Net Zero Investor’s Defined Contribution Forum 2026

She is a Partner and Head of Investment leading the Master trust market for Hymans in developing thought leadership in this space from an investment and governance perspective. Passionate about Responsible Investment, she works as part of the Hymans Responsible Investment team and is part of the Influence workstream of the Investment Consultants Sustainability Working Group working with regulatory bodies such as TPR and FCA to develop policy thinking and change.

Ryan has worked in the DC Pension marketplace for over 30 years and has gained experience in all aspects of the industry. Since joining Schroders in 2015 he has focused on building and developing relationships with Trustees, Pension Managers, Consultants and Providers of DC pension schemes. This involves understanding each client’s requirements and offering a service designed to anticipate and meet these needs through the delivery of Schroders’ investment capabilities. He previously spent time as an Investment Consultant, which included managing the DC Investment Team at Aon Employee Benefits. His main responsibilities included the development and delivery of all investment-based services to UK DC clients, including: thought leadership and developing the DC Investment Centre of Excellence. Prior to this Ryan worked for a number of pension providers where his roles included Investment Proposition Manager and was part of the Fund Strategy and Selection Group at Friends Provident, where he was responsible for the positioning of the investment proposition both externally and internally, whilst supporting the development of investment knowledge for all external facing employees. Ryan obtained a BEng (Hons) and MSc (Eng) from Leeds University and has also passed the IMC.

James is a Business Development Director at Schroders with over 16 years’ experience in the pensions and investment across DC and DB. Before joining Schroders in 2022, he was a senior investment consultant at KPMG and River and Mercantile, with a focus on investment strategy design and risk management. James is a qualified actuary and holds a masters degree in Mathematics from the University of Oxford.

Joined from Aegon UK, one of the UK’s largest DC pension providers where she established and led the responsible investment team, overseeing Aegon’s climate and stewardship efforts, leading Aegon’s efforts to invest in the energy transition and serving in Aegon’s investment leadership team.

Prior to that, Hilkka led the responsible investment strategy at Inter Fund Management, part of the Interogo Foundation/IKEA and held roles at EY, the Principles for Responsible Investment, the OECD and the United Nations.

Hilkka is a co-chair of the UK Department for Work and Pensions Taskforce on Social Factors and is an active participant in industry dialogue having served on the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance and the Steering Committee of the UK Asset Owner Council.

Jonathan has worked in the workplace pensions and savings industry for over 20 years.  He is currently a Managing Director at Gallagher and Head of the DC.

Prior to joining Gallagher, Jonathan held senior positions in pensions (Head of Investment Strategy for Zurich Corporate Savings), consulting (senior consultant for Willis Towers Watson) and asset management (Head of EMEA DC for Dimensional Fund Advisors).    

In addition to his role at Redington, Jonathan is an independent trustee on Aviva’s Master Trust, a position he has held for 5 years.  He also chairs the Investment Committee and is a member of the Audit & Risk Committee.

Jonathan is CFA charterholder (2005) and holds the Diploma in Financial Planning.  He graduated from Bristol University with a BA (Hons) in Ancient History.

Natalie is an accredited professional pension trustee and director of Law Debenture Pension Trust Corporation Plc.  She is trustee to DB, DC and hybrid schemes. Her trustee appointments include SEI MasterTrust, Tesco, Syngenta and DHL.

Natalie has worked in pensions for over 25 years with roles in pensions actuarial, investment consulting and asset management.  She is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a CFA Charterholder.  She was awarded Fellowship of the CFA UK for her services to the investment industry.  She is a past Chair of the CFA UK.  She was shortlisted this year for a lifetime achievement award by Professional Pensions. 

Eva is Head of Responsible Investment at Scottish Widows where she is leading the responsible investing strategy for one of UK’s largest asset owners, embedding it into the investments proposition to deliver good customer outcomes and driving efforts to engage and shape best practice across the industry. She has been actively involved in collaborative industry initiatives to drive forward best practice in responsible investing and advocate for a policy environment that enables investing in line with sustainability goals. She is a member of the UKSIF Board and IA Sustainability and Responsible Investment Committee.

Eva joined Scottish Widows from Aberdeen Investments where she was the Head of Sustainability Insights and Climate Strategy, responsible for leading research across key sustainability themes, including climate change, nature and social issues. She led Aberdeen’s climate strategy for Investments and has published a number of climate related papers including on net zero investing, climate scenario analysis, the credibility of net zero targets and the just transition. She graduated with an MSc in Economics with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh where her dissertation focused on the social cost of carbon.

James is a Workplace Investment Director looking after FutureWise Target Dated Fund Strategy and a number of key strategic IO clients since February 2023. He comes with 13 years DC Investment industry experience from Aon, where he was Head of DC Investments for 8 Years and is qualified as a Regulated Financial Planner, with a specialism in DC investment strategy design, sustainability, less liquid asset integration and provider market knowledge. His responsibilities included working on the Bank of England’s Productive Working Finance Group, governing the Aon DC Product (including the Aon Master Trust), reviewing the investment and bundled proposition of pension providers and advising Employers and Trusts on their workplace investment strategy.

Mark is a Partner at XPS, Head of DC Investment and part of the Investment Committee.  He’s responsible for developing the proposition and capabilities on investment matters in defined contribution schemes. He enjoys ensuring that delivering good retirement outcomes for members are at the heart of investment strategy design. Mark has worked at XPS for almost five years and has 23 years’ experience in the industry.

Kath is an Associate Partner in Aon’s Defined Contribution (DC) Consulting Team and Head of DC Responsible Investment. She takes a leading role in creating and delivering responsible investment advice as part of Aon’s Responsible Investment Team and advises some of Aon’s largest DB and DC clients regarding their responsible investment journey. She also works closely with several DC schemes, advising them on all areas of DC, including investment strategy and design, communications and scheme governance.

