Founding Director
Jane Nelson CMG
Jane Nelson is the founding director of the Corporate Responsibility Initiative, established in 2004, at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a senior research fellow at the school’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. She is a nonresident senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow with the Business Fights Poverty Institute. In 2024, she was appointed as a Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) in the United Kingdom’s New Year’s Overseas and International Honours List for services to business and sustainability.
Nelson has authored, co-authored or edited seven books and over 100 reports, book chapters, articles, and other publications on corporate responsibility and multistakeholder coalitions for sustainable development. She was awarded the Academy of Management’s 2015 “Best Book Award” in the Social Issues in Management Division for a book she co-authored with Professor David Grayson from Cranfield University entitled, "Corporate Responsibility Coalitions: The Past, Present and Future of Alliances for Sustainable Capitalism." Information on other publications is available in the attached publications list.
She taught at Harvard Kennedy School for over a decade, co-teaching classes on: Corporate Responsibility, Citizenship and Public Policy: Can Business Advance the Public Interest? with Professor John Haigh; Corporate Responsibility and New Governance Models with the late Professor John Ruggie; and Corporate Social Responsibility with John Ruggie and Steve Lydenberg, founding director of the Initiative for Responsible Investment at ĚÇĐÄvlogąŮÍř. She has served on the faculty of executive education programs for Harvard Business School’s Corporate Social Responsibility and Purpose and Profit – Creating Shared Value executive programs; Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative; the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University; Cambridge University’s Business and Poverty leadership program; the World Bank Institute; and the United Nations Staff College. She is a former senior associate at the Institute for Sustainability Leadership at Cambridge University and a former member of the advisory council at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, at Case Western Reserve University. In 2009, she was a track leader for the Clinton Global Initiative, leading the content and programming for the track on developing human capital, and served on CGI’s program advisory group for several years. She was a 2016 Arthur Vining Davis Aspen Fellow, and a recipient of the Keystone Center's 2005 Leadership in Education Award.
Nelson currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Newmont, South32 and the Niger Delta Partnership Initiative and as an emeritus director of the World Environment Center. In 2021, she was appointed as a Commissioner on the Business Commission to Tackle Inequality, hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and currently serves as one of the Commission’s co-chairs. She serves on the Stewardship Board for the World Economic Forum’s Food Systems initiative, on the Forum’s Community of Climate Governance Experts, and the Forum’s Global Future Council (GFC) on Good Governance. She has previously been a member of the GFC on Transparency and Anti-Corruption, and prior to that, the co-chair of the Forum’s GFC on Food Systems Innovation and a member of the Forum’s GFC on International Cooperation, Public-Private Partnerships and Sustainable Development. She served on the International Finance Corporation’s Economic Advisory Board and is currently on the following advisory councils: the National Community Advisory Council, Bank of America; the Global Citizenship Advisory Council, Abbott Laboratories; the Sustainability Advisory Council, Griffith Foods; the International Advisory Council, APCO Worldwide; the Circle of Advisers, Business Fights Poverty; the Corporate Responsibility Research Project Advisory Board, High Meadows Institute; and the International Advisory Network, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre.
Nelson was a director and then senior adviser at former Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (later IBLF) from 1993 to 2012. Established in 1990, by the former Prince of Wales (now King Charles III), the forum focused on building capacity for responsible business practices and public-private partnerships for sustainable development in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. She served in various roles, including the forum’s Director of Policy and Research and Director of Business Leadership and Strategy. She facilitated dialogues between the Chairs and CEOs of major global corporations, heads of United Nations agencies and funds, the World Bank Group and other development finance institutions, trade union leaders and the CEOs of global development, humanitarian and human rights organizations. She co-led international site visits consisting of business and nonprofit leaders to countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, Bangladesh and the United States and was responsible for establishing and overseeing several research initiatives and cross-sector dialogues and training programs. This included a five-year “Business as Partners in Development” program, which was implemented in partnership with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a series of UN-business partnership workshops co-created with the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the UN’s Staff Training College.
In 2001, Nelson was seconded to the executive office of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, where she worked with the UN Global Compact, researching and writing the Secretary-General’s report for the United Nations General Assembly, (A/56/323), “Cooperation between the United Nations and all relevant partners, in particular the private sector,” which was submitted to the Fifty-Sixth Session of the General Assembly and subsequently adapted and published by the UN as a book. Prior to joining the IBLF in 1993, she worked for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Africa, researching and co-authoring their Africa report for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit; for FUNDES (Fundación para desarrollo sostenible) in Latin America, undertaking research and co-authoring a book on small enterprise and sustainable development; with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), leading a global research project on business and sustainable development partnerships; and as a Vice President in the Financial Institutions Group at Citibank, with responsibility for marketing the bank’s Worldwide Securities Services in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, and was awarded one of the group’s All-Star awards in 1989.
Previously, she has served on the Boards of Directors or Trustees of FSG, Abraaj, SITA (now part of Suez Environnement), the World Environment Center, the UK Environment Foundation, AIESEC (one of the world’s largest youth-led networks focused on leadership development and cultural exchange), and the International Council of Toy Industries CARE Foundation (focused on improving working conditions in toy factories and global supply chains). She previously served on advisory councils for the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform, Initiative for Global Development, Center for Global Development, Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, InterAction, International Finance Corporation, The Norwegian Business for Peace Foundation, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Pearson, Merck Vaccines, British Telecom, Youth Business International, Henderson Fund Managers, UNDP’s Inclusive Markets Initiative, the UK Department for International Development, the Danish Ministry for Social Affairs, the Copenhagen Centre, Instituto Ethos in Brazil, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, the Ford Foundation’s Corporate Involvement Initiative, Alcoa Foundation’s Conservation and Sustainability fellowship program, the International Council on Mining and Metals, the Global Business Coalition Against HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria (later GBCHealth), and the 21st Century Trust.
In 2015, she was one of 34 people selected from the United Nations, business, civil society, and academia to be profiled in a book entitled “Next: Sustainable Business,” published to mark the 15th Anniversary of the United Nations Global Compact and outlining leadership perspectives on the future of corporate responsibility and sustainable development. In 2008, she was profiled in a book by Professor Sandra Waddock from Boston College entitled “The Difference Makers” as one of 23 people who has played a pioneering role in building the field of corporate responsibility.
Born in Zimbabwe, Nelson has lived and worked in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, and has work experience in the Middle East and Latin America. She was a Rotary International exchange student in her final year of high school in Michigan, United States, and a Fellow of the 21st Century Trust in the UK. She has a B.Sc. in Agricultural Economics (Cum Laude) from the University of Natal in South Africa, and a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.