Drawing on a successful global career investing in and managing businesses in complex market and regulatory environments, Piers Cumberlege works with multinational corporations on political risk and business intelligence and advises high-growth companies in the media, technology, and sustainability sectors. He is currently advising the UN SDG Lab in Geneva on building Impact investment frameworks for emerging markets; and is a member of the Teaching Faculty at HEC Paris.
Since 1999 Piers has been an active Board director of public corporations listed on the Frankfurt, Moscow, and Toronto exchanges. He has served on several high-profile joint-venture and investee company boards and has experience of Finance Audit and Risk, Governance and HR, Compensation, Strategy Committees.
In addition to serving on Boards, Piers particularly enjoys designing, building and steering complex international partnerships with multiple – and multi-cultural - stakeholders from business, government, and civil society. He has more than 35 years of executive experience in General Management, Investment, and International Business Development of major transportation, telecommunications, power, infrastructure and industrial businesses at Bombardier Inc., GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT),
and Hawker Siddeley Group, living in and managing multi-cultural teams in Russia and the CIS, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Since 2005, Piers has operated his own advisory vehicle, Straightview, in parallel to other executive roles. He was Head of Partnership at the World Economic Forum between 2010-2015.
He has significant experience in growth capital and early-stage direct investment, and a special interest in sustainability and the impact investment space, with a focus on emerging markets. Piers has established and managed commercial private equity funds investing in Russia and Africa, and non-profit sustainable economic development initiatives (he sits on the Advisory Council of FinDev Canada, the Investment Committee of Engineers Without Borders and was a Director and Chair of the Investment Committee of CARE Canada from 2006-2016).
He has a Master’s degree from Oxford University, a graduate business degree from Coventry University in association with the General Electric Company, and holds the Corporate Board Director certification from McGill University and the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors. In 2013 Piers received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for services to development.