Helen Clark (Patron)
Former Administrator - UNDP (2009-2017)
Helen Clark became the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme on 17 April 2009, and was the first woman to lead the organization. She was re-appointed to this role (April 2013) for a second four year term and was also the Chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee consisting of the heads of all UN funds, programmes and departments working on development issues. She left the UN after two full terms in 2017 and an award-winning documentary "My Year With Helen" was released globally. Prior to her appointment with UNDP, Helen Clark served for nine years as Prime Minister of New Zealand, serving three successive terms from 1999–2008. Throughout her tenure as Prime Minister, Helen Clark engaged widely in policy development and advocacy across the international, economic, social and cultural spheres.

Under her leadership, New Zealand achieved significant economic growth, low levels of unemployment, and high levels of investment in education and health, and in the well-being of families and older citizens. She and her government prioritized reconciliation and the settlement of historical grievances with New Zealand’s indigenous people and the development of an inclusive multicultural and multi-faith society. Helen Clark advocated strongly for NZ’s comprehensive programme on sustainability and for tackling the problems of climate change. Her objectives have been to establish New Zealand as being among the world’s leading nations in dealing with these challenges. Helen Clark was also an active leader of her country’s foreign relations and policies, engaging in a wide range of international issues.

As Prime Minister, Helen Clark was a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development. Helen Clark held ministerial responsibility during her nine years as PM for NZ’s intelligence agencies and for the portfolio of arts, culture and heritage. She has seen the promotion of this latter portfolio as important in expressing the unique identity of her nation in a positive way.

Prior to entering the New Zealand Parliament, Helen Clark taught in the Political Studies Department of the University of Auckland. She graduated with a BA in 1971 and an MA with First Class Honours in 1974. She is married to Peter Davis, a Professor at Auckland University.

Paul Atkins

Previously, Paul was CEO of the National Energy Research Institute, and prior to that was Director of Business Development for Izon Science Ltd, a nanotechnology instrumentation company.  During his time as General Manager of International Investments with the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, Paul established the Foundation’s International Group, negotiating joint research funding agreements with Korea and Japan, as well as research collaborations in the USA and Europe.   He was a Director in the British Council for almost 20 years, and has worked in over 40 countries around the world.

Paul holds an MSc and has post-graduate qualifications in both business and marketing management.  He is a Chartered Physicist and Chartered Scientist, a member of the Institute of Physics, a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and, until late 2015, was inaugural Chair of the New Zealand Smart Grid Forum and Vice-chair of the IEA’s Demand-side Implementing Agreement.

Hon. David Caygill (retired 2020)
More information here

Paul Hawken (retired 2019).
Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and author. His work includes starting ecological businesses, writing about the impact of commerce on living systems, and consulting with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. He has appeared on numerous media including the Today Show, Larry King, Talk of the Nation, Charlie Rose, and has been profiled or featured in hundreds of articles including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Week, Esquire, and US News and World Report. His writings have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Resurgence, New Statesman, Inc, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, Orion, and many other publications.

He authors articles, op-eds, and peer-reviewed papers, and has written seven books including four national bestsellers, The Next Economy (Ballantine 1983), Growing a Business (Simon and Schuster 1987), and The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins 1993) and Blessed Unrest (Viking, 2007). The Ecology of Commerce was voted in 1998 as the #1 college text on business and the environment by professors in 67 business schools. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little Brown, September 1999) co-authored with Amory Lovins, has been read and referred to by several heads of state including President Bill Clinton who called it one of the five most important books in the world today.

When Bill McKibben wrote the seminal article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” in Rolling Stone in 2012, Hawken asked, “Why aren’t we doing the math on the solutions? Somebody should come up with a list and see what it requires so you get to “drawdown” – actually reducing greenhouse gas concentrations so that global temperatures drop — “There’s no such thing as stabilization at 450 or 550 ppm,” he said. “That’s not stabilized. That’s volatile – the goal should be drawdown, which is a year-to-year reduction of carbon from the upper atmosphere, period.”

Project Drawdown (the book), edited by Paul, shot to the NYT Best Seller list in 2017 and the prestigious array of contributors involved continues to build on his Drawdown programme globally. Paul has founded several companies including some of the first natural food companies in the US that relied solely on sustainable agricultural methods. He presently heads OneSun, LLC, an energy company focused on ultra low-cost solar based on green chemistry and biomimicry; and Highwater Global, a social impact fund that employs the highest standards of corporate social, ethical and environmental behaviour. He has seven honorary PhDs and a clutch of awards on a shelf somewhere.

Paul retired from the Hillary Summit in 2019 - his final contribution was in selecting our 2018-19 Laureate Megan Fallone.

