Marisa Drew

Company: Standard CharteredTitle: Chief Sustainability OfficerIndustry: Financials and insuranceNotable in 2024: Drew and Standard Chartered partnered with the United Nations, accounting giant KPMG, and other leading organizations to publish new guidelines on climate adaptation finance, a move toward helping developing countries adapt to the growing costs of climate change.

Marisa Drew is putting capital to work for the climate — lots of it.

As chief sustainability officer at Standard Chartered since mid-2022, she's driving the bank's efforts to scale sustainable finance, channeling investment into high-impact projects across markets after having developed a long-term track record of structuring billion-dollar conservation deals, from the oceans to forests, and pioneering sustainability executive positions within the financial services sector.

She is not only the first chief sustainability officer at Standard Chartered, but also pioneered a similar role at Credit Suisse.

As part of the bank's net zero by 2050 goal, her role is critical to the mobilization of $300 billion into sustainable finance over a decade, mostly in the bank's major markets across Africa, Asia and the Middle East — about 80% of sustainability projects are located across these markets.

The bank hit major milestones on the journey, reported by Drew just last week. Through Sept. 2024, it had mobilized $121 billion since 2021 across a sustainable finance portfolio now valued at over $23 billion. And it is already on the verge of reaching its key goal of $1 billion per year in sustainable finance income by 2025, with $982 million reached in 2024, a 36% rise in income year over year.

Drew's working philosophy has long bridged the highest climate investment ambitions with the need for tangible, real-world results. "There's so much desire to do well in the world, but we have to be practical about what works and what doesn't," she told Everywoman in a 2019 interview. "One can spend a lot of time in this area chasing rabbits down holes and never come to an outcome that is meaningful enough."

Over 18 years at Credit Suisse, Drew ultimately rose to shape its sustainability agenda, serving as its inaugural chief sustainability officer and global head of the sustainability strategy, advisory & finance group. Her depth of knowledge in capital markets runs deep, having co-led investment banking and capital markets for the EMEA region, and worked on deals in equity, debt, leveraged finance, and structured products.

"I am a bit of a rebel so if someone says something cannot be done, I say 'bring it on.' When I was told it was not possible to raise scale capital to invest in the ocean, I set out to prove them wrong and created a landmark fund that raised nearly $500 million within a few weeks and followed that up with a first of its kind debt-for-nature-swap for marine conservation that helped create a new multi-billion dollar ocean asset class," she said in a fireside chat on leadership recorded by Liberty Global, where she is on the board of directors.

"Raising the lifeblood capital" to finance the industries of the future, from mobile telephones, satellites and cable television in the 80's and 90's to early wind and solar fields in the 2000s, to electric vehicle infrastructure, carbon sequestration and battery storage giga-factories now, is a job that Drew considers a privilege.

While high-profile decarbonization efforts get the most attention, Drew says only a small percentage of climate finance goes toward strengthening infrastructure and communities against climate change. Billions are needed to build resilience in systems already experiencing the effects of climate change, she told Time, but currently, less than 10% of climate finance is directed toward adaptation.

Drew and Standard Chartered created a partnership with the UN, KMPG and other leading organizations to publish new guidelines on climate adaptation finance, a move toward helping developing countries adapt to the growing costs of climate change. "There is the need for hundreds of billions, even trillions," she says, to be invested in adaptation strategies and climate resilience. "We need to build better, to defend," she says.

Drew's personal and professional goals are intertwined, "walk the talk, so to speak," she told CNBC, and that includes owning an EV, and improving her own sustainable eating habits, household waste management, and level of consumption.

"I think of myself as an intellectually curious person with a lot of energy and a short attention span so the dynamism of finance and the capital markets has been the perfect career match," she said in the Liberty Global fireside chat.

After three decades in banking, Drew has not lost any of the passion for meaningful work. "When we can play a role in turning concepts into businesses or when we can support the sustainability ambition of businesses that create positive change, the energy is infectious and it creates a ripple effect across our organization," she told The Economist. "It's that human capacity to deliver breakthrough solutions in times of unprecedented change which gives me optimism about the future."

Drew is also active in charitable work, with a focus on the lives of girls, and has served on the U.K. advisory board of Room to Read, whose CEO Geetha Murali was a 2024 CNBC Changemaker.