Global Leadership Council

Dr Steve Howard is currently Vice Chairman, Sustainability, Temasek. He first joined Temasek as Chief Sustainability Officer in January 2021. Steve is a board member of GenZero, which he helped establish, and chairs the Investment Committee. He is also a founding board member of the Temasek-BlackRock joint venture, Decarbonization Partners, and is a member of the Investment Committee. In addition, Steve is Founding Chair of the We Mean Business Coalition and a member of LeapFrog’s Global Leadership Council. He was, until recently, on the Administrative Board of SEforALL.

Before joining Temasek, Steve was Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA Group and served on IKEA’s Executive Group Management from 2011-2017. In 2015, Steve co-founded We Mean Business, a leading climate change coalition of organisations that helped support the Paris Agreement. Prior to IKEA, Steve was Founder and CEO of The Climate Group, a global NGO that has built networks of cities, states, regions, and businesses committed to a net-zero carbon world. Before the Climate Group, Steve consulted on sustainability for major corporations and institutions, working as a partner at ERM Group in London and a Director at URS Corporation.

Steve has worked with various NGOs and UN bodies on a wide range of global sustainability topics. Earlier in his career, Steve worked in WWF, where he established the Global Forest and Trade Network, chaired the UK Forest Stewardship Council and helped launch and chair The Forest Trust. Steve is trained as an ecologist and has a PhD in Ecophysiology and Environmental Physics based on research in Kenya.