A Month of Speeches in Holland, Switzerland and UK

*Internal window in the old Stock Exchange, Zurich, 4 September: says AURA*

*Panel discussion on business as a tool for solving big problems, facilitated by Robert and featuring, from left to right, Robert, Renat Heuberger, Steve Westly and myself*

*Bad weather in Amsterdam, from the Hotel Jakarta, 6 September*

*Let my people go surfing and cycling, even in the rain: the venue for the Ashoka Circular Futures conference, Patagonia’s Amsterdam offices*

*Large-scale photograph of a a graffito on a small dam – one of the targets of a European campaign backed by Patagonia*

*Artists producing a painting that would later be cut up, with the pieces distributed to participants*

*View over the old Casino building in Bern, where the Swiss Energy and Climate Summit was held, 19 September*

*My co-panellist, Anders Wijkman, being made up; I’m already done*

*Joschka Fischer speaking at the end of the conference: why can’t every country have a politician like him?*

*Part of my route back from the cathedral to the conference venue*

*A small Dalí, a rare pleasure in an otherwise slightly boring and relatively expensive Museum of Art*

*A view from the Berenberg Bank, London, during an impact investment event they hosted, 20 September*

A fairly frenetic September to date, among many other things with speeches given in:

Zurich at the Innovation for Sustainability conference on 4 September, Taking Sustainability Exponential, followed by a panel discussion with other members included the venture capitalist Steve Westly, who I hadn’t seen for some years having been on an HP advisory group with him shortly after we started Volans);

Amsterdam, at the Ashoka CircularFutures event on 6 September, co-hosted by Patagonia and eBay, where I spoke alongside Ken Webster of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation;

Bern, where I spoke at a dinner on 18 September, the night before the Swiss Energy & Climate Summit opened, meeting former German Foreign Minister for the first time since some time around 1990, when we spoke at an event in Wiesbaden; followed by a panel session the next day, alongside Urs Gredig, Editor-in-Chief of CNNMoney, Switzerland, and Anders Wijkman; and then

London again, where I was part of a panel that formed the centrepiece of an evening event co-hosted by Berenberg, Philanthropy Impact and the Impact Investment Network. Chaired by Richard Brass, Berenberg’s Head of Wealth and Asset Management UK, the panel also featured David Connor (Founder, 2030Hub, Liverpool), Martin Ewald (Managing Director & Head of Investment Strategy, Infrastructure Equity, Allianz Global Investors) and Rupini Deepa Rajagopolan (Head of Berenberg’s ESG Office)

Otherwise work continued on our New Carbon Economy Pioneers program, with Richard Roberts organising an event alongside Governor Jerry Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) in California, where we launched our new White Paper, Our Carbon Future, on our Innovate UK event in Exeter, and on our Tomorrow’s Capitalism program. All in the teeth of headwinds created by e.g. Brexit and looming trade wars, but we are making real progress.

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