Non-Resident Fellows
Rachel Davis, Senior Program Fellow
Rachel served for five years as Legal Advisor to Professor John Ruggie, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights, helping develop the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. She is now the Managing Director of Shift, a new, nonprofit center on business and human rights practice, chaired by Professor Ruggie and staffed by a team that was centrally involved in shaping and writing the Guiding Principles. At the Corporate Responsibility Initiative, she leads a project on the costs of company-community conflict. Rachel previously served as a policy advisor to the UN Special Advisor on the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, and clerked at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague and at the High Court of Australia. She has a particular interest and expertise in issues related to indigenous peoples, having advised the Australian Federal Attorney-General’s Department in this field. Rachel is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where she also lectured in law. She has published on a range of legal topics, and is a regular speaker on issues related to business and human rights. more>
Lisa Dreier, Senior Program Fellow
From 2005 - 2018, Lisa founded and led the World Economic Forum’s largest and most action-oriented global program, engaging over 650 organizations and 1500 individual leaders with a focus on transforming food security and agriculture. She established the New Vision for Agriculture initiative, which defined a shared vision and catalyzed action in 21 countries (including the Grow Africa and Grow Asia regional partnerships), mobilizing over USD 10 billion in private-sector investment commitments and benefiting over 11 million smallholder farmers. She developed a committed network of 100 global leaders to champion global food systems transformation; led collaborations with the G7 and G20; and founded a Transformation Leaders Network to strengthen collaboration among action leaders. Lisa pioneered the practice of System Leadership at the World Economic Forum, developing a unique approach which was documented in a case study by the Harvard Kennedy School's Corporate Responsibility Initiative (see weblink) and adopted as a core pillar of the Forum’s 2020 strategy. She authored or co-authored 11 World Economic Forum reports as well as various policy papers and media publications, and designed and facilitated over 100 high-levet leadership dialogues. She previously held positions at the UN Millennium Project, Columbia University, and the Environmental Defense Fund; consulted on sustainable development projects; and worked as a freelance journalist in the US and Asia. She holds a Masters in Public Policy and an M.A. in Energy and Resources from the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.A. from Bowdoin College.
Beth Jenkins, Senior Program Fellow
Beth is a Director at Inspiris, a specialized consultancy that designs, manages and supports networks and partnerships at the interface of business and international development. She is also Insights Director at Business Fights Poverty, the world's largest network of business and development professionals. She has nearly fifteen years’ experience researching and advising on inclusive or base-of-the-pyramid business models and cross-sector partnerships. Before becoming a fellow, she directed CSRI’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. She authored and edited eight reports in the CSR Initiative’s Economic Opportunity Series, including a cross-cutting analysis and seven industry studies in the extractives, financial services, food and beverage, information and communications technology, health care, tourism, and utilities sectors. She has developed six inclusive business reports with IFC and co-authored the UNDP publication “Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor” with another CSRI Non-Resident Fellow, Christina Gradl. 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 and communications technology and housing sectors at the World Resources Institute and Ashoka. She is a graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Kennedy School. more>
Mark Kramer, Senior Program Fellow
Mark Kramer is founder and managing director at FSG, a nonprofit consulting firm he co-founded with Harvard Business School Professor Michael E. Porter. FSG helps organizations achieve social impact by applying research, strategy, and evaluation to better solve social problems. Mark also serves as a Senior Fellow in the CSR Initiative at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Mark is a founder and served as initial Board Chair of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. Mark 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 Michael Porter of several influential Harvard Business Review articles, has published extensively in Stanford Social Innovation Review and in The Chronicle of Philanthropy and has been quoted by the Financial Times, Economist, and NPR.Prior to founding FSG, Mark served for twelve years as President of Kramer Capital Management, a venture capital firm, and 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. more>
Lance Pierce, Senior Program Fellow
Lance Pierce is President of CDP North America, a global NGO and the world's largest platform for investors, corporations and cities to share data, manage performance and build action programs on climate, energy, water, forests and supply chains. Lance leads strategic initiatives on behalf of the CDP organization worldwide, including carbon pricing in partnership with the World Bank, and finance for climate and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Lance's prior NGO leadership positions include Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of Ceres, and Director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. His CSR roles include Director, Corporate Issues Management for former Fortune 20 food and consumer goods parent company, Altria Group, overseeing teams focused on human rights and community economic impact analysis in supply chains at Kraft Foods and other Altria operating companies. He was also Project Director in the launch of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, supporting established public and private sector leaders in the creation of new philanthropic, social enterprise and sustainability ventures. Lance is a Fellow at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, advisory board member of Planet Forward at The George Washington University, US governing board member of Swiss international development NGO HELVETAS, and a former Energy Track Advisor to the Clinton Global Initiative. His recent media appearances include CNN, Fast Company, Forbes, USA Today and Bloomberg, among others. Lance is a frequent speaker at major industry and sustainability conferences and is a co-author of Harvard Business School Case studies. He holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School and an MA in Anthropology from New York University. more>
Caroline Rees, Senior Program Fellow
Caroline is the President of Shift, an independent, non-profit center for business and human rights practice. Shift were established in July 2011 immediately after the UN Human Rights Council endorsed the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Caroline was centrally involved in shaping and writing the Guiding Principles with their author and CSRI Faculty Chair John Ruggie; as such, Shift works with governments, businesses and their stakeholders to help put the Guiding Principles into practice. Caroline's main area of focus is 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, a Board member of RESOLVE and a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Social Compliance Programme. She has a BA Hons from Oxford University and an MA in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School, Tufts University. more>
John Sherman, Senior Program Fellow
John is General Counsel, Secretary, and Senior Advisor to Shift, an independent non-profit center for business and human rights. Shift is staffed by a team led by CSRI Faculty Chair John Ruggie that was centrally involved in shaping and writing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; from 2008 through 2011, John was a member of Prof. Ruggie’s UN mandate team. Drawing on his legal and business experience, John concentrated on developing the integration of human rights due diligence into existing corporate governance, enterprise risk management, compliance and ethics, safety and environmental management, and dispute resolution systems. John retired in 2008 as deputy general counsel of National Grid, with thirty years of experience in litigation, alternative dispute resolution, health, safety and environment law, antitrust, enterprise risk management, corporate governance, compliance and business ethics, and corporate social responsibility. At National Grid, he represented the company at the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights (BLIHR), and was a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the International Institute of Conflict Prevention and Dispute Resolution. John is a member of the UN Global Compact Human Rights Working Group, an Executive Fellow at the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University, and was formerly co-chair of the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee of the International Bar Association (IBA), for which he achieved a certificate of outstanding achievement from the IBA. John is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Dartmouth College. more>