Matthew Kiernan

Kiernan is founder and Chief Executive of Inflection Point Capital Management, and author of Investing in a Sustainable World. In 1992, he had founded Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, the top-rated firm in the world in sustainable investment research, where he also served as Chief Executive. While leading Innovest, Kiernan was instrumental in both the design and implementation of a number of innovative, “sustainability-enhanced” investment products – across a number of different asset classes and geographies. Those products included a number of world “firsts”, including: emerging markets sustainability fund, climate risk-adjusted bond index, “green” listed REIT index. Clients of Innovest included leading international institutional investors, including CalPERS, CalSTRS, APG, USS, PGGM, and the Norwegian Government Pension Fund. He holds a Master’s in Environmental Studies, and earned a PhD in Strategic Environmental Management from the London School of Economics in 1982. After co-founding a strategy consulting firm which he later sold to KPMG Peat Marwick, Dr Kiernan became a senior partner there. From 1990 to 1992, he was director of the Business Council for Sustainable Developmentin Geneva, and acted as a senior advisor to Secretary General of the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. He has taught sustainable finance in executive programs at the Wharton School, Columbia, Stanford, London Business School, and Oxford, and is currently a guest faculty member at Cambridge University, in HRH The Prince of Wales’ executive program in sustainability. In 2007, he was given a special executive award by the United Nations Environment Program’s Finance Initiative, for innovations and contributions in the field of carbon finance. He is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Environmental Investing, and of the advisory board of the Responsible Investment Academy in Sydney.