bending quarterly earnings. Guided by diverse wisdom, I advise and coach leaders and their teams, working towards my vision which is an economy in service of life.

That is an economy where all businesses—across all industry sectors—can only succeed by enabling society and the biosphere to thrive.

I have also voluntarily conducted open-source Matereality assessments on Google, TD Bank, Danone, and JBS. And I write incisive articles about plastic waste, lobbying, Net Zero, and more in the Matereal World substack.

All of my coaching, advising, research, and writing are done in service of this vision.

Land/social and Biophysical Acknowledgement: I reside in Montreal. I don’t make land acknowledgements as the government who receives my taxes does not have a plan for reparations (much less land back)