Virtual Symposium on The Future of Financial Reporting 2022

Professor Carol Adams is an internationally recognised researcher in corporate accounting and reporting and its role in the relationships between business, society and the environment.

Her research has been published in;

• Accounting Organizations and Society,
• Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal,
• British Accounting Review,
• European Accounting Review,
• Accounting and Business Research,
• Critical Perspectives on Accounting

amongst others.

Carol is Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, which she established to promote research that addresses practice and policy issues capable of improving the relationships between accounting, organisations and sustainable development.

Carol has sought to advance practice and policy with respect to integrating sustainability considerations into organisations through applied research, leadership, standard-setting, advisory work and educating the next generation of business leaders for over two decades.

She has authored several industry/professional reports, has made submissions to numerous public consultations and writes on her website.

Carol is immediate past Chair of the Stakeholder Council of the Global Reporting Initiative and served on the Climate Disclosure Standards Board’s Technical Working Group (2015-2021).

She was a member of the International Integrated Reporting Council’s Capitals Technical Collaboration Group.

Diogenis Baboukardos is an Associate Professor at Essex Business School, University of Essex, UK.

He is also a research affiliate of the Adam Smith Observatory of Corporate Reporting Practices at the University of Glasgow, committee member of the British Accounting & Finance Association (BAFA) Financial Accounting & Reporting Special Interest Group (FARSIG), and serves in editorial positions for a number of accounting academic journals.

He has held teaching and research appointments in Greece, Sweden and the UK.

Diogenis has extensively researched issues about corporate reporting and particularly companies’ sustainability and climate change reporting.

His research has been published in various academic journals, and it has been funded by professional bodies and regulators (such as the UK Financial Reporting Council -FRC and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants -ACCA).

He is also involved in consultancy projects in relation to the application of UN’s Sustainability Development Goals in local councils in the UK.

He is a member of the European Accounting Association, the British Accounting and Finance Association and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK.

He has a rich professional record with extensive experience in accounting and taxation consultancy positions.

Harry Briggs is the Project Lead for ESG Reporting at Accounting for Sustainability (A4S).

His role is to develop a comprehensive guide on implementing an ESG reporting function.

Harry is currently leading a series of roundtables with multinational organisations to deep dive into challenges within ESG reporting.

He is on secondment to A4S from KPMG where he is a Director of ESG Reporting and Assurance.

Harry was the only sustainability-focused accountant named in Accountancy Age’s top 35 under 35 list in 2021 and is a regular podcaster and writer on ESG topics.

Harry is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and holds the CFA Certificate in ESG Investing.

Jeffrey Hales serves as the Chair of the Standards Board at Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). As Chair, he oversees the agenda-setting and due process associated with the SASB standards development and maintenance.

Before serving on the Standards Board, he chaired the Standards Council for the SASB.

Jeffrey Hales teaches at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Charles T. Zlatkovich Centennial Professor of Accounting.

He is a graduate of the accounting program at Brigham Young University and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.

He has previously been an editor for Contemporary Accounting Research and Accounting Horizons and has served on the editorial boards of several journals.

During the 2009-10 academic year, Jeffrey was a Research Fellow at the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in Norwalk, CT.

In addition, he served as a member of the FASB’s Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council from 2016-2019. In the United Kingdom, he served on the Financial Reporting Council’s Future of Corporate Reporting Advisory Group from 2018-2020. He has been a member of the Climate Disclosure Standards Board since 2018.

Rachel is the Chief Impact Officer at Connected Asset Management.

She joined Connected Asset Management, a specialist impact manager providing investment solutions to pension schemes, in 2021.

She is responsible for measuring and reporting on the social and environmental impact of the investments made by Connected.

Previously, Rachel was Head of Sustainable Investment at Smart Pension, a technology-based master trust. While in this role she developed and implemented Smart’s responsible investment strategy alongside the trustees, including Smart’s climate policy.

Prior to this, she held roles in product design, credit analysis and asset management at various global banks.

She has also championed diversity and inclusion in her roles and heads up this work at Connected Asset Management.

Rachel is a CFA charterholder and a member of the CFA Institute. She is an active volunteer at the CFA UK Society, including the Society’s response to the FCA’s climate reporting proposals.