The Transition Tapes

In this episode of The Transition Tapes , Hugh Wheelan speaks with Simon Rawson , Executive Director of the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD) , about why social issues are becoming increasingly relevant to business resilience, long-term value creation, and investment decision-making. Together, they discuss: The origins and mission of TISFD, and why it was est...

In this episode of The Transition Tapes, we speak with, Founder & CEO of Theia Finance Labs and Professor in Practice at, about the huge risks embedded in today’s overwhelming investment focus on AI and tech — and how social and regulatory pushback could ‘strand’ some of the sector’s biggest investment bets. Together with Hugh Wheelan, they explore: the “silicon boundaries” we may already be c...

In this episode of The Transition Tapes , we speak with Harald Walkate, Advisor on Financing Sustainability & Blended Finance at Route17 and Senior Advisor at the LSE.   We explore the idea of “reference narratives” - the stories that shape how we think about sustainable finance. These narratives can spread quickly, reinforce themselves, and influence decisions, even when they don’t fully refl...

In this episode of The Transition Tapes , we speak with Justine Leigh-Bell, CEO of the Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute (AFII). Together, we explore the growing importance of transition risk in the $150 trillion global debt market — and the tension at the heart of sustainable bond labelling in the context of the climate transition. We discuss: how AFII approaches research on the real-world sust...

In this episode of The Transition Tapes, Hugh Wheelan speaks with David Carlin, founder of D. A. Carlin and Company, a New York-based sustainability advisory firm, and Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, where he focuses on the intersection of sustainability, economics, and finance. In the conversation, they explore the current global landscape of climate and sustainability regulati...

In this episode of The Transition Tapes, Hugh Wheelan with Catherine Howarth, OBE, Chief Executive of ShareAction, the European NGO that pushes for ambitious standards in responsible investment.   Catherine also serves on the board of NEST pensions, is a member of the Financial Conduct Authority’s advisory committee on sustainable finance and of HM Treasury’s Asset Management Taskforce.   In the c...

In this episode of The Transition Tapes , Hugh Wheelan talks with Rob Bauer , Professor of Finance at Maastricht University, Chair in Institutional Investors, and Director of the European Centre for Sustainable Finance (ECCE). With extensive experience researching and advising pension funds and institutional investors, Rob brings an evidence-based perspective on how sustainability and climate risk...

In this episode of The Transition Tapes , Hugh Wheelan talks with Rory Sullivan , CEO and Co-Founder of Chronos Sustainability and a leading global expert on climate change, human rights, and sustainable finance. With over thirty years of experience across public policy, investment management, and advisory roles, Rory brings a clear-eyed perspective on where ESG stands today, and what serious inve...

Helena Viñes Fiestas is Commissioner of Spain’s financial markets authority (CNMV) and was recently reappointed as Chair of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance. She has been at the heart of Europe’s sustainable finance architecture since its earliest days, helping to shape the EU’s approach to taxonomy, disclosure, and transition planning. In this episode of The Transition Tapes , Helena joins...

Lisa Sachs is Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, part of the Climate School at Columbia University in New York. She is also the author of a smart and trenchant set of reality check articles on LinkedIn. In the latest episode of The Transition Tapes, Lisa talks with Hugh Wheelan about why she’s challenging thinking on sustainable finance and how a renewed vision can help re-...

In the third episode of the Transition Tapes, HughWheelan talks with Nell Minow, who BusinessWeek called "the queen of good corporate governance" and Fortune magazine dubbed "the CEO killer". Minow is Chair of ValueEdgeAdvisors, Co-founder and Director of GMI Ratings, and a former President of ISS.  This is a crucial time for shareholder rights in the US financial system, which...

In the second episode of The Transition Tapes, we’re talking with Sean Kidney, CEO and Co-founder of the Climate Bonds Initiative about its theory of change, and the scaling of an organisation that helped birth a market of trillions of assets in climate and sustainability bonds. How does that  actually  happen? Sean explains how his interest in using finance to lower costs for critical societal is...

In this first episode of The Transition Tapes, Mark Campanale, founder of Carbon Tracker, walks us through his career, the origin story of Carbon and Planet Tracker, and the Theory of Change behind it, on unburnable carbon and stranded assets. He reflects on how a month stranded in the desert sparked a lifelong mission to connect sustainability with economic history and finance. He also shares his...

The world already has a lot of podcasts. What it does not have is a podcast that combines challenging interviews, Desert Island Discs and deep insights into the cultural, political and professional hurdles of sustainable finance and how they are overcome by experts. (AKA humans!). As well as going deep on their professional fields of expertise and the current global sustainable finance context, we...