Speaker

Valeria Piani is Head of Stewardship at Phoenix Group. She joined the firm in September 2021 to lead a stewardship team and collaborate with Phoenix’s Asset Management partners to influence ESG performance by investee companies. She has over 15 years of experience in the industry and has held a number of senior positions at different firms. She joined UBS Asset Management in 2017 as Strategic Engagement Lead responsible for the manager’s climate change engagement programme, stewardship reporting and integration research in the industrial sector. Prior to this, Valeria worked for nine years as Associate Director at the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) where she managed a team of 11 members responsible for coordinating investor collaborative engagement activities with companies on a range of ESG issues. When at the PRI, she supported over 30 investors coalitions involving more than 200 asset owners and investment managers. Topics included among others director nomination, gender diversity, emissions reduction and human rights. Her recent publications include reports on engaging on climate change and the added value of stewardship more broadly. Her research on the effectiveness of shareholders’ collaborative engagement activities with companies on ESG issues has been published by the Business & Society Journal and Emerald Group Publishing and was selected by the editors as an Outstanding Author Contribution in the 2014 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence. Valeria is currently a member of the PRI Advisory Committee of Advance, the AOA Engagement and Policy Dialogue Track, the IIGCC Net Zero Stewardship working group, the UK Transition Plan Taskforce workstream focused on sector templates and the UK Taskforce on Social Factors.