Kicked off the week outside Windsor at the Sustainable Brands 2015 conference. Spoke in the opening session with Koann Skrziniarz of SB and Albert Bosch Riera, the explorer – who among many other things has climbed all seven of the world’s highest mountains. His theme: ‘The Spirit of Adventure.’ Travelled back towards London with him after our session ended – we got on like the proverbial house on fire and ended up hugging goodbye.
The rest of the week slightly blurred by, though we had a fascinating meeting of the Friends Life/Aviva Stewardship Committee of Reference, on the 23rd floor of the Aviva Undershaft building in the City of London. Very interesting presentation from Amec Foster Wheeler on how they see and handle the ethicals to sustainability agenda.
Then had to scoot out to T5 for the flight to Madrid, for the annual meeting of the LEAD initiative developed by the UN Global Compact. The security was not noticeably tighter after the terrible events in Paris on Friday 13th. Great welcome as we arrived late for the UNGC reception, after which we headed on to a delightful supper with Richard Northcote of Covestro.
A well produced UNGC event the next day, co-hosted by Endesa in their extraordinary HQ building, not far from the airport. Met some very useful people and had a potentially landmark discussion with Lise Kingo, who now runs the UNGC. More anon on that, hopefully.
First snow this week, yesterday morning – great clods of fluffy snow falling, as though someone was plucking a goose in the heavens. Walked across to the bookshop to browse and came back with two huge history times, Eugene Rogan’s The Fall of the Ottomans and James Holland’s The War in the West. A bit like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter, though a fair amount of travel to come before Christmas.
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