CCI is delighted to welcome its 2022 Turner Fellow – Elree Winnett Seelig

Elree Winnett Seelig is a Managing Director and Global Head of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) for Citi’s Markets business. Elree’s role at Citi gives little clue to her huge passion for the natural environment, and her desire to use her experience and position in the financial sector to foster positive change for biodiversity. CCI is absolutely delighted that, as a CCI Turner Fellow, Elree will be sharing her knowledge, networks and ambition to drive change together with the CCI community.

During her year-long Fellowship, Elree will be meeting with members of the CCI community in a mutual sharing of expertise and experience, as well as hosting a series of events to explore various aspects of the financial sector and how this sector can, and does, interface with biodiversity. While these discussions will undoubtedly be wide-ranging, Elree’s broad focus during her Fellowship will include:

• Sustainable debt, with a particular consideration of matters relating to forest protection and habitat restoration
• Exploration of the role of corporate institutions and financial markets in landscape-scale conservation and restoration initiatives
• Identifying best practices for financial market engagement with the carbon market, advocacy (regulation), sustainability targets, etc.
• Biodiversity data and biodiversity-aware portfolio construction
• How to integrate ecosystem degradation considerations in investment decisions, starting with data and mapping to corporate activities
• The implications for biodiversity of the increasing number of high-level agreements and guidelines regarding sustainable investing by financial markets, such as the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation’s Adverse Impact Principles, the EU Taxonomy Minimum Safeguards, the Task Force for Nature-based Financial Disclosure, and the UN’s biodiversity plan and financial integration.

On taking up the post, Elree shared: “I have been a passionate conservationist my entire life and a professional in financial markets. This unique partnership is a golden opportunity to bring together academia, conservationists, and the financial services industry. Pooling intellectual capital, not just financial capital, will be critical to driving biodiversity solutions quickly and at scale.”

The Turner Fellowship Programme has been established to enable the CCI partners to engage with world-leading academics as well as influential individuals from mainstream business, policy and civil society. Fellows spend their fellowship immersed within the CCI ‘ecosystem’, interacting with the CCI community through lectures, workshops, and informal discussions. CCI’s campus within the David Attenborough Building, in central Cambridge, was designed to support the networking and collaboration that underpin CCI’s work, and thus a spell of time within the campus rapidly generates connections, encounters and exposure to new ideas and ways of thinking. CCI is immensely grateful to Dr Patricia Turner, co-founder of the Turner Kirk Trust, for establishing the Turner Fellowship.

Find out more on the Turner Fellowship Programme webpage.