Sophie L'Helias

Sophie L’Helias is a corporate governance and ESG expert with extensive experience in shareholder activism and a trusted advisor to corporate, investor and non-profit senior executives.

She is President of LeaderXXchange, a purpose-driven advisory that promotes diversity and sustainability in governance, leadership and investment, and creator of the award-winning Gender Diversity Exchange that tracks gender diversity in leadership in companies around the world. In 2016, LeaderXXchange co-organized the groundbreaking Investor Dialogue on Climate Risk-Management Series in New York in 2016, that led to the launch of Climate Action 100+.

Ms. L’Helias currently serves as Lead Independent Director of Kering (Euronext) responsible for ESG board-investor engagement, chair of the ESG board committee at Herbalife (NYSE), chair of the nominating, governance and compensation board committee at AFL, a French community bank. She also serves on the boards of Africa50 (Morocco) and Echiquier Positive Impact (France) investment funds.

Ms. L‘Helias was awarded the ICGN Lifetime Achievement Award in Corporate Governance in 2019, the New York Women in Asset Management Award – ESG in 2019, and the Global Proxy Watch GPW 10 Award in 2018.

Ms. L’Helias is a Fellow at the Conference Board ESG Center. She holds an MBA from INSEAD, an LLM from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Law from the law schools of the University of Pantheon-Sorbonne- Paris I, following law studies at the University of Saarbrücken, Germany.