Emily Pierce, Head of Global Policy, Persefoni
Long live the post horn by Vigdid Hjorth
It was a recommendation from the staff at a local bookshop and caught my eye – it’s about a woman in midlife who rediscovers her curiosity, empathy and energy while running a PR campaign against an EU directive on postal services. A little bit of politics, a lot of humanity.
Feel freeZadie Smith
It’s a collection of essays about art, music, film, and pop culture – like a series of conversations over a cup of coffee with a friend who always shares insightful observations with me. Each of these essays piques my curiosity to learn more about the topic she’s covering.
Dog songsMary Oliver
It’s all about dogs – the joy they radiate and what they teach us.
Piet Klop, Head of Responsible Investment, PGGM
Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
It’s a chilling read, in part because real news often seems like foreshadowing of the climate dramas that unfold in the book. It’s also an insightful read about the macroeconomic levers that must be pulled to control global warming.
Andy Howard, Global Head of Sustainable Investments, Schroders
The Key Man by Simon Clark and Will Louch
I’m a fan of financial thrillers and this book about the Abraaj Group, which has attracted the attention and capital of some notable groups to its vision of impact investing, is a gripping novel. It also reminds me that sustainable and impact investing is not immune to the risks and challenges that have provided the fodder for countless stories in the investment and finance world.
Borders and beyondedited by Ugo Bardi and Carlos Alvarez Pereira
It’s been a while, but I keep coming back to the work that Donella Meadows and her colleagues originally did in the 1970s on systems analysis to connect the many different challenges and threats that sustainable investing poses. There is a lot to read on individual issues, but little that attempts to connect these issues into a unified framework. And while the model they develop is far from perfect, the question they ask is one that will become increasingly important for all of us.
Five times faster by Simon Sharpe
This book was a finalist in the FT Business Book of the Year Awards, sponsored by Schroders. It makes a compelling case for the need to act faster on climate change, something I think many of us are aware of. Simon Sharpe’s perspectives from the front lines of many of the policy discussions that have brought us to this increasingly precarious state of our planet are insightful, and his recommendations for a new course of action to accelerate change are urgently needed.
Héléna Charrier, Solution Manager, La Banque Postale AM
Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by Guy Delisle
This award-winning graphic novel follows the personal experiences of the author, a French comic book writer, who follows his humanitarian wife from Doctors Without Borders.
Through the everyday life of a father with two children, simply living his family life, getting to know communities and actively moving around the area, the book offers an insightful look at the city, the metropolitan area and its complex system of communities and borders. With simple observations of local neighborhoods, traffic and urban planning, it sheds light on the tightened security policy and its impact on the people and on the diversity of opinion in Israel.
Published more than a decade ago, the book provides a highly subjective and light-hearted insight into a complex, well-documented subject. It proved to be timely reading as we had fulfilled a number of normative due diligence obligations under our human rights policy.
Adam Kanzer, Head of Stewardship Americas, BNP Paribas AM
Intertwined Life: How Fungi Create Our Worlds, Change Our Thinking, and Shape Our Future by Merlin Sheldrake
This book was mind blowing. I read the abridged illustrated version which is full of amazing photos. The book was so good that I now plan to read the unabridged version.
Taming the Street: The Old Guard, the New Deal, and FDR’s Fight to Regulate American Capitalism by Diana B Henriques
Diana Henriques gave the lunchtime keynote at the recent Council of Institutional Investors conference and it was fascinating. I think it’s important to revisit why we have the Securities and Exchange Commission and regulated capital markets in the first place, as the SEC’s role and mission have been clouded by many misunderstandings, inadvertent and otherwise. In the process, the SEC’s mission to serve the public interest has been lost. FDR was arguably the closest thing to a socialist president in the United States. If you think he created the SEC solely to serve investors – the wealthiest Americans at the time – then you should probably take some time to read up on history.
Pierre Devichi, Head of Responsible Investment, ERAFP
Scarlett and Novak by Alain Damasio
Damasio is a science fiction writer and I like his political and technological perspectives the most, as I recently enjoyed reading Les Furtifs. It depicts a dystopian world where everything is owned by private companies (LVMH bought the city of Paris, for example) and technology is embedded in every detail of daily life; all of this is described with a wealth of well-thought-out neologisms. Scarlett is the AI embedded in Novak’s “Brightphone,” which he loses during an escape attempt, and the story is apparently about living without the technology you’re used to.
Finally, a confidential book recommendation from someone who doesn’t like to make public that he is talking to her RI – The recommended title is consistent with this position:
The opposable spirit by Roger Martin
“It’s about reconciling conflicting positions.” – any guesses as to what RI area this person works in…?
