When: June 4-5, 2025
Registration: Register here. Complimentary for Future 500 members. Registration price will increase on April 30th.
Who: Executives from Future 500’s Corporate Affinity Network (CAN) and other select corporate sustainability leaders and advocates.
What: Future 500 has conducted this intimate working group for over ten years. Our discussions are confidential, facilitated under the Chatham House Rule, and designed to foster constructive engagement between companies and advocates to illuminate important issue trends and best practices that inform business strategy and competitiveness on sustainability.
Participants will join in the following small-group, Chatham House Rule sessions:
Climate Philanthropy's Evolution: Where is It Headed? What have Funders Learned? And What Does That Mean for Business?: Mijo Vodopić, Senior Program Officer for Climate Solutions at the MacArthur Foundation, will share his insights from 16 years of grantmaking to civil society at one of the country’s most established and strategic climate protection funders. He'll share what funding strategies he has found most effective, how funders are adapting to a rapidly changing geopolitical world, and how that can help inform business planning
The Rights of Nature: Creating frameworks to align people and planet: We live in a world governed by laws regulating the marketplace while seeking to minimize the harm business can impose on nature. The frame seems to pit jobs vs. the environment, people vs. trees, and fishermen vs. fish. But is this a false, binary choice? How can we ensure that humans and nature flourish together? In this session, we will hear from Missy Lahren, Board President at Earth Law Center, an innovative group working to "align our laws with Nature’s laws." They represent and defend nature worldwide, co-drafting legal instruments that recognize the rights of nature. Grant will share these and other evolutions in environmental policymaking, as well as his priorities and view of the future.
Investor Engagement: Enduring approaches for a dynamic landscape: Regulatory uncertainty is challenging investors and companies alike as they navigate the landscape of corporate sustainability disclosure. In the U.S., the federal government seeks to weaken regulations relating to material, social, and environmental factors, but state-level activity varies dramatically. In other countries, governments continue to maintain or advance regulations. Given the dynamic landscape, how is investor engagement shifting in the U.S. and abroad? In this session, we will hear from Erica Lasdon, Program Director for Climate and Environmental Justice from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a coalition of faith-based investors that helped pioneer investor-corporate engagement. The coalition proactively engages and collaborates with the leaders of companies in which they invest to understand and address the company's full impact on society in pursuit of superior, long-term shareholder returns.