In this year’s summer series on PA Future, we have asked junior members of ESG/sustainability teams to answer our questions on career paths, red flags and personal passions, to showcase the ‘Next Generation’ of talent coming through.
Candidates needed to be a member of a fund management, ESG/sustainability or stewardship/engagement team with less than five years’ experience.
Here, Riona Bowhay, senior macro stewardship analyst at Aviva Investors, discusses moving from auditing to investments, what Covid has taught us and why greenhushing has become more of a concern.
How did you start your career and what led you to focus on ESG/sustainability? Is this a personal passion?
I started at one of the Big Four accounting firms and trained in audit, qualifying in 2020, moving across into sustainability shortly after. It was during the pandemic, which provided perspective on what really mattered to me. I have always been concerned about the environment, especially as I love to spend time in nature – hiking, running, cycling, skiing – and could see the effects of the changing climate and biodiversity loss whilst participating in these pursuits. Shorter winter seasons, earlier blossoms, flooded river routes etc. It was all quite subtle, but when you start to notice it, it gets pretty terrifying.
Working in accountancy, it always struck me how natural capital wasn’t being valued by the private sector and, with what I was seeing outside of work, I felt empowered to try to do something about it. So, I moved across to climate consulting to support companies assessing their climate-related risks and opportunities as they were developing their climate Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) reports. This allowed me to leverage my accounting and corporate governance experience to support organisations to measure, monitor and manage their impact on the environment.
You joined the industry around five years ago, when appetite and launches in this area of investment soared. What was that like to experience as a relatively new starter to the industry?
I joined Aviva Investors in 2023 but had been working with financial service companies as a sustainability consultant. The understanding and mindset shift towards climate change across finance has been dramatic. The private sector definitely had a moment with climate change around 2021– Covid really brought home to board rooms that black swan events can happen and materially affect the resilience of companies. The regulatory requirement for TCFD reporting meant boards of listed companies had to upskill on the disclosure requirements and develop processes ahead of reporting in 2022. With the UK hosting COP26 in November 2021, firms were keen to set climate targets and not get left behind.
The brilliant thing about joining an industry during an exciting time is that you’re presented with the opportunity to have great impact and jump on a moving train. This is particularly so when you’re still junior in your career, as you tend to have more freedom to invest in your learning and you can become very specialised in a particular technical area, meaning you can connect dots across initiatives and lean into opportunities. Unless you continue to invest time to keep abreast of the increasing requirements, your knowledge soon becomes out of date, giving you more of an incentive to stay up to date.
And what has it been like for you over the past few years where appetite has waned, and we have experienced the anti-ESG backlash in some areas?
While I welcome greater scrutiny on companies who are greenwashing, there has been an increase in greenhushing. Which means that whilst companies are still doing brilliant work, we are hearing less about it and ultimately companies are becoming more insular on climate and fewer lessons are being shared. All of this can ultimately temper ambition, when we are at a moment where it needs to ratchet up.
With transition plans becoming more mainstream in the private sector, we expect the focus to shift to forward-looking action and planning. With the support of governments, who can create the investment environment for business to invest in the transition, we’ll start to see more action on climate as companies understand that this is an economic growth opportunity to be seized as the incentives are aligned to the transition.
What has been a career highlight for you?
In 2022, I spent a year working at the Transition Plan Taskforce secretariat developing the transition plan framework and guidance. It was brilliant to see what can be achieved when government, industry and the third sector work together and the legacy of that work speaks for itself, with the ISSB recently looking to take on its outputs and form the basis of a global transition planning standard. The work at the TPT was pivotal for my career and led me to want to work across the system, which steered me to Aviva Investors.
What is a red flag you in terms of greenwashing? Are you happy to hold companies or individuals accountable for greenwashing?
The future economy will look fundamentally different to the present one, characterised by decarbonisation, the protection of nature and restoration of nature and the need to operate on a more and ‘just’ basis. Therefore, a red flag would be when companies believe they can maintain the status quo and aren’t honest about the scale of internal transformation that needs to be made to meet their sustainability commitments. Incumbency mindset will leave certain companies behind as it did in the digital era.
Fast forward to five years from now – where would you like to be in terms of career aspirations? And how do you think the industry will have evolved by then?
Five years ago, I was still a trainee auditor. I wouldn’t have believed I’d be doing what I am today – engaging with policymakers and regulators to create the right investment environment to mobilise private finance for the transition – and the journey that I have taken to get to this point. So, I don’t know where I will be in five years’ time. But I know I still want to be on the edge of my comfort zone, learning and making impact where I can across the economy.
