Alex is a Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex graduated top of his class from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (NYC). After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton, where he was granted tenure and won 14 teaching awards in six years. Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, behavioural finance, CSR, and practical investment strategies. He has been awarded the Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing and the FIR-PRI prize for Finance and Sustainability, and was named a Rising Star of Corporate Governance by Yale University. Alex co-led a session at the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos, and runs a blog, “Access to Finance” (www.alexedmans.blogspot.com), that aims to make complex finance topics accessible to a general audience.

In his talk, Prof. Patrick Walsh discusses the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda as an agenda of the people, with the responsibility for implementation by the people, using their influence on Livelihoods, Civil Society, and Governance, to induce successful stakeholder partnership at local, national, regional and global levels. Patrick Paul Walsh is a Professor of International Development Studies in UCD, Ireland. He was a Senior Adviser to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York during its input to the post 2015 Development Agenda, formally mandated by the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon. He also represented the UN Major Group for Science and Technology during the Inter-Governmental Negotiations that produced the UN 2030 Agenda Outcome Document in September 2015.