Mona is Senior Director, Product Management for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) at S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI). In this role, Mona serves as global spokesperson for S&P DJI’s ESG Indices, educating the market on the values of ESG investing and our industry-leading ESG lineup. Our ESG indices support a diverse spectrum of ESG benchmarking and investing needs, from best-in-class approaches like the world-renowned Dow Jones Sustainability Index, to broad-market ESG alternatives and core ESG solutions like the S&P 500® ESG Index.
Prior to joining S&P DJI, Mona was Director at Trucost (part of S&P Global) and advised some of North America’s biggest institutional investors on low-carbon and fossil fuel free strategies, energy transition alignment, and meeting the recommendations of the TCFD for investors. Mona also led the North American presence of the 2° Investing Initiative, a prominent sustainable finance NGO focused on aligning the finance sector with climate goals. Mona also served as an advisor to the Obama Administration on climate and energy policy, and she worked for several years as an economist at the UK’s Bank of England.
Mona graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree (with honors) in Government and Economics (double major) from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is a regular market commentator on sustainable finance issues and is a published author of several research papers on topics ranging from disruptive technologies to the problem of “short-termism” in mainstream finance.As the world continues to pump the gas on a one-way street toward catastrophic climate change, market actors are attempting to slow down the traffic by limiting global temperature rise to within 1.5°C since pre-industrial levels.[1] To date, climate-conscious investors have largely focused on reducing relative portfolio carbon exposure. However, divergent methodologies make fertile ground Read more […]
As green investing becomes ever more mainstream, there is greater scrutiny of the myriad “environmentally friendly” investment products that have emerged. Several green-labeled benchmarks have been criticized for including oil and gas stocks, for instance, sparking some controversy within the sustainable investment community. However, while efforts to make financial products more transparent are laudable, not Read more […]
Socially responsible investing (SRI) has deep roots in the South African market. Indeed, some of the earliest records of this type of investing date back to the boycotts against South African companies during the era of Apartheid. The movement paved the way for a generation of socially conscious investors seeking to affect social Read more […]
The landmark Paris Agreement to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy marked a sea change in the global fight against climate change. A swelling tide of carbon-limiting regulations has since emerged, shifting the narrative from a largely ethical debate to a material set of risks and opportunities for the financial markets, today. As the Read more […]