Richard Burrett

Richard Burrett is a Fellow of the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership (CISL). He is a Co-founder and Director of Cambridge Social Impact Consulting and a Senior Adviser to the Earth Security group. He also lectures on sustainability at Durham University and Porto Business School.

At CISL he has worked with international companies at Board and Senior Executive level and tutored on the MST in Sustainability Leadership. His background is in international finance and investment. At ABN AMRO he worked on the Equator Principles, creating a market recognised standard for the management of environmental and social risk within project financing before becoming Global Head of Sustainability. He was Co-Chair of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) from 2010 to 2012 working on systemic change in finance to support a sustainable economy and on the board of Forest Trends, a Washington-based NGO promoting market-based approaches to forest conservation. He was a FMO (Dutch Development Bank) nominated non-exec Director of Union Bank of Nigeria from 2013 to 2022 and Chief Sustainability Officer at Earth Capital, a sustainability focused investment group from 2010 to 2024. He was an Independent Non-Exec Director of Triodos Bank UK (a leader in sustainable banking) from 2019 until early 2025.

He holds a BA in Modern Languages and MBA, both from Durham, and a MST in Social Innovation from Cambridge University. His work and research interests are focussed on sustainable business approaches.