Peggy Liu
Peggy Liu was appointed to the Hillary Summit post her being awarded the Hillary Step (NZD100,000) in 2012 to assist in her "China Dream" project. 

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Manfred Kets de Vries
Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries holds the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chair of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD. In addition, he is the Founding Director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Centre. Furthermore, he is the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership Development Research at the European Institute of Management and Technology in Berlin (ESMT).

The Financial Times, Le Capital, Wirtschaftswoche and The Economist have rated Kets de Vries as one of world’s leading leadership theoreticians. His books and articles have been translated into 31 languages.Kets de Vries is listed among the world’s top fifty leading management thinkers and among the most influential contributors to human resource management. He is the author of more than 35 books and 350 articles.

Kets de Vries is a member of seventeen editorial boards and has been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management. He is also a founding member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations (ISPSO) of which (in 2009) he became a Lifetime Distinguished Member. He has also been the recipient the “Harry and Miriam Levinson Award” from the American Psychological Association and the “Freud Memorial Award” from the Dutch Psychoanalytic Institute. In addition, Kets de Vries is also the recipient of the International Leadership Association “Lifetime Achievement Award” for his contributions to leadership research and development. The Dutch government has made him an Officer in the Order of Oranje Nassau.

Kets de Vries is a consultant and educator on organizational change and leadership development to leading European, US, Canadian, Australian, African, and Asian companies. In that capacity he has worked in more than forty countries. In addition, he is the Chairman and principal owner of the Kets de Vries Institute (KDVI), a global leadership development consultancy firm.

(e-mail: manfred.ketsdevries@insead.edu; website: www.ketsdevries.com and www.KDVI.com)

Matt Petersen - Appointed as the Hillary Senior Fellow 2008–2014 (co-leading our global Laureate search programme with FD Mark Prain), Matt Petersen is CEO of the LA Cleantech Incubator (laci.org).

Appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti as the first ever Chief Sustainability Officer for the City of LA in 2012, he served as CSO for four years and was the chief architect of the groundbreaking Sustainable City pLAn, and helped create the Climate Mayors. A board member of Global Green USA, he formally served as President and CEO for close to 20 years, Matt built Global Green into one of America’s leading environmental organisations, bringing critical attention to the impacts of climate change while focusing on greening affordable housing, schools and cities as key solutions including turning the group’s attention to the communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy, creating the Solar for Sandy. Previously, he ran local, state, and federal political campaigns as well as serving as the Executive Director of Americans for a Safe Future. 

Matt has been touted a ‘green all star’ by Outside Magazine, is an advisor to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a Member of the Pacific Council on International Policy and serves on the Environmental Media Association (EMA) Advisory Board, as well as the Automotive X Prize Advisory Board and the City of Santa Monica Environmental Task Force.

In 2019, Matt became an Edmund Hillary Fellow.

Kevin Roberts

Kevin Roberts is an international business leader, founder, and educator. His company Red Rose Consulting counsels business leaders and employees on creative thinking, marketing, and leadership.

A CEO for 22 years, Kevin has an uncompromisingly positive and inspirational leadership style, with an ability to generate ideas and emotional connections that accelerate extraordinary value. Kevin’s latest book 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World (2016) offers frameworks and solutions for winning in a business world that has become volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous.

Born and educated in Lancaster in the north of England, Kevin Roberts started his career in the late 1960s with iconic London fashion house Mary Quant. He became a senior marketing executive for Gillette and Procter & Gamble in Europe and the Middle East. At 32, he became CEO of Pepsi-Cola Middle East; and later Pepsi’s CEO in Canada, over-taking Coke in the ‘Cola Wars.’ In 1989, Kevin moved to Auckland, New Zealand, to become Chief Operating Officer with Lion Nathan, growing the company to become the region’s leading brewer.

From 1997 to 2014 Kevin was New York-based CEO Worldwide at Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the world’s leading creative organizations, with responsibility for the effectiveness of several of the world’s leading advertising budgets including for clients Toyota and Procter & Gamble. He retired as Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi in 2016. For 16 years Kevin was a member of the Management Board of Publicis Groupe, the Paris-based global communications group active in 108 countries and employing 80,000 professionals, as it grew from the world’s seventh largest communications group to the third.

Kevin advises national organizations and global brands across commerce, media and sport. He has honorary appointments and doctorates at a number of universities. He is Honorary Professor of Creative Leadership at Lancaster University (England), Honorary Professor of Innovation and Creativity at the University of Auckland Business School (New Zealand), and Honorary Professor of Leadership and Innovation at the University of Victoria School of Business (Canada). With academic colleagues, he wrote Peak Performance: Business Lessons from the World’s Top Sporting Organizations, an inspiration-driven business theory and practice. In 2004, he wrote Lovemarks: the Future Beyond Brands, a ground-breaking business book published in 18 languages, showing how emotion can inspire businesses and brands to deliver sustainable value. Lovemarks was named one of the ten Ideas of the Decade by Advertising Age in 2009. His 2005 book Sisomo (for sight, sound and motion) explored the future of the screen age.

