European Boards Growth & Resilience Series

Boards Impact Forum and Chapter Zero Netherlands are pleased to host the fourth webinar in the European Boards Growth & Resilience Series, developed in collaboration with the Chapter Zero Alliance and several European Chapters, namely Chapter Zero France, Chapter Zero Brussels and Climate Governance Initiative Greece.

The board is accountable for promoting long-term resilience and value creation — overseeing the systems and processes that formalize responsibility for how changes in climate and natural resources affect organizations. This means enforcing clear board-level accountability, ensuring responsibilities are well defined and appropriately resourced, aligning incentives with long-term goals, and regularly reviewing governance structures to confirm that oversight remains fit for purpose.

Effective oversight also depends on strong foundations: the skills, mindset, culture, and stakeholder engagement that enable boards to navigate complexity, challenge strategy, and guide transformation with confidence.

This session focuses on the Oversight and Responsibility principle of the WEF’s Guiding Principles for Climate and Nature Governance. It aims at exploring the board’s accountability for promoting long-term resilience and value creation, together with the three board foundations of skills and knowledge, culture, and stakeholder collaboration, exploring how boards can build the internal capabilities and governance structures needed to translate strategic intent into accountable, purposeful action.

The discussion will address how supervisory boards can:

• Strengthen accountability for climate- and nature-related impacts within governance structures and decision-making
• Ensure clear ownership and integration of sustainability across board and committee responsibilities
• Build the skills, knowledge, and foresight capabilities required to challenge strategy and oversee emerging risks
• Foster a board culture that enables curiosity, constructive challenge, and long-term thinking
• Guide meaningful stakeholder engagement to strengthen resilience and inform strategic choices

Insights gathered will directly contribute to the European Boards Growth and Resilience Roadmap, translating governance principles into concrete, actionable guidance for boards across Europe.

As with all sessions in this series, participation is reserved for board directors and those holding a board mandate, ensuring a frank and focused exchange among peers.

Speakers include:

• Ludo Van der Heyden, INSEAD Chaired Professor in Corporate Governance and Founding Academic Director of INSEAD’s Corporate Governance Initiative. He has been Professor of Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD since 1988 and has co-directed the International Directors Programme for over a decade. His work spans corporate governance, family business, digital transformation and strategy, and he has published extensively in leading academic and practitioner journals. He holds an Engineering Degree from the Université Catholique de Louvain and a PhD from Yale University.
• Julie Baddeley, one of the UK’s most experienced board directors, having served in executive and non-executive capacities across FTSE 100 and 250 companies as well as major public sector organisations. She is the co-founder of the Hughes Hall Centre for Climate Engagement at Cambridge University, bringing climate science, law, regulation and risk into the boardroom. She has chaired both Chapter Zero, the UK network helping non-executive directors tackle climate change, and the Climate Governance Initiative globally, with chapters in 56 countries.
• Virginie Morgon, Founder and Managing Partner of Ardabelle Capital. She previously served as CEO of Eurazeo from 2018 to 2023, transforming it into a leading multi-strategy international investment firm with assets under management growing from €3 billion to over €34 billion. Prior to Eurazeo, she spent 16 years at Lazard, becoming the youngest Managing Senior Partner at Lazard Frères et Cie in Paris. She has served on the boards of AccorHotels, Vivendi, Moncler and L’Oréal, and was made Knight of the Legion of Honor and Knight of the National Order of Merit.
• Marina Niforos, board director, deep-tech strategist and governance expert with over 25 years of experience at the intersection of technology, governance and strategic transition. She is the President of Climate Governance Initiative Greece, part of the WEF network of board director associations leading climate action in the boardroom, and a globally recognised expert on AI and blockchain. She serves as Jury Expert Member for the European Innovation Council Accelerator and the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform. Her doctoral research at Johns Hopkins SAIS examines how AI-driven demand is reshaping energy infrastructure and its implications for competitiveness and national security. She has held board mandates with the GrowthFund — The National Fund of Greece, Séché Environnement and the US National Commission for UNESCO, and currently serves on the Sustainability Committee at Thrace Group.

The session will combine keynote insights, board-level discussion moderated by Liselotte Engstam, Chair of Boards Impact Forum, and interactive breakout conversations among participants. Insights gathered during the webinar will contribute to the development of the European Boards Growth and Resilience Roadmap, a cross-European initiative aimed at strengthening board leadership for sustainable competitiveness.

A collaborative event organized by Boards Impact Forum, Chapter Zero France, Chapter Zero Netherlands, Chapter Zero Brussels and Climate Governance Initiative Greece.