Anita Tiessen

Trustee

Anita Tiessen is the CEO of Youth Business International, the global network of expert organisations focused on helping young people start, grow or sustain their own business.

Her career has focused on international development and human rights, with previous CEO or senior executive roles at the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, UNICEF UK, and Amnesty International. Now based in the UK, she initially worked as a journalist and government communicator in her native Canada. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Management from York University.

Latest

Sustainability’s secret weapon: Procurement approaches as a way of creating environmental, social and economic value

Business is changing, and procurement is emerging as a secret weapon. Forum's Principal Change Designer, Felicity Butler, discusses the need to rethink procurement processes and buying strategies that are primarily focused on cost-savings and risk mitigation. What’s our alternative and how can we get there?
Step up or step back? Hero or villain? Will business go far enough, fast enough in this decisive decade?

Here, Forum’s Global Strategic Lead for Business, James Payne, hones in on the opportunity for businesses in transition, highlighting four key unlocks: visionary leadership, rethinking supply chains, reimagining consumption and creating an enabling context.
Creating an Enabling Context

Change is possible if businesses step up to help influence, rethink and reshape our economic structures. This includes intellectual property rights, corporate tax regimes, limited liability legal entities, the global financial structure and more. Forum is collaborating with key stakeholders throughout the market ecosystem, such as financial institutions, regulators and civil society organisations, who influence the actions, goals and incentives of businesses.
Transforming Consumption

The true cost of our purchases goes beyond the price tag and can have significant social and environmental consequences. Transforming Consumption aims to engage influencers, media, brands, consumers, and other actors in envisioning and exploring more sustainable ways of consuming and living that are aspirational, affordable, and actionable.

Emily Bushby

Emily Bushby has been the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at GuarantCo since January 2022. She was Interim Chief Executive Officer from May to December 2021 and joined the company as Chief Operating Officer in March 2018.
Rita Clifton CBE

Rita is a portfolio chair and non-executive director of leading businesses and in the non-profit sector. She joined Forum for the Future as Chair of the Board of Trustees in December, 2020.
Laura McGonigal

Laura leads on the sustainability agenda for the Ecover and Method brands in Europe. She has a passion for systems change and believes in the power of brands to make the world a better place.
Andrew Winston

Andrew is a globally recognized expert on how companies can navigate and profit from humanity’s biggest challenges. His book, The Big Pivot, was selected as one of the "Best Business Books" by Strategy+Business magazine.
Noa Gafni

Noa is the Founder and CEO of Trust Collab. Noa began her career as an entrepreneur, founding a social network for women in 2005. She then joined the founding digital team at Hearst Magazines as Head of Social Media.
Jonny Wates

Jonny sees sustainability as a key to the long term resilience of organisations, humanity and the planet itself. He is a fourth generation owner of the Wates Group, where the common cause of the owners is to hand on a stronger enterprise to the next generation.
Heather Grady

Heather is a Vice President in the San Francisco office of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and leads the organization’s strategy and program development in global philanthropy, including collaboratives and research.
Charlotte Ersbøll

Charlotte joined the board of Forum for the Future in 2019. She is a senior advisor to the United Nations Global Compact, and a partner in Hansen & Ersbøll Agenda.
Volker Beckers

Volker has built up more than 20 years’ senior experience within the utility industry and has a comprehensive knowledge of European energy markets. He was Group CEO, RWE Npower plc until the end of 2012.

The Five Capitals - a framework for sustainability

The Five Capitals Model provides a basis for understanding sustainability in terms of the economic concept of wealth creation or ‘capital’. Any organisation will use five types of capital to deliver its products or services. A sustainable organisation will maintain and where possible enhance these stocks of capital assets, rather than deplete or degrade them.
For a just and regenerative future

Forum for the Future is a leading international sustainability non-profit running out of offices in the UK, US, India and Singapore.
Jobs

We are a growing organisation and we are regularly on the look out for new recruits to join our teams around the world.
Growing our Future US

Working together to accelerate the transition to a just and regenerative agriculture system in the United States.
Sustainability and system change

Climate change, malnutrition, inequality, poverty, ecological degradation. The global challenges we face are so urgent and tricky that we need a solution to match their scale and complexity. This is where system change comes in. We use systems thinking to understand the web of interrelations that create complex problems, anticipate unintended consequences, and identify how and where to take action to meet the SDG goals.
What is Net Positive?

We reinvent strategies for a 1.5°C world. Our Net Positive approach helps business put back more into society and environment than it takes out. Unilever’s pioneering commitment to eliminate fossil fuels from its operations and directly support the generation of more renewable energy than they consume was driven behind the scenes by Forum.
Become a system change agent

Learn more about upcoming system change programmes and express your interest.
Trailblazing sustainability strategies

Leadership in the 2020s is about your organisation’s ability to positively influence its operating context. We help you to understand the opportunities, and then how to unlock them.
Cotton 2040

Cotton 2040 aims to create a resilient cotton industry in an increasingly climate-disrupted world by bringing together stakeholders across the value chain.
6 ways Unilever has achieved success through sustainability - and how your business can too

A year ago this week, Unilever launched its Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), one of the most ambitious strategies that a global company has ever embarked on. Pioneering a bold new business model, the company pledged to double in size at the same time as halving its environmental footprint.