Heidi Welsh, Executive Director, Sustainable Investments Institute

Heidi Welsh, the founding executive director of the Sustainable Investments Institute (Si2), has analyzed and written about corporate responsibility issues for more than two decades. She oversees Si2's operations and research. Welsh was the lead author of Si2's two studies about the corporate governance of political spending in the S&P 500, published in 2010 and 2011 with the IRRC Institute. Previously, Welsh helped author seasonal and annual reports on proxy voting trends starting in 1987 at the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC), closely followed social and environmental shareholders resolutions and their results, and for 16 years ran the monitoring program examining corporate compliance with the MacBride principles for fair employment in Northern Ireland. She co-authored the Carbon Disclosure Project's 2007 report on S&P 500 companies and also set up a global sustainability metrics project for RiskMetrics analyzing 1,800 of the world's biggest companies. Welsh also served on the Global Reporting Initiative's Electric Utility Sector Working Group in 2008-09 and participated in an Oxford University assessment of Northern Ireland's affirmative action legislation. Welsh received her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude, with a concentration in science, technology and public policy, from Carleton College. She holds a master's degree from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.