Charles Nouhan – Chairman, and Representative to the United Nations in New York
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.
Before 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.
Derek Osborn – Stakeholder Forum President
A former Chair and a former President of Stakeholder Forum, Derek has been a driving force at Stakeholder Forum for nearly 20 years. He served 30 years in the UK Civil Service, the latter 6 years as Director-General for Environmental Protection within the Department of the Environment until he retired from the Civil Service in 1996. Derek represented the United Kingdom and was Chair of the Management Board of the European Environment Agency (1995-1999) and was on the Board of the Environment Agency for England and Wales (1996-98), having been involved with its planning and creation. He has been a non-executive director of Severn Trent PLC, and chair of Jupiter Global Green Investment Trust.
In addition to his work with Stakeholder Forum, Derek continuities to share his knowledge and experience as a Board Member of several other prominent environmental organisations.
Claudia M. LaRue – Senior Advisor on Governmental Affairs and Partnerships
Claudia La Rue focuses on environmental, economic and social issues at the Permanent Mission of the Dominican Republic to the United Nations (UN). She has been responsible for negotiating resolutions to improve transparency and accountability in strategic UN partnerships and was part of the UN Expert Working Group on Partnerships. During her time at Montclair State University as Sustainability Specialist, Claudia developed initiatives and programs aimed at strengthening the University’s commitment to the United Nations and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the Sustainable Development Goals.
She has ample experience in sustainable development and communications, and her work spans the public, private and non-profit sectors. While living and working in Norway, Claudia worked in the telecoms 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 also a Board Member of Granito de Arena, a non-profit organization that promotes transparency and information-sharing in the Dominican Republic.
Jan-Gustav Strandenaes – Senior Adviser on Governance
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 ’70s, 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, advises 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 environmental, governance and sustainability issues while observing and writing on political behaviour.