The CSR Initiative Team

John G. Ruggie, Faculty Chair; and Berthold Beitz Professor in Business and Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School; Special Representative to the Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights, United Nations

John G. Ruggie is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Affiliated Professor in International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He also serves as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. Trained as a political scientist, Ruggie has made significant intellectual contributions to the study of international relations, focusing on the impact of globalization on global rule making. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he has received the International Studies Association’s “Distinguished Scholar” award, the American Political Science Association’s Hubert Humphrey award for “outstanding public service by a political scientist,” and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A recent survey published in Foreign Policy magazine identified him as one of the 25 most influential international relations scholars in the United States and Canada. Apart from his academic pursuits, Ruggie has long been involved in practical policy work, initially as a consultant to various agencies of the United Nations and the United States government. From 1997-2001 he was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Planning – a post created specifically for him by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. His responsibilities included establishing and overseeing the UN Global Compact, now the world’s largest corporate citizenship initiative; proposing and gaining General Assembly approval for the Millennium Development Goals; advising Annan on relations with Washington; and broadly contributing to the effort at institutional renewal for which Annan and the United Nations as a whole were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.Ruggie has been UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights since 2005. His mandate is to propose measures that will strengthen the human rights performance of the business sector around the world. In 2008 the UN Human Rights Council was unanimous in welcoming a policy framework he proposed for that purpose and extending the mandate for a further three years, asking him to build on and promote the framework so as to provide concrete guidance for states, businesses, and other social actors. For this achievement, Ethical Corporation magazine, published in the UK, named Ruggie among its top 10 “Ethical Leaders” for 2008.

Jane Nelson, Director; and Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School; Director, Business Leadership and Strategy, the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF); non-resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

During 2001 she worked in the office of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, preparing a report for the United Nations General Assembly on cooperation between the UN and the private sector, which supported the first UN resolution on such cooperation. Prior to joining the IBLF, Jane was a Vice President at Citibank and responsible for marketing for the bank's Worldwide Securities Services business and Financial Institutions Group in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. She has worked for the Business Council for Sustainable Development in Africa preparing a report for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and for FUNDES (Fundación para desarrollo sostenible) in Latin America undertaking research on small enterprise development. Jane has authored four books and over 50 fifty reports, papers, book chapters and articles on public-private partnerships and the changing role of business in society, especially in emerging markets, and co-authored four of the World Economic Forum's Global Corporate Citizenship reports. She serves on the advisory councils or boards of the World Environment Center, the ImagineNations Group, the Initiative for Global Development, the International Council of Toy Industries CARE process, the 21st Century Trust, the U.K. Environment Foundation, Instituto Ethos in Brazil, the International Council of Mining and Metals Resource Endowment Initiative, and on the faculty for Cambridge University’s ‘Business and Poverty’ leadership program. She has a BSc. Agricultural Economics from the University of Natal, South Africa, and an MA Politics, Philosophy and Economics, from Oxford University, and has been a Rhodes Scholar, a Rotary International student, a fellow of the 21st Century Trust, an Aspen Institute scholar, and recipient of the Keystone Center's 2005 ‘Leadership in Education’ Award.

Caroline Rees, Director, Governance and Accountability Program (non-resident)
Caroline Rees is the Director of the Governance and Accountability Program with the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative. Her main area of focus is on corporate accountability and human rights and in particular the development of grievance and dispute management mechanisms to address the conflicts arising between companies and groups they impact in society. She is currently on leave from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which she joined in 1992. While with the Foreign Office in London she worked variously on Iran, UN Security Council business and the East Timor crisis, and headed the London coordination team for the negotiations to enlarge the EU to central Europe.  She was posted to Slovakia following the split of Czechoslovakia, where she ran the UK’s transition aid program from 1994-1997.  From 2003 to 2006 she was posted at the UK’s Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, where she led the UK’s human rights negotiating team.  During that time she chaired the UN negotiations that led to the creation of the mandate of the UN SRSG on business and human rights, to which Professor Ruggie was subsequently appointed.   Caroline is a Trustee of the Institute for Human Rights and Business and Board Member of RESOLVE.  She has a BA Hons from Oxford University and an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School, Tufts University.

