Home Introduction Our Work Who We Are Glossary Links Contact Us	SD2 Partners is a 'young consultancy' made up of 'old hands' in their respective fields of international business, environmental management systems, socially responsible investment, and stakeholder dialogue and partnership brokering. Together, we offer a highly effective, flexible team – allowing you to draw on the expertise and experience you need while enjoying the benefits of working with an outside consultancy. MINU HEMMATI Dr. rer. pol., Dipl. Psych., Berlin, Germany ROBERT WHITFIELD MA, MBA, FCA, FRAeS, London, UK FRANZ KNECHT lic.iur., Basel, Switzerland A psychologist by background, Minu started her career in academia. Since 1998, she has been an independent advisor working with NGOs, corpora­tions, international agencies and governments. Areas of work include participation of stake­holders in decision-making, des­igning & facilitating multi-stake­holder dialogues and partner­ships, training, and gender issues. Minu has broad experience in international policy-making, wo­rking with a variety of stake­holders and leading a range of multi-stakeholder processes. She serves on a number of boards, advisory councils and expert groups, and as a Special Advisor to The Seed Initiative – Supporting Entre­preneurs for Environment and Development (IUCN, UNEP, UNDP). Minu was closely involved in the World Summit on Sustainable Development (South Africa, 2002), dealing with 'WSSD Partnerships', and coordinating the 'Implementation Conferen­ce: Stakeholder Action For Our Common Future', held immedia­tely prior to the Summit, with Robert Whitfield. This multi-stakeholder process resulted in 20+ partnership initiatives in the areas of freshwater, energy, food security and health. Her book "Multi-stakeholder Processes for Governance and Sustainability – Beyond Deadlock and Conflict" was published by Earthscan, Lon­don, in 2002. Robert is a Cambridge eco­nomics graduate, a Chartered Accountant and an Insead MBA. He spent 30 years in inter­national business, the last 15 years of which were with the Airbus partnership as Director of Business Development and later Director of Strategy and Exter­nal Affairs in the UK and Senior Vice President – Finance of Airbus Industrie in Toulouse. Since 2000, he has been working through Envirostrat on sustainable development and stakeholder engagement. With a Masters degree in Environmental Policy, he has worked as a consultant with Stakeholder Forum to deliver the Implement­ation Conference in Johannes­burg in 2002 with Minu Hemmati. Having managed the organis­ation's Multi-stakeholder Process and Capacity Building activities and worked with stakeholders on programme development in Africa, Robert recently coord­inated the deve­lopment of the UK's first sustain­ability strategy for aviation, including providing advice on process and stake­holder enga­gement. Publications include papers with Minu Hemmati on Multi-stake­holder Processes and Capacity Building, and a chapter on Partnerships in World Summit on Sustainable Develop­ment: The Johannesburg Conference , L Hens, B Nath eds. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands (2005) Franz Knecht founded Connexis Strategy Consultants in 1998 after implementing and leading Environmental Management Ser­vices at Swiss Bank Corporation (now UBS) from 1991-98. During his assignment, the bank developed and integrated envi­ronmental management sys­tems, environmental risk assess­ment for domestic lending and asset management solutions (SRI) as well as corporate reporting and internal education programmes. Since 1991, Franz has been active in several major industry initiatives and leading developments at the WBCSD, UNEP FI, IPCC and GRI. Connexis Strategy Consultants is a network of senior finance, manufacturing and engineering industry experts around the world, focussing on economic and financial aspects of sustain­able development and business activities. The strategic develop­ment focus today is new areas of business risks: Social Due Diligence applications for tran­sactions and Corporate Gover­nance solutions integrating in­tangible areas like environ­mental or social responsibility. Connexis is working for financial and manufacturing companies as well as UNEP, the World Bank, IFC and others such as the Business and the Environment Programme of Cambridge Uni­versity (1997-2002).