Simon is currently Sherpa of the UN Secretary General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals, based at the United Nations Development Program. He was recently Senior Advisor on Finance in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, and Co-Director of the UN Environment’s Inquiry into Design Options for a Sustainable Financial System. He founded and was founding Chief Executive of the international think tank, AccountAbility, and before that Development Director of the New Economics Foundation, founding Chair of the Ethical Trading Initiative and on the founding Steering Committee of the Global Reporting Initiative.
He has been Visiting Professor at Singapore Management University, Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School of the University of Oxford, a Visiting Scholar at Tsinghua School of Economics and Management in Beijing, S Senior Visiting Fellow at Harvard`s JK Kennedy School of Government, Visiting Professor, Copenhagen Business School, and Honorary Professor at the University of Southern Africa, as well as Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum and Senior Fellow at the Global Green Growth Institute. He is on the Advisory Board of the leading sustainability investment fund, Generation Investment Management.
Simon publishes extensively: his book, ‘The Civil Corporation’, was awarded the Academy of Management’s prestigious Best Book on Social Issues in Management, and his Harvard Business Review article, ‘Paths to Corporate Responsibility’ is widely used as a reference point in understanding emergent sustainability strategies. He has advised companies worldwide on sustainability issues.