Charles Nouhan – Chair
Charles is a sustainability consultant and Chartered Waste Manager who, until recently, worked in the UK local government waste and resource sector developing and managing recycling, composting, and waste minimisation services for communities and businesses.
Prior to that, he was Stakeholder Forum’s Deputy Director and UK Co-ordinator from 2000 to 2002, where he worked alongside then Executive Director Felix Dodds and Co-Chairs Margaret Brusasco-MacKenzie and Derek Osborn in the run-up to the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Now US-based in the New York Metropolitan area, Charles is SF’s Representative to the United Nations where he supports SF’s work with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and Member states to realise the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
His newest SF projects include a Sustainable Development Multi-Stakeholder Partnership to transform the energy supply of Small Island Developing States and other coastal communities with electrical power generation from ocean waves and the creation of a new global network for National Councils for Sustainable Development.
Derek Osborn – President
As Deputy Director and UK Co-ordinator of Stakeholder Forum (2000 to 2002), Charles worked alongside former Stakeholder Forum Executive Director Felix Dodds and then Chair Derek Osborn in the run-up to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. He is a Chartered Waste Manager, currently working in the UK local government waste and resource sector where he develops and oversees recycling and waste minimisation services for households and businesses. As Chair of the Kent Waste Minimisation and Recycling Forum (2006-2010), Charles worked within the team that developed the long-term waste strategy for Kent.
Charles’ other activities include developing and leading seminars on the drivers of the climate change debate, teaching the science of climate change and introducing participants to the history, politics, and economics surrounding it. He also speaks to community and business groups on a wide-range of environmental issues.
From 1998 to 1999, Charles was a project manager and advisor to the directors of the International Hotels Environment Initiative and the Resource Centre for the Social Dimensions of Business Practice, both programmes of the International Business Leaders Forum.
Charles holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Management, and is a Member of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management and Rotary International.
Claudia M. LaRue
Prior to joining Montclair State University as Sustainability Specialist, Claudia focused on environmental, economic and social issues at the Permanent Mission of the Dominican Republic to the United Nations (UN). She was responsible for negotiating resolutions to improve transparency and accountability in strategic UN partnerships and was part of the UN Expert Working Group on Partnerships.
She has ample experience in sustainable development and communications, and her work spans the public, private and non-profit sectors. In Norway, she worked in the telecom industry and managed IT contracts for corporate customers. In the Dominican Republic, she stewarded a social investment fund in partnership with the Inter-American Foundation which benefited over 50,000 low-income individuals through community development projects.
Claudia has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, a Master’s Degree in International Marketing from Strathclyde University and was a recipient of a United Kingdom Chevening Scholarship. She is a Board Member of Granito de Arena, a non-profit organization which promotes transparency and information-sharing in the Dominican Republic.
Jan-Gustav Strandenaes
Jan-Gustav had his debut with the UN and the environment in the 1970s through the Stockholm Conference for Environment in 1972 and has stayed with this arena ever since, worked on disseminating information on and teaching about UN issues during the 80s and early 90s, has followed and worked with the UN Commission for Sustainable Development since 1997, when he that year, was a liaison officer between the UN and the NGO community at the UN headquarters in New York. After his first assignments for the UN in Latin America in the 70’s, Jan-Gustav has worked and lived in Botswana, Uganda, the US and Sweden in addition to Norway. He has extensive NGO experience developed through three decades in almost all continents in the world, speaks several languages and has lectured and given workshops all over the world on the UN, governance, the environment and sustainable development, evaluated projects and organisations, advised governments on relations with civil society, chaired UN meetings and facilitated UN processes, translated several books from English to Norwegian and authored two books and numerous articles on the environment and sustainable development.
He serves on a global civil society committee for UNEP and is presently the global UN CSD NGO Co-Organising Partner coordinating global NGO input into the UN CSD process and into preparatory process for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development to be organised in 2012 in Brazil. Jan-Gustav joined Stakeholder Forum in London in 2011.While also operating as a free-lance adviser, Jan-Gustav is part time employed by the Brussels-based, international NGO, ANPED, as their Policy Adviser, advices on CSR issues for a private sector think tank in Norway, but works out of his home outside Oslo, Norway, when he is not travelling the world, writing, lecturing or otherwise working abroad on environment, governance and sustainability issues while observing and writing on political behaviour.