SVM2020 – Speaker Profile – Caroline Rees
Social Value Matters 2020
Speaker Profile
Caroline Rees
“Our focus is on how business makes its money.”
For over a decade, Shift has partnered with Fortune 500 companies, national governments, financial institutions, prime sporting bodies, intergovernmental institutions and civil society organizations to advance this mission.
Shift also partners with other actors who influence business behavior, such as national governments seeking to put in place measures that influence business behavior; financial institutions and investors, who shape business practice by creating the right incentives for them to respect human rights; and other stakeholders of companies, including trade unions and civil society organizations.
As a mission-driven non-profit, Shift also combines its hands-on expertise with research and analysis to develop tools for public use, in order to raise the bar for all businesses with regards to human rights. This includes Shift’s dedicated tools to improve non-financial disclosure; and practical guidance and case studies to help companies grappling with specific issues -such as trade union rights or sustainability strategies. Its most recent venture is Valuing Respect: a collaborative platform to co-design better methods and indicators to evaluate companies’ human rights performance.
Caroline’s insights come from her career in the public and non-profit sectors. Prior to co-founding Shift, she was the Director of the Governance and Accountability Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Corporate Responsibility Initiative. Caroline served as a British diplomat for fourteen years, with experience covering Iran, Slovakia, the European Union, the UN Security Council, and the UN Human Rights Council.