Time flies when you’re having fun and it certainly has been fun to spend the better part of 2023 at the helm of the GRESB Foundation. I am proud to lead such a critical part of GRESB and support the Foundation’s mission to drive sustainable value through effective communication between institutional investors and managers.
The work that goes into ensuring a functioning GRESB Foundation requires countless hours (sometime in the middle of the night) of commitment from more than 100 individuals around the globe. I owe tremendous gratitude to the Foundation Board, the Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards Committees, the Working Groups, and the Expert Resource Groups. These volunteers are the lifeblood of the Foundation. They ensure the GRESB Standards remain independent, investor-led and reflective of the real asset industry, and each of them contributed to the Foundation’s successes of 2023. Over the course of the year:
- We created twelve months of newsletters, countless articles and even podcasts, which reached the eyes and ears of thousands of people around the world
- We hosted town halls and round tables around the globe to elevate and explore the concepts that are most important to our stakeholders
- We continued to advance and improve the Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards, keeping up with the rapidly evolving real asset industry
- We shared the findings from the Net Zero Working Groups, which will continue to inform next year’s Standards
- We elected nearly ten new members to the Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards Committees and put them straight to work crafting proposed changes to the Standards
- We invited several new members to the Expert Resource Group, who have already raised their hands to support our 2024 Standards development work plans
- We thanked Patrick Kanters for his nearly three-year tenure as the inaugural Foundation Board Chair, where he has played a critical role in ensuring the Board’s continued success
- After serving on several GRESB committees for more than a decade, we welcomed Katie Jowett as the new Foundation Board Chair
- We published the Foundation 2024 Roadmap, which will serve as the crucial communication tool between the Foundation and each of you
I sincerely hope our accomplishments elevate the importance of the GRESB Foundation and reinforce its vital role in advancing sustainability within the real asset industry. I also hope it is clear to you that the Foundation does that work as an echo chamber. We rely on your input to guide and evolve the standards’ development. You elevate the topics we explore, you inform the questions we ask, and you demand the changes we make to the Standards. Your participation and support are what drives sustainable market transformation.
As we embark on another year together, I commit to each of you that you will see and hear from us more, and more importantly, that we will listen and engage with you more. On behalf of the GRESB Foundation, I am grateful for each of you and to your contributions to the standards. I sincerely look forward to engaging with even more of you — GRESB’s invaluable stakeholders — in the years to come.
Thank you and happy new year!
Sincerely,
