Pavan Sukdhev

Pavan is a scientist by education, an international banker by training, and an environmental economist by passion. He previously led the UN’s Green Economy Initiative and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study. As CEO of GIST Impact, Pavan works with corporations and investors, harnessing the power of impact economics and technology to discover a business’s full value contribution to the world.

Pavan was awarded the McCluskey Fellowship (2011) by Yale University, where he taught a graduate course on TEEB and wrote his book “Corporation 2020: Transforming Business for Tomorrow’s World.” In this book, he presents new approaches to measuring the true costs of business and its obligation to society, as well as offering a hopeful vision for its role in shaping a more equitable future. Pavan is a former President and Chair of WWF International and has served on the boards of Conservation International (CI), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), and the TEEB Advisory Board. His work has been recognised through several awards, including the Blue Planet Prize (2016), the Tyler Prize (2020) and most recently, the EAERE European Practitioner Achievement Award in Applying Environmental Economics (2024).