Conference CIRANO 25years: Sustainable Development, A Strategic Opportunity for Companies

CIRANO

Wednesday 20 Nov 2019
From 11:30AM To 1:30PM

Event organized in collaboration with

During this signature conference organized as part of CIRANO's 25th anniversary activities, Pauline D'Amboise, Secretary General and Vice President Governance and Sustainable Development at Desjardins, made a presentation on the theme "Sustainable Development: A Strategic Vector for Companies".

Her presentation was followed by a roundtable discussion moderated by Daniel Normandin, Executive Director of the Institut EDDEC.

The panelists were:

Pauline d'Amboise, Secretary General and Vice President Governance and Sustainable Development, Desjardins
Sophie Bernard, Associate Professor at Polytechnique Montréal, CIRANO Researcher and Fellow
Justin Leroux, Associate Professor at HEC Montréal, CIRANO Researcher and Fellow

This event was followed by the symposium for the launch of the book Le Québec économique 8 : Le développement durable à l’ère des changements climatiques.

Sophie Bernard

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2011, Main Researcher of the theme Sustainable Development and Agri-Food, Sophie Bernard is Full Professor in the Department of Mathematical and Industrial Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal.

Holding a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Ottawa, Sophie Bernard then did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Paris School of Economics.

Sophie Bernard specializes in public policy for the environment and the management of end-of-life products. In particular, it works on remanufacturing, recycling, eco-design incentives for products and international trade in waste. She is particularly interested in the illegal waste market and extended producer responsibility. These subjects are part of the broader theme of the circular economy for which she has developed expertise.

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Pauline D'Amboise

Pauline D’Amboise is secretary general and vice-president of governance and sustainable development at Desjardins Group, the leading cooperative financial group in Canada and the sixth largest in the world. She is responsible for developing and reviewing initiatives related to governance, organizational ethics, and sustainable development. As secretary general, Ms. D’Amboise plays an advisory role with the board of directors, the board of ethics and professional conduct, and the president and CEO of Desjardins Group, supporting them in their roles and responsibilities. She has extensive experience in the areas of corporate governance, organizational ethics, and corporate social responsibility.

Under the leadership of Ms. d’Amboise, Desjardins has fully integrated the principles of sustainable development into its strategy, client service offer, and operations, and today, it has an advisory services team dedicated to sustainable development. Desjardins Group also offers a full range of solidarity-based and eco-friendly financial products and services and supports university research in sustainable development and responsible investing. D’Amboise has spoken at a number of events in Quebec and Europe. She also completed training with the Climate Reality Project Canada (founded by Al Gore) and is certified to give talks on climate change.

Pauline D’Amboise holds a master’s degree in organizational ethics from the Université de Sherbrooke and the title of certified corporate director from the Université Laval. In 2012, she was appointed ambassador of sustainable development by the Université de Sherbrooke and was named one of Canada’s top 25 women of influence. In 2013, she was named business and economics grand laureate by the Quebec newspaper Le Soleil/La Presse. She received a Clean50 Award from Delta Management Group for her efforts in sustainable development in 2015, and a Women of Distinction Award in the environment category from the Montreal Women’s Y Foundation in 2016.

D’Amboise is the chair of the board of the Université Laval’s Institut Hydro-Québec en environnement, développement et société. She is also a board member of Coop Carbone and an advisory council member of SWITCH, an organization that aims to speed up the transition towards a green economy.

Ms. D’Amboise has been a board member of the David Suzuki Foundation since 2010. She is the board co-chair of Bourse du Carbone Scol’ÈRE, an education program to encourage young people and their families to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through the program’s educational carbon credits.

She has also been an ambassador and mentor for the Association of Quebec Women in Finance for two years, and she was recently recognized for her active involvement. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation appointed her a Trudeau mentor in 2017.

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Nathalie De Marcellis-Warin

Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin joined CIRANO in 2000 as a postdoctoral researcher and was appointed President and CEO in 2016, after serving as Vice-President from 2008 to 2016. Since 2011, she has led the CIRANO Barometer project on risk perception in Quebec, which annually collects data on Quebecers’ concerns regarding 47 major societal issues. She is also Head of the CIRANO Research Pole on the Socioeconomic Impacts of Digital Intelligence and Principal Investigator of the Innovation and Digital Transformation research theme.

She is a Full Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, where she also serves as Academic Director of PolyFinances. In addition, she is a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Data Valorization (IVADO).

She holds a PhD in Management Science (specializing in risk management and insurance) from the École normale supérieure de Cachan. Her research focuses on risk management and decision-making in contexts of risk and uncertainty, as well as the design and evaluation of public policies. Her work combines economic analysis, cost-benefit analysis, survey data analysis, and more recently, large-scale unstructured data analytics.

In 2008, she founded the RISQH network, a knowledge-sharing and awareness network dedicated to risk management, patient safety, and quality of care in healthcare institutions. She contributed to the development of the Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence.

She serves as Scientific Director of the Measurement Tools, Monitoring and Surveys Division at the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of AI and Digital Technologies (OBVIA). She is also co-founder of the International Francophone Network on Scientific Advice (RFICS).

At CIRANO, she leads and contributes to several large-scale research initiatives, notably the creation of an economic digital twin of the St. Lawrence–Great Lakes region (GVCdtLab), developed in collaboration with the federal government.

She has published numerous scientific articles, several books, and more than 40 reports for government and other organizations. She has delivered over one hundred conferences and is regularly invited to speak in the media.

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Marcelin Joanis

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2008, Main researcher of the theme Economic and Fiscal Policy, Marcelin Joanis is Full Professor in the Department of Econimics at Université de Montréal.

Holding a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Toronto, his main research interests are public economics, public finance and policy analysis.

A specialist in public economics, his research focuses on public finance, public infrastructure, regional economics, fiscal federalism and political economy.

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Justin Leroux

A CIRANO Researcher and Fellow since 2009, Justin Leroux is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at HEC Montréal. He is also a member of the Centre de recherdhe en éthique (CRÉ) and associate member of the Groupement de recherche en économie quantitative d'Aix Marseille (GREQAM).

Holding a Ph.D. in Economics from Rice University, his research interests include cost allocation, externality (the creation of externalities), climate change and chaos theory.

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Daniel Normandin

Daniel Normandin holds a bachelor's degree in biological sciences (Université de Montréal), a master's degree in environmental biotechnology (Université Laval), a master's degree in administrative sciences (HEC Montréal) and an MBA (HEC Montréal). Since March 2014, he has been Executive Director of the Institut EDDEC.

Previously, Daniel Normandin participated in the creation and deployment of Quantis, an international consulting firm specializing in life cycle assessment. Prior to this transition to private practice, Daniel Normandin had an essentially academic career, devoted to the establishment and development of various research units in the fields of the environment, sustainable development and life cycle analysis. Among these, we should mention the CIRAIG of the École Polytechnique, for which he was Executive Director until 2010.

A renowned speaker, Daniel Normandin is the author of several reports and articles on the themes of environmental biotechnology, sustainable development and life cycle management. He sits or has sat on several boards of directors, including those of the United Nations Environment Program's Life Cycle Initiative, the Environment Network, I.C.I. Environment Inc. and the Centre of Expertise on Waste (CEMR). Daniel Normandin has also been a member of the jury for several prizes and distinctions in the field of the environment and sustainable development.

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