Kate Gibson

Kate is a global leader with more than 20 years of experience working at the intersection of corporate strategy, transformation, and sustainability in complex multinational businesses. She is a senior advisor to a range of businesses, helping them to accelerate action on their sustainability targets to deliver societal impact and business value.

Kate was Global ESG Director at Diageo from 2019 until the end of 2024, and was the architect of Spirit of Progress, Diageo’s industry-leading approach for environmental sustainability, social impact, and responsible business and collaborated with all markets and functions globally to embed this into the core of the business.

Prior to Diageo, Kate held leadership roles at InterContinental Hotels & Resorts (IHG) including head of Corporate Strategy for Europe, Middle East, and Africa before taking on the role of Vice President Global Corporate Responsibility, with global accountability for environmental sustainability, community impact, human rights, stakeholder engagement, and non-financial reporting.

Kate started her career as a strategy consultant, working across the Consumer Products, Manufacturing, Financial Services and Pharmaceutical sectors in the UK, Continental Europe and the US and is an experienced Non-Executive Director and Trustee.

"I am delighted to join the Board of Forum for the Future, a truly trailblazing organisation that has worked for almost 30 years to create a more just and regenerative future where people and planet can thrive. I have long admired Forum’s focus on deep systems transformation (rather than piecemeal action) - and its ability to bring people together across sectors and organisations to develop solutions to shared challenges. As the impacts of our interconnected crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and rising inequality become more visible, this work is urgently needed, and I am proud to be part of it."

Kate Gibson

Latest

Recruitment of two individuals to join our global Board of Trustees

Do you want to create impactful change, addressing critical global challenges? Do you have a collaborative approach to relationship building, a successful track record of leading through change, experience in convening and a commitment to our mission?
Lavanya Garg

Associate Director, India
The next phase of India’s energy transition

India’s renewable energy transition is entering a more complex phase where speed and scale alone are no longer enough. Reflecting on discussions from the Responsible Renewable Energy Summit 2026, this article explores why community trust, biodiversity, accountability, and responsible implementation must become central to the transition. It highlights the growing need for collaborative, systems-based approaches that balance rapid deployment with long-term social and ecological resilience.
Inside Forum’s Learning and Impact Week, May 2026

What happens when an organisation intentionally creates time to pause, reflect, and learn together? In this reflection from Forum’s May 2026 Learning and Impact Week, we explore why learning is central to how impact happens, and why making space for collective inquiry matters more than ever.

Bruce McCombie

Bruce McCombie is a philanthropy and partnerships leader with almost 20 years of experience working across the UK, Europe and globally. He has advised philanthropists, foundations, corporates and investors on how to direct capital for greater impact, and has helped forge alliances and funding models that support social innovation and long-term systems change.
Komala Ramachandra

Komala Ramachandra has been a human rights advocate and lawyer for nearly two decades, promoting transparency, corporate accountability, and access to remedy for individuals and communities around the world.
Deepak Subramanian

Deepak Subramanian is a Member of the Management Committee of Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), the Indian subsidiary of Unilever, and a publicly listed company in India with a market cap of 70 billion USD.
Deepa Iyer

Deepa is an impact investor and independent advisor who invests globally and flexibly across the returns continuum. She advises social enterprises, impact investing funds, private foundations, family offices, endowments, and traditional venture capital funds on strategy, structure, individual investments and portfolios, impact, and emerging markets.
Emily Bushby

Emily Bushby is Deputy CEO at Nesta and BIT. Prior to this, Emily was the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at GuarantCo and her previous roles have included leading the finance functions at a world top ten university and a medical related charity, as well as performing mergers and acquisitions for a highly acquisitive FTSE 30 business and investment management within the banking sector.
Rita Clifton CBE

Rita is a portfolio chair and non-executive director of leading businesses and in the non-profit sector. She joined Forum for the Future as Chair of the Board of Trustees in December, 2020.
Laura McGonigal

Laura is Global Head of Sustainability Transformation at CHANEL. She has a decade of experience distilling complex sustainability issues into business strategy and programmes designed to have a positive impact on people and planet.
Jonny Wates

Jonny sees sustainability as a key to the long term resilience of organisations, humanity and the planet itself. He is a fourth generation owner of the Wates Group, where the common cause of the owners is to hand on a stronger enterprise to the next generation.
Charlotte Ersbøll

Charlotte joined the board of Forum for the Future in 2019. She is a senior advisor to the United Nations Global Compact, and a partner in Hansen & Ersbøll Agenda.

Sustainability News from 3BL
The Five Capitals - a framework for sustainability

The Five Capitals Model provides a basis for understanding sustainability in terms of the economic concept of wealth creation or ‘capital’. Any organisation will use five types of capital to deliver its products or services. A sustainable organisation will maintain and where possible enhance these stocks of capital assets, rather than deplete or degrade them.
Jobs

We are a growing organisation and we are regularly on the look out for new recruits to join our teams around the world.
For a just and regenerative future

Forum for the Future is a leading international sustainability organisation running out of offices in the UK, US, India and Singapore.
Growing our Future US

Working together to accelerate the transition to a just and regenerative agriculture system in the United States.
Sustainability and system change

Climate change, malnutrition, inequality, poverty, ecological degradation. The global challenges we face are so urgent and tricky that we need a solution to match their scale and complexity. This is where system change comes in. We use systems thinking to understand the web of interrelations that create complex problems, anticipate unintended consequences, and identify how and where to take action to meet the SDG goals.
What is Net Positive?

We reinvent strategies for a 1.5°C world. Our Net Positive approach helps business put back more into society and environment than it takes out. Unilever’s pioneering commitment to eliminate fossil fuels from its operations and directly support the generation of more renewable energy than they consume was driven behind the scenes by Forum.
Working at Forum

Reimagining the way the world works is our day job - and it could be yours too.
Transport or Mobility: What’s the difference and why does it matter?

Recently, the word transportation is being replaced with mobility. Why is this happening? What’s the difference between them? And why should we care about this change?
6 ways Unilever has achieved success through sustainability - and how your business can too

A year ago this week, Unilever launched its Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), one of the most ambitious strategies that a global company has ever embarked on. Pioneering a bold new business model, the company pledged to double in size at the same time as halving its environmental footprint.