France - Robin Edme

Born in October 1956 and bilingual French-English, Robin graduated from HEC (the leading French business school) in 1979 and was trained as a high-ranking civil servant through ENA (“Ecole Nationale d'Administration” / 1984). He also holds a Master's degree in political science from the Paris Institute of Political Sciences (IEP Paris / 1981), in public law (1979) as well as a Doctorate degree in Economics from the university of Paris IX - Dauphine (1981).

He started his career as Head of the International Affairs Bureau of the Agro-business division of the Ministry of Agriculture. During that period he was appointed as Task Force Secretary to the President of the Agribusiness Industry Strategy Group of the French Ministry of the Plan and Investigator of the French Fair Trade Commission.

After having founded Maqassar in 2002, a strategy & management consulting company in the field of SRI and CSR, Robin was the Managing Partner of ecodurable® , the consulting division in CSR, SRI & sustainable development of Grant Thornton in France, a member of Grant Thornton International, one of the world's leading organisations of independently owned and managed accounting and consulting firms providing assurance, tax and specialist advice to independent businesses and their owners.

Robin spent most of his career as a strategy and management consultant in international consulting companies (Arthur D. Little, KPMG, Arthur Andersen) where he worked, at top management levels, on several international assignments (USA, Russia, Poland, Northern Africa and naturally Western Europe) covering various fields such as: strategy definition & implementation, company and intangible assets valuation, corporate culture audits, management of change and management control systems.

Actively contributing to the promotion of SRI and CSR since 1999, Robin is a founding member and the President, since July 2003, of the Forum pour l'Investissement Responsible, the French SIF. As such, he represents the French Forum on Eurosif’s board of directors and is currently serving as Eurosif's vice president.

He is a member of the Comité 21 (The French association for the promotion of the 21 Agenda), Amnesty International's Business Club in France, the Association 4D (which was set up to participate in the development of initiatives taking place in France as a consequence of the 1992 Rio Conference) and of the Advisory Committee of the French Board Members’ Association (Institut Français des Administrateurs).

Robin has been a visiting Professor at the Institut National Agronomique de Paris-Grignon since 1988 and is regularly invited as a speaker in international conferences on SRI. He has also published or contributed to several articles on SRI and CSR issues.

Contact Robin Edme.