Impact Alpha Partners has appointed a non-executive director to its board.
Impact investment research and consulting firm Impact Alpha Partners (IAP) has appointed sustainability and impact investment expert Désirée Lucchese as a Non-Executive Director to the board.
Lucchese is a Sustainability Manager at MLC Life Insurance. Prior to this, Lucchese was the Head of Ethics and Impact at U Ethical Investors and an ESG Consultant at MSCI ESG Research.
“We are excited to have an individual of Désirée’s calibre lend her knowledge and support towards our company mission,” Andrew Huang, Managing Director of IAP said.
“Désirée’s deep and cross-disciplinary expertise, which spans environmental science & systems, climate risk evaluations, and sustainable finance frameworks will provide invaluable guidance for IAP and our clients to appropriately and credibly navigate the impact investing ecosystem,” he said.
Lucchese is an Honorary Associate of the Finance Department at UTS Business School and a Sustainability and Social Impact Industry Mentor at RMIT. She has served as an advisor to the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia’s Technical Expert Groups and has collaborated on stewardship initiatives with the Investor Group for Climate Change and Investors Against Slavery and Trafficking.
Since 2011, Lucchese has been an Al Gore Climate Ambassador.
“We are now at a crossroads: rising climate risks increasing the potential for hot-house disasters versus promising technological progress in the clean economy transformation and innovations in policies and markets,” Lucchese said.
“The scale of socio-economic change and disruption for society and the natural world will require unprecedented ingenuity and business resilience. Positive change requires courage and humility, which IAP will bring to this space,” she said.
IAP also appointed quant investor Adam Randall as an Executive Director. Randall has also joined the board of the firm.
“Adam’s appointment will drive the firm’s capability to apply a quantitative lens to impact investment research,” Huang said.
Randall brings expertise in quantitative research and portfolio construction from a distinguished career across some of Australia’s largest fund managers including IFM Investors, RQI Investors (part of First Sentier) and Victorian Funds Management Corporation.
In 2017, Randall founded Blue Orbit Asset Management, a quantitative Australian and global small caps asset manager. His expertise covers alpha signal research, portfolio optimisation and risk allocation. Randall holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering.
Huang established IAP in July 2023 after having spent more than five years at State Super, where he was a Senior Investment Manager.
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