Shannon Murphy, Executive Director; and Associate Director, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School

Shannon is the Executive Director of the CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research interests focus on the intersection of religion and socially responsible business practices and private sector contributions to human capital development.  Shannon co-directs CSR's work in the Middle East with Director Jane Nelson and is leading our research on business partnerships for human capital development. She also serves as an Associate Director at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government.  In this capacity, she directs the Center’s communications and web strategy, oversees the execution of various faculty and program projects, and provides research and editing support for the CSRI.  Shannon is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Divinity School.

Christine Bader, Advisor to the UN Special Representative for Business & Human Rights

Christine Bader is an Advisor to Professor John Ruggie in his capacity as UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for business and human rights. She is focused on the part of Professor Ruggie's mandate that requests him "to elaborate further on the scope and content of the corporate responsibility to respect all human rights and to provide concrete guidance to business and other stakeholders". From 1999 - 2008, she was with BP plc, during which she worked in Indonesia, China, and the UK. With stints in corporate planning and investor relations, she spent most of her time with the company improving management of its social impacts. She has also served as a corps member with City Year; the first Teaching Fellow in Community Service at Phillips Academy in Andover; and a Special Assistant to the New York City Mayor's Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor for Community Development and Business Services. Christine has published articles on business and human rights in Stanford Social Innovation Review, Ethical Corporation, and China Rights Forum, and presented at numerous venues including Business for Social Responsibility's annual conference. She has a BA magna cum laude in American Studies from Amherst College and an MBA from Yale University. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kyle Stone. Kyle Stone is the Project Leader for the BASESWiki Project at the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative.  Previous to joining CSR, Kyle served as a web producer and content strategist in non-profit, for-profit, and academic environments.  Kyle earned his Bachelor’s degree in Hons. Philosophy and Gender Studies from Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where he served as a Student Technical Assistant to academic technologists at the Raether Information Center.  His research interests focus on assistive internet technologies, new media ethics, and the impact of digital activity on socialization and consciousness.

Nicola Bodger, Project Assistant for the BASESWiki Project at the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative. She has previous human rights experience with judicial focus having worked for a legal aid NGO in Cambodia, which particularly focused on access to justice, child labour and trafficking issues, as well as the AIRE Centre, a charity offering legal advice and representation to individuals on matters of European rights law. Nicola also has an LLM in Human Rights and Employment Law from Kings College London. More recently, Nicola has worked at Advocates for International Development where she gained particular interest in the role of the private sector in development. Nicola has an LLB law degree from Manchester University and is due to start her training as a solicitor in London in September 2010."

Research Fellows

Rachel Davis, Legal Advisor to the UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights; Research Fellow, Business and Human Rights

Rachel Davis is a Legal Advisor to John Ruggie in his capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights. She is responsible for the mandate’s work on access to justice, within the mandate’s broader framework of access to remedy for corporate-related human rights abuses. Rachel is an Australian lawyer with experience in both domestic and international legal issues, having clerked at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague and at the High Court of Australia, as well as having worked in the Australian Federal Attorney-General’s Department. At the International Peace Institute, a New York-based NGO focused on the UN, she managed the “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)” program. Rachel holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and a BA in Politics and International Relations and LLB from the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Rachel has a particular interest in legal issues concerning indigenous peoples, having worked and published in that area, including with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

Beth Jenkins, Economic Opportunity
As a non-resident fellow of the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative, Beth Jenkins focuses on the role of corporations in expanding economic opportunity in developing countries, particularly through inclusive or base-of-the-pyramid business models.  She is a consultant to IFC’s Corporate Advice Department and an advisor to UNDP’s Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative, and she blogs at NextBillion.net.  Before becoming a fellow, Beth directed the CSR Initiative’s Economic Opportunity Program, analyzing, documenting, and disseminating inclusive business activity together with partners such as the International Finance Corporation, United Nations Development Programme, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and NGOs and companies around the world.  Earlier in her career, Beth was responsible for developing and disseminating risk management concepts and capabilities at Booz | Allen | Hamilton, with special emphasis on the strategic risks companies face as a result of social, environmental, and international development issues.  She also spent five years working on base-of-the-pyramid business models in the information & communications technology and housing sectors at the World Resources Institute and Ashoka. She is a graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Vanessa Zimmerman, Legal Advisor to the UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights; Research Fellow, Business and Human Rights (non-resident)

