Stockholm (NordSIP) – To NordSIP’s regular readers, Tiina Landau is hardly a stranger. Her book, Sustainable Investing: Beating the Market with ESG, co-authored with Hanna Silvola, has been an inspiration for many sustainable investors, providing a bridge between the latest findings of academia and the efforts of practitioners to incorporate sustainability in their day-to-day work. An announcement earlier this week that Landau would be joining Finnish business and project development company Forus Oy as Business Director provided an opportunity to catch up with the sustainability thought leader and learn more about her new venture.
“When I met with Forus Oy’s founder and CEO, Eero Oksanen, I was immediately compelled by the mission he shared: to stop climate change profitably,” says Landau. “To make this a reality, he had already gathered a passionate and talented team with a great track on solar panel sites in Finland. I found this truly inspiring and decided to join them. My aim is to enable commercialisation and the scaling-up of new solutions.”
Landau is a genuinely versatile sustainable professional. For the past fifteen years, she has contributed to the field through a variety of roles and businesses. Starting with NGO projects, Landau moved quickly to sales of voluntary carbon offsets and then to ESG in asset management at OP Financial Group. She was a management consultant at KPMG before joining Finnish pension insurance giant Ilmarinen as Senior Responsible Investment Officer.
“I got into sustainable investing at a time when it was still new for most,” explains Landau. “We were rapidly developing new practices and sharing lots of tacit knowledge informally among investors. Eventually, I wanted to make these learnings available more widely. That is when I decided to co-author a book on the topic.”
After years in sustainable investing, Landau moved on to an industrial company, Neste, the world’s largest producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. “I got into innovation projects and seized an opportunity to take on a commercial role in business development at the incubator team, leading projects to evaluate and develop new business ideas,” recalls Landau. “It was exciting to be looking at something very new and developing again, seeking opportunities to create positive impact that also make business sense.”
This same pragmatic sustainability approach compelled her most recently to move on to Fortus Oy. “Here, we work on business and project development that contribute to solving sustainability challenges,” she says. “We seek to get new solutions implemented in practice, even if it is not always easy. I am pragmatic and enjoy a fast pace combined with creating impact, so this approach fits me well.”
Given her vast experience spanning several industries as well as academia, we are curious to hear Landau’s view of what Nordic investors can do to speed up the transition to a green economy. “Fund companies can certainly be part of the solutions, even if it requires a bit more patience,” she says. “As asset owners, it is imperative to signal clearly that sustainability is the norm and what is expected of companies. Let them know that being part of the solution makes them more attractive as investees in the future,” concludes Landau.
