EuroSIF - President
http://www.frenchsif.org

France

Robin Edme President EuroSIF Robin EDME, who is 48, is the co-founder the French Social Investment Forum (“Forum pour l’Investissement Responsable᾿). He became President of the French SIF in July 2003, after two years as Vice-President in charge of international relations. He was appointed President of EuroSIF (European Sustainable and Responsible Investment Forum) in February 2004, following in that position Emma Howard-Boyd (President of UKSIF, Head of the Jupiter Environmental Research Unit of Jupiter Asset Management) and Davide Dal Maso (General Secretary of the Forum per la Finanza Sostenibile and Partner of Avanzi SRI Research, a member of the SiRi Group). After graduating from H.E.C. (“école des Hautes études Commerciales᾿ - 1979, the leading French business school) and l'I.E.P. Paris ("Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris" - 1981), Robin Edme spent three years in the Ministry of Agriculture as Head of the International Affairs Bureau, after training as a civil servant at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (E.N.A. - 1984). During that period he was appointed asTask Force Secretary to the President of the Agribusiness Industry Strategy Group of the French Ministry of the Plan and Investigator of the French Fair Trade Commission. Robin Edme is the founding partner of Maqassar, a strategy and management consulting company advising the top management of leading companies and institutions on issues of corporate social responsibility, socially responsible investing and sustainability issues. Prior to his current situation, Robin Edme spent most of his career as a strategy and management consultant in international consulting companies (Arthur D. Little, KPMG, Arthur Andersen,…) where he worked, at top management levels, on several international assignments (USA, Russia, Poland, Northern Africa and naturally Western Europe) covering various fields such as: strategy definition & implementation, company and intangible assets valuation, corporate culture audits, management of change and management control systems. As part of his SRI & CSR commitment, Robin Edme is an active member of the Amnesty International France Business Club since launch in 2002, of the Comité 21 (A French Association for the Environment and Sustainable Development promoting Agenda 21 issues), of the Association 4D (Dossiers & Débats pour le Développement Durable / Dossiers & Debates for Sustainable Development, a non-for-profit organisation launched in 1993 to contribute to the implementation of the recommendations of the UN Conference on Environment & Development), of the OSI (Observatoire Social International / International Social Observatory,  a non-for—profit association created by Suez to examine social sustainability issues such as social reporting in a multinational context, long-life training…). He was recently appointed as a member of the Qualified Experts Committee of the French Institute of Independent Board Members (IFA – Institut Français des Administrateurs). Robin Edme is the author of several articles, among which: § Cutting the Gordian knot: the banks are entangled in the mesh of their international environmental commitments. Building coherence and ensuring prioritization among the different codes of environmental principles and conduct: the financial industry business case - Paper for the IDDRI (Institut du Développement Durable & des Relations Internationales / Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations) Conference on International Environmental Governance, March 2004 -; • « Les valeurs qui se comptent et celles qui s’apprécient », in Les Nouveaux Utopistes du Développement Durable, Éditions Autrement – Coll. Mutations, August 2002; • « Principales approches et référentiels de RSE en « concurrence » : en quoi et comment l’Investissement Socialement Responsable entre en résonance et quelles sont ses perspectives ? », Études & Documents de l’ANACT – N° Spécial sur la responsabilité sociale des entreprises, January 2003.   He is also a Visiting Professor at the Institut National Agronomique de Paris-Grignon since 1988 and teaches CSR and SRI courses at H.E.C. He also holds a Master's degree in Public Law as well as a doctorate degree in Economics.