Caroline Rees is President and Co-Founder of Shift, a non-profit working globally to embed respect for human rights into business and build a fairer economic system. Caroline drives Shift's thought leadership work on key challenges and opportunities in advancing corporate respect for human rights. Her recent work has focused on improving the data and methods used to evaluate the effects of companies’ human rights-related processes and practices, and on strengthening social aspects of sustainability reporting as a catalyst for better human rights risk management.
Caroline was previously a lead advisor to Professor John Ruggie in his role as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, and was closely involved in the development of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. From 2009 to 2011, she was Director of the Governance and Accountability Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Corporate Responsibility Initiative. From 1992 to 2005 she was a British diplomat; during her posting at the UK Mission to the UN in Geneva, she initiated and then chaired the intergovernmental process that led to the creation of John Ruggie’s mandate on business and human rights. Caroline is a member of the Imperatives Board of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Board of the Capitals Coalition, the Unilever Sustainability Advisory Council, and the Steering Committee of the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures.