
Join the Canadian Sustainable Finance Network (CSFN) for its annual conference Aug. 29 and 30, 2022 hosted by the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business. PICS is a sponsor of this year’s event through the Events Partnership program.
The conference will bring together academics and financial industry experts to discuss the latest sustainable finance research and share innovations in sustainable finance education.
Attend the PICS-sponsored panel on climate risks and the financial sector for free, in person or online. Please email csfn2022@uvic.ca.
Keynote speakers include Prof. Laura Starks of the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, and Senator Rosa Galvez, one of Canada’s leading experts in pollution control and its effect on human health.
Are you planning a great climate solution event? Learn more about the Events Partnership program.

Dr. Rosa Galvez is an environmental engineer, an independent senator in the Senate of Canada since 2016, and the President of the Parliamentary Network on Climate Change of ParlAmericas, a network of parliamentarians from the Americas. She was a professor at Laval University in Québec for more than 25 years, and was chair of the Civil and Water Engineering department from 2011 to 2017. Her expertise is in water and wastewater treatment, watershed management, sustainable development, municipal and hazardous waste, site remediation, impact assessment and climate risk to infrastructure.
In the Senate, she is a member of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, which she chaired during the 42nd Parliament. In 2021, she was the sponsor in the Senate of the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, providing an accountability framework for the federal government to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. She was also recipient of the Clean50 Award 2021 for her parliamentary work on climate and the environment. In March 2022, she published a white paper on Aligning Canadian Finance with Climate Commitments, which led to the introduction in the Senate of Bill S-243, the Climate-Aligned Finance Act, legislation to help guide the financial sector in its transition to a net-zero economy.

Laura Starks, Ph.D., is the George Kozmetsky Centennial University Distinguished Chair at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on environmental, social and governance investing.
Her current research focuses on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, including climate finance and board diversity, as well as molecular genetics and financial decisions. She has won many awards for her research and teaching.
She is Research Associate of the NBER, Research Member for the ECGI, and Senior Fellow for ABFER. She has served as President of the Society of Financial Studies, Western Finance Association and Financial Management Association, and is presently President-Elect of the American Finance Association. She is Editor of the FMA Survey and Synthesis Series, Advisory Editor for the Financial Analysts Journal and Financial Management and previously, Editor of the Review of Financial Studies. She has served or currently serves on mutual funds’ boards of directors, pension fund advisory committees, the Board of Governors of the Investment Company Institute, and the Governing Council of the Independent Directors Council, and advisory committees for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund.