Our approach
Where do decisionmakers go, to get objective, trusted advice on ESG, sustainability and related priorities, including their own ESG aspirations and accomplishments?
Where do investors, company boards, regulatory authorities and others go to secure independent, objective and neutral assessments and validations of the claims of their potential clients, partners and investment targets?
ESG Validation provides the business, investment and policy communities with independent, consistent, and evidence-based strategic advice, as well as assessment of ESG performance, and validation of claims in the ESG profiles of companies.
We believe focused propositions across these three communities – business, investment and policy -, all with a view to providing objective, independent and robust thought leadership and advice, enhances the probity of the advice we offer our clients.
What we do - A Few Examples
- We assess the ESG performance of companies on behalf of investors or potential investors, company boards and leadership and regulatory authorities, validating claims against actual performance.
- We support investors to develop their own ESG purpose and strategy, and offer advice on exclusion screening, ESG-positive investments, and impact investing.
- We assess and advise on ESG-related issues in international trade, including cross-border supply chains.
- We provide specialist support to in-house ESG due diligence and compliance teams.
- We develop ESG toolkits based on the requirements of company boards, investors and others to strengthen delivery of their ESG-aligned aspirations and commitments.
- We prepare individual ESG validation statements for portfolio packages and for investment managers to use with their investors. We do not offer investment advice.
- We support government departments and regulators seeking to improve ESG accountability and transparency in business.
- We work on advancing ESG aspirations and concrete activity in developing and emerging markets around the globe.
- We work to advance sustainability, support the fight against climate change and help reverse environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity through our advisory and advocacy work.
- We publish thought leadership, white papers, and “lessons-learned” articles and stimulate and contribute towards public debate on ESG assessment and validation.
Who we are
ESG Validation is a London based Limited Company. Our Founders and Managing Directors partners and associates have a wealth of experience in business, finance, trade and the environment, allowing us to bring a global perspective to the ESG advice and assistance we offer our clients. The ESG strategies we help develop are robust in the face of scrutiny, coherent and evidence-based, and designed around international best practice and gathering global expectations.
Richard Burge
Founder
Richard is an independent adviser on international affairs and commerce with a focus on trade, conflict, and development. He has led four multi-million-pound organisations as chief executive over a total of 18 years. These include a famous 200-year-old charity, a UK government agency, a private company, and a 130,000-strong membership body. All of them were revenue-based operations delivering public benefits.
Additionally, he has been a senior non-executive Board member of five multi-million-pound operations including companies, charities, two government agencies, and a UK Russell Group university.
Richard worked in 62 countries, with a particular focus on Africa, the wider Commonwealth, and in post-conflict situations. For over twenty years, Richard has been focused on delivering ESG is some of the most challenging political and economic circumstances – ranging from environmental management to social impact and reforming governance in the face of organised crime and corruption.
Richard was Chief Executive, Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council from 2017 to 2019. For the previous 8 years, he was Chief Executive of Wilton Park (a Foreign and Commonwealth Office agency for conciliation and dialogue on global issues). Richard was also a Commissioner for Commonwealth Scholarships, and on the Council of Durham University.
He has been CEO of the Countryside Alliance, Director General of the Zoological Society of London, and for ten years served with the British Council in Africa and the Middle East.
Alexander R Malaket
Managing Director
Alexander R. Malaket, CITP, CTFP, GTP-E, is President of Canadian consultancy OPUS Advisory Services International Inc., established in 2001, focusing on international business, trade and investment with a specialism in trade finance/supply chain finance and trade-related international development.
Alexander is the author of “Financing Trade and International Supply Chains”, Gower/Ashgate Publishing, UK 2014 (now Taylor & Francis, UK), has authored numerous white papers, policy briefs and articles for industry press. He speaks at top-tier events, and has delivered training and educational material around the world.
Alexander serves on several industry boards and advisory bodies, including as Deputy Head of the Executive Committee, ICC Banking Commission, Chair of the International and Technical Advisory Committee, Global Trade Professionals Alliance, Member of the World Economic Forum E-15 Initiative and member of the Advisory Board of Tin Hill Capital among others.
Dr Mark Infield
Managing Director
Mark is an independent consultant focusing on the environment, ecosystem services and biodiversity. He has worked extensively in Africa and South East Asia on the design, delivery and assessment of sustainable conservation and natural resource management. Operating primarily in the charitable sector, Mark has also worked with private companies, governments, research institutions and international agencies.
