Global Head of Sustainability
Franklin Templeton
Anne Simpson is Global Head of Sustainability for Franklin Templeton, reporting to the President and CEO. In this newly created role, Ms. Simpson is responsible for driving the company’s strategic direction on stewardship, sustainability and ESG investment strategy globally, while fostering best practices within the firm’s autonomous specialist investment managers. She serves as the firm’s primary spokesperson on matters related to sustainability and participates in industry engagement initiatives and advocacy activities with policy makers and regulators.
Ms. Simpson joined Franklin Templeton in 2022, bringing 35 years of sustainable investment and academic expertise as well as extensive experience in the international regulatory and policy arena. She is a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University appointed by the Chancellor and teaches at University of California, Berkeley Haas Business School as a Lecturer in Sustainable and Impact Finance. In addition, Ms. Simpson is an advisory council member for the Official Monetary Financial Institutions Forum, a board member at Ceres, serves on the Leadership Council for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and on the steering committee of Climate Action 100+. She has previously served on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Investor Advisory Committee, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Boards Investor Advisory Group and the International Financial Reporting Standards Advisory Council.
Prior to joining Franklin Templeton, Ms. Simpson was with the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), one of the largest asset owners in the world, where she served as Managing Investment Director for Board Governance & Sustainability, leading the development and execution of CalPERS’ award-winning Sustainable Investment Strategy across a global portfolio of US$500 billion with 80% assets internally managed. At CalPERS, Ms. Simpson served as a member of its Investment Management Committee, which determines asset liability management, capital allocation, risk management and operations across global public equity, fixed income, private equity, private credit, real assets and infrastructure. In addition, she served as the inaugural Chair of Climate Action 100+ and its Asia Advisory Group, a global investor alliance of $60 trillion which CalPERS convened and co-founded. Ms. Simpson also led the CalPERS investment office diversity, equity and inclusion business initiative, including the founding of 3D (Diverse Director DataSource). Prior to joining CalPERS, Ms. Simpson was a Senior Faculty Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Management, Head of the Global Corporate Governance Forum at the World Bank, Executive Director of the International Corporate Governance Network and Joint Managing Director of Pensions and Investment Research Consultants (PIRC) Ltd.
In 2019, Time Magazine named Ms. Simpson as one of the 15 women leading the global fight on climate change. In 2020, she was named one of the 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance by Barron’s. For 11 consecutive years from 2010-21, she has been ranked by the National Association of Corporate Directors as one of the year’s 100 most influential people in the boardroom. Simpson has published several books in the field, including, most recently, “”The Financial Ecosystem: The Role of Finance in Achieving Sustainability”” with Satyajit Bose and Dong Guo of Columbia University (Palgrave MacMillan), and “”Fair Shares: The Future of Shareholder Power and Responsibility”” with Jonathan Charkham (Oxford University Press).
She graduated from Oxford University in the United Kingdom, where she studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics, received bachelor’s and master’s degrees and was a Slater Fellow at Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