In 2013, Kevin, a New Zealand citizen, was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to business and the community. Currently, he is business ambassador for the New Zealand United States Council, and Chairman of New Zealand home food delivery service, My Food Bag. He is a former director of the New Zealand Rugby Union and former chairman of USA Rugby. Kevin has homes in Carefree Arizona, New York, Auckland, and Grasmere in the English Lake District.

He has made presentations to business audiences in 60 countries, with a San Francisco technology reviewer noting, “Kevin Roberts was arguably more entertaining and more informative than any other speaker, speaking about any other subject, anywhere. That is saying a lot, but during the hour of his speech, there was nowhere else in the world that I would have rather been than in his audience.”

Kevin shares his thinking on www.krconnect.blogspot.com. Read his archived speeches 1997-2016 at www.saatchikevin.com. Tweets @krconnect. Red Rose Consulting is named after a Lancastrian heraldic symbol dating from 1485 (War of the Roses).

Joan Shapiro

Ms. Shapiro is Founder and Executive Director of Reading Between the Lines®. Using discussions of short, powerful literary masterworks to build critical thinking and communication skills with the re-entry population, the organization works with currently and formerly incarcerated women and men at halfway houses in Chicago.  Its novel, foundational approach to helping participants learn to listen, think, express opinions and exchange ideas fills a major deficit for those returning from prison and trying to rebuild productive lives with work, family and community.

 As Executive Vice President of ShoreBank Corporation, she established its franchise as the leading development bank in the United States, shaping the field of community-based investment and spreading these strategies abroad. She is recognized as a pioneer of socially responsible investing. In 2000, she joined the newly formed UK Social Investment Task Force (its only non-UK member), a small group of business and civic leaders who advised government on private sector investment in urban regeneration and whose report was implemented. Ms. Shapiro was a trustee of Parnassus Income Fund and has served on many non-profit boards, including International House (University of Chicago), Ceres, Environmental Law & Policy Center, New Israel Fund (North American Vice President), Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Hillary Institute for International Leadership (New Zealand).

Ms. Shapiro consulted on social enterprise investment and community development.  Clients included the Global Environmental Facility of the United Nations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Chicago Humanities Festival.  She gave academic lectures on community development and social investment at leading graduate schools of business, professional institutes and international forums and contributed to numerous books and publications on these subjects.  She co-founded and chaired Seer Analytics, a consumer research firm, for a decade prior to creating Reading Between the Lines® late in 2013.

Simon Walker

Simon Walker became Director General of the Institute of Directors in October 2011 and is its outgoing DG in early 2017. As the public face of the IoD, and the most senior representative of the membership, Simon debated regularly in the media and engages with senior figures from across government, politics and Whitehall. He previously served as Chief Executive of the BVCA, the organisation that represents British private equity and venture capital, from October 2007 to March 2011. Between 2003 and 2007 Simon worked at Reuters as Director of Corporate Communications and Marketing. He was Communications Secretary to HM The Queen at Buckingham Palace from 2000 to 2003 and earlier served as Director of Corporate Affairs at British Airways. From 1996–1997 Simon worked as a special adviser in the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street.

Simon was previously a partner at Brunswick, the public relations group, and Director of European Public Affairs for Hill & Knowlton in Brussels. He was born in South Africa, and has worked as a journalist and consultant in New Zealand, Belgium and the UK. He was a member of the Better Regulation Commission, a member of the UK-Jamestown Committee and a Trustee of the New Zealand-UK Link Foundation. He read PPE at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union. He was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. Simon is married with two children.

Dr. Helen Sykes
-AM (Australia), is the Director of Future Leaders, President of the Trust for Young Australians and Chair of The Australian Collaboration. She is Chair of the Royal Children's Hospital Mental Health Service Reference Group, an Associate of Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and a Member of the Future Justice Executive. She has published and edited eleven books.

Ta (Sir) Mark Solomon (retired) - Kaiwhakahaere/Chair Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, New Zealand) 
Mark Solomon is of Ngai Tahu and Ngāti Kuri descent, and is from Kaikoura on the east coast of Te Waipounamu. He was the elected Kaiwhakahaere (chair) of Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, from 1998-2016.

Sir Mark was knighted in the 2012 NZ, New Years Honours List for services to Maori and Business.

Mark retired from the Hillary Summit in 2013 - his final contribution was in formally responding to 2013 Laureate Atossa Soltani's Hillary Dinner address (Nov 19), and supporting her in her engagement with Ngai Tahu runaka throughout the South Island as they confront oil and gas exploration. His founding work with us has been greatly valued.

