Robert G. Eccles keynote speaker

Robert G. Eccles is a leading authority on corporate purpose and the integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in resource allocation decisions by companies and investors. He is also the world’s foremost academic expert on integrated reporting.

Currently Eccles is a Visiting Professor of Management Practice at the Said Business School, University of Oxford where he is engaged in a number of research projects, including the “Enacting Purpose Initiative.” Eccles has been a Visiting Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management and was a Berkeley Social Impact Fellow at the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley. He was a Professor at Harvard Business School and received tenure in 1989.

Eccles is a Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group and the non-profit Impact Management Project. He is a Co-Chair to “COVID-19 & Inequality: A Test of Corporate Purpose” Initiative. He was the founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, and was one of the founders of the International Integrated Reporting Council. In 2011, Dr. Eccles was selected as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior – 2012 for his extensive, positive contribution to building trust in business. In 2013, he was named the first non-accountant Honorary Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), one of only nine since 1999. In 2018 he was named by Barron’s as one of the top 20 influencers in ESG investing and cited for being an “ESG research trailblazer.” Also, in 2018 he received “The CSR Lifetime Achievement Award” at
“The 8^th International Conference on Sustainability & Responsibility” in Cologne, Germany.

Dr. Eccles received an S.B. in Mathematics and an S.B. in Humanities and Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an A.M. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University. He currently resides in Lexington, MA with his wife Anne Laurin Eccles and their two dogs Basil and Rowan. They have four children (Charlotte, Philippa, Isabelle, and Gordon) and seven grandchildren (Scout, Russell, Thomas, Thora, Frederick, Dashiell, and Philip). His main outside activity is weight lifting where he is quite good at the dead lift, credible at the squat, and pathetic at the bench press.