Alexandra Christiansen is one of two Lead Portfolio Managers for Nordea’s Global Climate Transition Engagement Fund, which she has co-managed since joining the Fundamental Equities team in November 2021.

Alexandra began her career as an Analyst at BlackRock and Nordea, covering Energy, Materials, Telecoms and Utilities, before moving to Oldfield Partners as a generalist investor. She holds a BA from Cambridge University (2007) and is a CFA® charterholder.

Leanne is a responsible investment expert with 14 years’ experience, and 25 years working in sustainable development more broadly. As Head of Responsible Investment, her role is to assist the investment team in integrating environmental, social, governance and stewardship considerations into our investment process.  In any discussion, Leanne brings to life the impact that such policies have on savers’ pension funds, notably with respect to addressing industry challenges to effective stewardship. 

Drew leads LCP’s responsible investment advice to DC clients, which includes advising some of the largest pension schemes in the country, as well as DC pension providers, on all aspects of their responsible investment strategy. This includes some of the first schemes to give their members exposure to private markets through an LTAF.

As a senior researcher at LCP, Drew is also deeply involved in assessing new investment products as they come to market, particularly where these might help investors to meet responsible investment objectives. As part of this, he designed LCP’s framework for assessing funds that invest at the nature interface. He also works closely with LCP Delta, LCP’s energy transition consultancy business, to help trustees and other asset owners to understand the risks and opportunities associated with the transition.

Rahil Ram is Head of Investment Strategy at Cushon. He joined from Fulcrum Asset Management, where he was Head of Climate Investing and served as a director in the absolute return investment team, responsible for idea generation, portfolio construction, portfolio management and risk management. Prior to that, he was a multi-asset strategist at Legal & General Asset Management, where he worked across strategic asset allocation, tactical asset allocation, portfolio design and quantitative analysis. Rahil is a qualified actuary and holds a master’s degree with distinction and a first-class undergraduate degree from Bayes Business School.

Mohammed Khalil is a sustainable investment strategist at Standard Life. He is primarily responsible for developing net zero/decarbonising investment strategies for policyholder portfolios. Previously, he was a multi-asset portfolio manager at BlackRock, where he was responsible for developing and managing investment solutions for pensions, foundations, and family offices.

James Dalby leads Aviva Wealth’s TCFD product (fund) reporting team. His team produces c.400 fund-level climate reports for Aviva’s life and pensions entity, covering funds that are distributed through workplace, retail adviser and direct-to-customer channels. He also provides the climate metrics to the Aviva Master Trust Trustee for its annual TCFD report.

In addition to his TCFD reporting responsibilities, James forms part of Aviva’s response team for DC-relevant sustainability-related regulatory consultations, including historically the FCA Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) and investment labels consultation. He is currently involved in working on Aviva’s response to CP25/34: ESG Ratings : proposed approach to regulation.

Beverley is Founder and Managing Partner of Clean Growth Investment Management, a venture capital fund manager that  invests in the UK’s most promising early stage cleantech companies that have the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. She is also CEO of Carbon Limiting Technologies (2006), a cleantech consultancy for corporates, financiers, government officials and SMEs. Prior she was she was a founder and Vice President, Shell Technology Ventures. 

Beverley is a thought leader in early stage cleantech investments and commercialisation with over 40 years’ experience in the international energy sector. She specialises in accelerating innovation to market and scaling companies by providing strategic insights, developing industry partnerships and identifying novel ways to overcome barriers to entry. Her ambition is to create a better, sustainable world and she firmly believes that this will be achieved through climatetech innovation playing a transformative role in the global economy. In 2023, Beverley was awarded an OBE by His Majesty King Charles III for services to Net Zero innovation. She is a NED and Chair of Investment Committee at Great British Energy and previously an independent member of the UK’s cross-government Net Zero Innovation Board chaired by the chief science advisor, Dame Angela McLean. Beverley is a Fellow of the Energy Institute. She holds a BSc in Mining Geology from University College Cardiff.

James is the Head of Investment Proposition for Smart Pension. He is responsible for building and running Smart Pension’s £2.5bn investment solution for its master trust. As part of this role, James and the investments team will be delivering Smart Pension’s net zero pledge for its members, using leading and innovative ESG investment products.

Prior to joining Smart Pension, James spent nine years at Mercer, where he was the lead investment strategist for Mercer’s UK DC delegated investment business, including the Mercer Master Trust. In this role he was responsible for the strategic direction of the delegated investment solution, Mercer SmartPath, with over £12bn of assets.

James is also a CFA Charterholder

Mark is the Climate and Sustainability Lead within The Pensions Regulator (TPR), responsible for developing the regulatory response to climate change and sustainability disclosure requirements and delivering TPR’s Climate Change Strategy.  He brings some 30 years of experience working predominantly in the public sector.    

 Mark is actively involved in work across government and the sector from the Climate Financial Risk Forum to the Transition Plan Taskforce in support of sustainable finance and better outcomes for savers.  Prior to joining TPR, Mark worked for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) within the Defence Infrastructure Organization where he led on climate change and sustainability.  During his time with the MoD, Mark contributed to the Defence Climate Change and Sustainability Review which ultimately led to the publication of the Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach in 2021. In tandem he developed a Defence Energy and Emissions Strategy and was involved in work to facilitate the mobilization of third-party capital to invest in renewables across the Defence estate, before attending COP 26 as part of the Cabinet Office’s COP 26 Unit.  Just before leaving the MoD to join TPR, he was busy supporting cross sector work to integrate climate risks into sustainable land management practices and specifically brownfield land development.