Rajendra Pachauri (Founding Summit Governor, In Memoriam)

Dr. R.K. Pachauri was the Chief Executive of TERI since 1981, designated initially as Director and since April 2001 as Director-General. In April 2002 he was elected as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme in 1988. IPCC along with former Vice President Al Gore has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2007. He has been appointed as Director, Yale Climate and Energy Institute from July 2009. Dr. Pachauri has a PhD in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Economics and has authored 26 books and several papers and articles.

He has been on several international and national committees including membership of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, the Advisory Board on Energy (ABE) which reported directly to the Prime Minister of India, a Senior Advisor to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and several others. He has been President (1988) and Chairman (1989–90) of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE). He has been President of the Asian Energy Institute since 1992. In April 1999, he was appointed Member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan and continues to hold this appointment.

Dr. Pachauri was awarded the "Padma Bhushan" in 2001 by the President of India and he was also bestowed the "Officier De La LégionnD'Honneur" by the Government of France in 2006. He was conferred with the "Padma Vibhushan", second highest civilian award, for his services in the field of science and engineering in January 2008 by the President of India. In November 2009, he received the "Order of the Rising Sun – Gold and Silver Star" in recognition of his contribution to the enhancement of Japan's policy towards climate change and was bestowed with the Order of the White Rose of Finland from the Prime Minister of Finland.

‘Patchy’ passed after a long illness in India on 13th February 2020.

“The Hillary Institute honours his memory. As a founding governor Rajendra brought his unique science leadership and generous spirit to the development and governance of our work. May he rest in peace.”

Ray Anderson (Founding Summit Governor, In Memoriam)
Chairman and Founder, Interface, Inc.
The story is now legend; the “spear in the chest” epiphany Ray Anderson experienced when he first read Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce seeking inspiration for a speech to an Interface task force on the company’s environmental vision. Twelve years and a sea change later, Interface, Inc., is approximately 40 percent up “Mount Sustainability,” the journey towards a vision that no one would have imagined for the company, or the petroleum-intensive industry of carpet manufacturing which has been forever changed by Anderson’s vision. The once captain of industry has eschewed a luxury car for a Prius and built an off-the-grid home, authored a book chronicling his journey, Mid-Course Correction, and become an unlikely screen hero in the 2004 Canadian documentary, The Corporation. He was a sought after speaker and advisor on all issues eco, including a stint as co-chairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, and as a confidante of Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott as the company becomes more aware of its environmental impact and opportunities.

Some 11 years after his first book Mid Course Correction, Ray’s new book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist debunks the myth that financial success and environmental success are mutually exclusive and tells the Interface story, as only he can tell it. Ray was the recipient of a number of life-time achievement awards. He passed away in August 2011.

“The Hillary Institute honours the memory of Ray Anderson who passed away August 8th, 2011, at his home in Atlanta, Georgia. As a founding governor Ray brought his leadership and inspiration to the development and governance of our work enabling and inspiring all he had contact with. He was forever thanking others ‘for the work that they do’. The debt we owe Ray for the work that he did, is enormous. May you rest in well-earned peace Ray.”

Bridget Cullerton (Founding Summit Governor, In Memoriam)
Bridget Cullerton was Chief Executive Officer of the Belize Citrus Growers Association, Chairperson of the Caribbean Citrus Association, and Belize representative to the Inter-American Citrus Network.

She capped 30 years of professional employment in the United States as Washington State’s Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction and adjunct professor at several universities before returning to her native Belize in 1992. She earned a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in Education Administration while in the U.S. She represented U.S. and Belizean associations in delegations to the former Soviet Union, Germany, United Kingdom, Cuba and several other countries.

She was honored as Belize’s “Business Woman of the Year”, was invested with an MBE (Member of the British Empire) as part of the Queen’s Honors in 2000, and currently serves as a Justice of the Peace, member of the Regional Educational Council, and President-elect of the local Rotary Club. As a two-time cancer survivor, she was an organizing member of the Belize Cancer Society.

She was a popular and inspirational public speaker whose largely extemporaneous talks inspired audiences at numerous public events. She lived with her husband and three adopted children in Dangriga, a Garifuna community of 10,000 persons on the Caribbean Seacoast. Most of her seven adult children and 10 grandchildren reside in the United States. She was the daughter of a lighthouse keeper and grew up as the oldest of 10 children on the cayes of Belize.

"The Hillary Institute honours the memory Bridget Garbutt Lambert Cullerton – who passed away 8:40 P.M. Thursday, September 10, 2009, at her home in Dangriga, Belize. From 2006 on, Bridget brought her very special blend of wholly unique world-view and deeply compassionate leadership to the development and governance of our work internationally, enriching us all. She will be deeply missed."