Jane Nelson

Jane Nelson is the founding director of the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School and a senior research fellow at the school’s Center for Business and Government. She is a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings, co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Energy Nexus, and an editor-in-chief of the Cambridge Forum on Corporate Climate Governance. She serves on the boards of Newmont, South32 and the Niger Delta Partnership Initiative and on sustainability-related advisory councils for Bank of America, Abbott and Griffith Foods. She started her career with Citibank and worked with The Prince of Wales International Business Forum and on a secondment in the office of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, preparing a 2001 report for the General Assembly on partnerships with the private sector. Since 1992, Jane has served on advisory councils for over 45 corporations, non-governmental organizations, and government bodies. She has co-authored seven books and more than 100 publications on the role of the private sector and multi-stakeholder partnerships in supporting sustainable development, including the Academy of Management’s 2015 Best Book Award in the Social Issues in Management Division (with David Grayson). In 2024, she was recognized in the UK Honours List as a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George for her services to business and sustainability.