Events

Alison Taylor - Sustainability and the Future of Business Ethics

Large corporations have traditionally treated business ethics as primarily an issue of legal compliance, while sustainability teams focus on philanthropy, environmental responsibility, and reporting. However, public trust in business is at an historic low, and companies are increasingly asked to respond to stakeholder concerns over issues such as inequality, transparency, corruption, human rights, and climate change. Taylor will examine current corporate approaches to these larger ethical questions, and propose some ideas for how they might evolve in future.

Alison Taylor leads BSR’s energy and extractives practice and co-leads the sustainability management practice. She focuses on approaches to sustainability through risk management, strategy, stakeholder engagement, transparency, ethics and governance, and organizational change. Previously, Taylor was a senior managing director at Control Risks, where she helped companies operate with integrity, particularly in high-risk environments. She has also worked at Transparency International, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and IHS Global Insight. Taylor holds an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago, an MA in organizational psychology from Columbia University, and a BA in modern history from Balliol College, Oxford University.