Since 2006, Vanessa Zimmerman has been a Legal Advisor to John Ruggie in his capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights.  She leads Professor Ruggie’s work on the state duty to protect – in simple terms, his elaboration and guidance on the role of states in protecting against corporate-related human rights harm. In this work, Vanessa focuses in particular on ways in which to increase domestic and international policy coherence with respect to business and human rights, including in policy domains such as corporate and securities law and the international trade regime, which have traditionally been kept institutionally separate from human rights concerns. Vanessa is an Australian lawyer, based in Melbourne, with experience in both domestic and international legal issues, having worked with the Australian Delegation to the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as having worked as a competition lawyer at the Australian law firm of Mallesons Stephen Jaques and Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications provider. Vanessa holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and a BA in Japanese and History and LLB (Hons) from Monash University in Melbourne.

Michael Wright. Michael Wright is a Legal Advisor to John Ruggie in his capacity as UN Special Representative to the Secretary-General (SRSG) on business and human rights.  He currently leads the SRSG's global open-source initiative on non-judicial grievance mechanisms, aimed at advancing access to, the improvement of, and learning from mechanisms that can address grievances and disputes between companies and their external stakeholders.  Mr. Wright has also completed two extensive studies for the SRSG, "Business Recognition of Human Rights: Global Patterns, Regional and Sectoral Variations" and "Corporations and Human Rights: A Survey of the Scope and Patterns of Alleged Corporate-Related Human Rights Abuse".  Before joining the mandate, he worked at the UN Global Compact and also served as an NGO Consultant on corporate responsibility in Sudan.  Domestically, he worked on commercial litigation for the City of New York and plaintiff-side on federal civil rights suits as a Haywood Burns Fellow.  He has also published in the civil rights area and served as Editor-in-Chief of Race and the Law Review.  Mr. Wright is currently a member of the Carnegie Council's New Leaders Program.  He holds a BA magna cum laud in Social Work/Business from University of Maryland and a Juris Doctorate from Rutgers University. 

Senior Fellows

David Grayson, Senior Fellow; and Chair and Founding Director, Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management, UK

David Grayson is Chair and Founding Director of the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management (UK). Grayson is a former Managing-Director of Business in the Community, a UK-based organization working to improve the impact of business on society with over 750 corporate members employing some 12 million people in over 200 countries worldwide. He remains a part-time director focused on sustainability and small businesses, and chairs the UK's Small Business Consortium, which encourages responsible business practices among small and medium enterprises and has served on numerous other advisory bodies for business, government, and nonprofit organizations. The Financial Times has described him as, "one of the UK's most respected voices on business social responsibility." His books include: Corporate Social Opportunity - Seven Steps to make Corporate Social Responsibility work for your business and Everybody's Business - both with Adrian Hodges. He was co-founder and director of Project North East which has worked on enterprise and small business development in over 40 countries. Grayson was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Brussels and has held Visiting Fellowships with a number of business schools.

Anne Habiby, Senior Fellow; and co-founder of AllWorld Network

Anne is one of the founders of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a non-profit launched in 1995 by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter to expand the job and business base of distressed urban areas. From 1996 to mid 2005, Anne led the organization as its Co-Executive Director, collaborating closely with Michael Porter to advance the economic potential of inner cities. Anne was instrumental in creating the Inner City 100 with Inc. Magazine, an annual ranking of the fastest growing companies in America's urban areas.  In 2008 she co-founded AllWorld Network with Deirdre Coyle to take their work with Michael Porter international.  AllWorld Network is creating AllWorld Rankings to identify fast growth companies from the emerging world (Africa 500, Arabian 500, Asian 500 and Americas 500) and help countries develop entrepreneurial growth strategies, and will also launch AllWorld Media and AllWorld Ventures. Anne is a visiting scholar at the Illinois Institute of Technology where her course "Strategic Competitiveness in the Next Economy" is a required course of MBA students. Anne is the author of the forthcoming book "What's Your GPS? Global Positioning Systems for Entrepreneurial Cities." Prior to her work at ICIC, Anne was an investment banker in the Public Finance Department of Morgan Stanley & Co. specializing in finance for hospitals and universities.

