Today’s guest is Julie Baddeley.

Julie is one of the UK’s most experienced female business leaders having held numerous executive and non-executive positions on the boards of many well known FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies over the last 20 years.

Julie is currently non-executive director of Ebiquity plc and Senior Independent Director of Marshall of Cambridge.  In addition to these roles she has established the Hughes Hall Centre for Climate Change Engagement at Cambridge University, something we discuss in today’s show.

Before moving in to her portfolio career she was a partner at Accenture, Executive Director at The Woolwich and has been on the boards of Harvey Nash, Greggs, and the Department of Health to name but a few.

I was introduced to Julie by former guest of the show Harry Gaskell who worked for Julie before she left Consulting. Given her wealth of experience and current area of focus he thought she’d make an excellent guest for the show and he was certainly right about that.

Today’s episode is rather different to some of my other conversations and instead of going in to detail on Julie’s career we focus on an important topic that Julie is hugely passionate about and one that will be critical for Consultants and their clients over the coming years and that is climate change.

In addition to her non-executive roles Julie is currently leading a series of initiatives with investors, scientists and advisors to help Board chairs and non-executive directors recognise the impact that climate change is going to have on their businesses and the importance of doing their part to reduce the environment impact of their businesses.

With her substantial board level experience Julie brings a pragmatic business lens to the climate change conversations and in this episode we go in to huge detail about why helping tackle climate change is a sound strategic business decision and why Consultants should be focusing on this as an offering for their clients.

Our conversation really opened my eyes to some of the challenges that businesses are facing when it comes to climate change and how Consultants can, and should, be looking to support their clients with this, both to help the planet but also to help their profits.

You can get in touch with Julie on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-baddeley-675a2011/

or drop her an email – juliebaddeley@gmail.com

Specific things we discussed in the show:

What Price Climate Change? by Alex Cameron and David Archer – Click here to download

Engaging Boards With Climate Change by Alex Cameron and David Archer – Click here to download

Engaging Company Boards with Climate Action research by William Cross, Diane Mouradain, James Roberts and Sudhiksha Unnikrishnan for Imperial College Business School – Click here to download

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells – https://amzn.to/2Ur4dgk

Accounting for sustainability – https://www.accountingforsustainability.org/en/index.html

Task Force on Climate Change Related Disclosures – https://www.fsb-tcfd.org/

How to Set Up Effective Climate Governance on Corporate Boards: Guiding principles and questions by the World Economic Forum – https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/how-to-set-up-effective-climate-governance-on-corporate-boards-guiding-principles-and-questions