Mark has engaged extensively on the interface between communities and protected areas and thus, necessarily, the trade-offs between protection and consumption. He has analysed the viability of natural resource-based enterprises, the impact of industry-based sustainability initiatives, the feasibility of nature-based tourism enterprises, and synergies between sustainable land uses and conservation areas. He has been closely associated with the development of innovations in the way conservation practices account for the social, cultural and political environments in which conservation interventions are designed and managed. He has a particular interest in highlighting cultural values in processes that describe the value of ecosystem services and thus the role of culture in conservation initiatives.
Mark also has experience of designing ecosystem-based carbon emission reduction projects (REDD+) with the finance sector, and of planning climate change mitigation and resilience programmes with governments.
Tim Morris
Managing Director
Tim was a career diplomat, working on bilateral and multilateral policy, and the promotion of trade and investment. His last ten years were spent in or working on Africa, where he led British diplomatic missions as Ambassador in Morocco, Mauritania, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan and was the Foreign and Commonwealth Senior Trade Advisor for Africa. Tim is now a private sector consultant promoting investment in Africa and working with the non-profit sector to promote high quality private sector investment as the key contributor to economic development.
Tim is a passionate advocate for the value of good and global standard investment in less developed countries. He sees ESG criteria and compliance as essential reassurance to the responsible investor, and as an essential benefit to the people of the recipient countries, so they can develop sustainably and attract further high-quality investment. Tim believes that accelerated, sustainable and responsible private sector investment in the African continent, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, is a generational challenge profoundly related to saving the planet.
Rob Handfield
Senior Advisor, Supply Chain Management
Rob Handfield is the Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at North Carolina State University, and Director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative.
He also serves on the Faculty for Operations Research Curriculum at NC State University. The SCRC is the first major industry-university partnership to integrate student projects into the MBA and undergraduate classroom in an integrative fashion.
Handfield has over 120 peer reviewed journals and is regularly quoted in global news media such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and CNN.
Craig C Weeks
Senior Advisor - Sustainable Supply Chains & Trade Finance
Craig Weeks is an independent consultant for organizations needing Trade Finance, Supply Chain and other Transaction Banking expertise, including sustainable finance and sustainable supply chains.
Craig serves as an advisor to the Global Trade Professionals Alliance; an Executive Practicum Adviser and member of the Advisory Board of the North Carolina State University Supply Chain Resource Cooperative. Craig serves as a member of the Trade Finance Advisory Council (TFAC) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, an Advisory Board member of the Falcon Group and an advisor to Capital and Credit Risk Manager (CCRM), a Singapore-based FinTech.
Previously Craig served as SVP and Manager of the International Banking Group of US Bank where his responsibilities included managing the Trade Finance, International Financial Institutions, and Supply Chain Finance teams.
Craig has a Masters of International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dickinson College.
Allison Miller
Research Associate
Allison Miller is a graduate of Dickinson College with an Environmental Studies major and Philosophy minor. During her studies, Allison completed extensive quantitative and qualitative research projects in Nepal, Bhutan and the Canadian High Arctic. She has had several internships in the realm of sustainability, both at university as well as at NGO’s. She most recently completed an internship with EcoChallenge.org.
In her final year of University, Allison was honored as a Baird Sustainability Fellow for advancing sustainability goals on and beyond the Dickinson campus through excellence in scholarship, leadership and service, and received the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium Campus Sustainability Champions award in 2020 for her work focused on climate change and behavior change on college campuses.
Next Steps...
We are committed to the advancement of ESG practices, standards and disciplines around the globe. We provide objective, independent advisory services, research, analysis and thought leadership, and advocacy on ESG, sustainability and related areas.
ESG Validation engages with a variety of clients, including company boards and executive leadership, CSR, ESG and sustainability teams, as well as investors seeking to better understand the ESG claims (and substantive actions and behaviours) of corporates. We work with government, public sector and international institution clients as well as regulatory and standards organisations, investment and asset managers, business leaders and others committed to bringing ESG to the core of commercial, investment and policy activity. We apply a disciplined, independent posture in the market, which enhances the probity of the advice we offer to our clients.
Find out more, download our pdf: 'Navigating the Maze'