Mark Kramer, Senior Fellow; and Founder and Managing Director, FSG Social Impact Advisors

Mark Kramer is also a founder and served as initial Board Chair from 2000 to 2004 of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a nonprofit research organization in the United States. He has spoken and published extensively on topics in philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, including strategy, evaluation, leadership, social entrepreneurship, community foundations, venture philanthropy, cross-sector collaboration, and social investment. He is co-author, with Professor Michael E. Porter, of three influential Harvard Business Review articles entitled "Philanthropy's New Agenda: Creating Value" (1999), "The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy" (2002), and "Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility" (2006).  In the Stanford Social Innovation Review he has published with John Kania "Game Changing CSR" (2006) and with Professor Ron Heifetz "Leading Boldly" (2005). He is also a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Prior to founding FSG, Mark served for twelve years as President of Kramer Capital Management, a venture capital firm, and before that as an Associate at the law firm of Ropes & Gray in Boston. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Brandeis University, an M.B.A. from The Wharton School, and a J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

John Sherman, Senior Fellow

John is Vice Chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee of the International Bar Association and a member of the UN Global Compact Human Rights Working Group.   He recently retired after thirty years as deputy general counsel for National Grid, one of the world’s largest utilities.  John was the company’s top lawyer for litigation, environmental law, and ethics in the US, and for corporate responsibility and human rights globally.  He has written and spoken extensively on the emerging convergence of corporate law, business ethics, and human rights. John’s research at the Kennedy School will focus on the internalization of hard law and soft law into corporate values that drive a company’s human rights conduct; it will build upon the work he did on corporate human rights accountability as National Grid's representative to the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Holly Wise, Senior Fellow; and President of Wise Solutions

Through her consultancy practice, Wise Solutions LLC, Holly brings international development, corporate social responsibility, public-private alliance, and business development expertise to corporations, foundations and non-profits.  She serves as a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, teaches enterprise development at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and sits on the boards of WRAP, GlobalGiving and LivingGoods.  Ms. Wise is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Holly Wise spent 26 years in the foreign service with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), achieving the diplomatic rank of Minister Counselor.  She is the founder and first Secretariat Director of the Global Development Alliance, USAID’s business model that forges strategic alliances between public and private partners in addressing international development issues.  Under her leadership 300 alliances were formed with $1.1 billion in USAID funding leveraging $3.8 billion in private resources for the world’s poor.  In addition to overseas tours in Uganda, Kenya, Barbados, the Philippines and China, Ms. Wise served as USAID chair at the National Defense University where she taught political science, environmental courses, and published research on China. Ms. Wise is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Connecticut College and holds advanced degrees from Yale University and the National Defense University.      

Simon Zadek, Senior Fellow; and Founder, AccountAbility

Dr Simon Zadek is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Government and Business of Harvard University’s Kennedy School. He founded, and was until recently Chief Executive of AccountAbility, where he established the organisation’s global leadership in sustainability standards, collaborative governance and responsible competitiveness, extending its impact from bases in Beijing, Sao Paulo, London and Washington, and through activities in South Africa and across the Middle East. Simon sits on the International Advisory Board of the Brazilian business network, Instituto Ethos, the Advisory Board of the sustainability fund manager, Generation Investment Management, and the Boards of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development and the Employers’ Forum on Disability. In 2003 he was named a World Economic Forum ‘Global Leader for Tomorrow’. Simon’s work with businesses, governments and international organisations over the last decade has contributed to establishing responsible business on the global map as a core business strategy and public policy issue and practice.

Faculty Steering Group

John G. Ruggie, Chair

David Gergen, Professor of Public Service; Director, Center for Public Leadership, at Harvard Kennedy School

Alex S. Jones, Lecturer in Public Policy; Director, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at the Harvard Kennedy School

Mark H. Moore, Hauser Professor of Nonprofit Organizations and Faculty Director of the Hauser Center, at Harvard Kennedy School