Advancing Business Resilience and Decarbonisation – Green Technology Innovations and Opportunities For Finance

Jenny serves as the Deputy Secretary General of the Hong Kong Green Finance Association (HKGFA), where she leads strategic multi-stakeholder engagement across its diverse membership of over 160 institutional firms, encompassing the private and public sectors, regulators and government entities.

Her efforts are focused on advancing Hong Kong’s position as a leading sustainable financial and green tech center. Jenny contributes to the capacity building, data analytics and transition planning workstreams of the Centre for Green and Sustainable Finance under Hong Kong’s Cross Agency Steering Group (CASG), as well as initiatives with the UN-led Financial Centres for Sustainability (FC4S), and as co-convenor for the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). Additionally, she serves on the advisory panel for Hong Kong’s Green and Sustainable Fintech Proof-of-Concept Funding Support Scheme, and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) Industry panel for Hong Kong Green Fintech Map.

Following a two-decade career in investment banking, Jenny transitioned her expertise into sustainability, driven by a desire to create positive impact. She co-founded Development Finance Asia, a platform which provides innovative financial solutions to the Global South, and worked as a Consultant responsible for managing Mercer’s Fortune 500 Multinational clients based in Hong Kong, prior to joining HKGFA. Jenny is a life-long learner, dedicated to fostering a sustainable ecosystem, that integrates finance, technology, nature and biodiversity. She holds certifications from the CFA Institute in Climate Risk, Valuation and Investing, CFA Sustainability Investing, and MIT Sloan Management in Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy.

Jenny’s professional background includes regional roles at Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan, where she specialized in equity derivatives and prime brokerage, assisting alternative asset managers in scaling their business, raising capital and accessing financing. She has lived in London, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

My Sustainability Goals for 2025:

Increased collaboration across private and public sector
Align, amplify and synergise HKGFA’s sustainability-related initiatives with members, partners regionally and globally to drive greater impact on climate mitigation, adaption and resilience efforts in Asia.

Toby is a co-founder of Audacy, focused on catalysing and scaling decarbonisation technologies critical to the energy transition post his prior career in traditional energy and renewables. Audacy is an early growth stage investor and supports technologies related to energy efficiency, transportation and industrial decarbonisation, that are in early stages of commercialisation particularly in the APAC region.

Toby has 20 years of investments and advisory experience across energy, infrastructure, technology, real estate and natural resources. Toby advised on over US$15bn of transactions whilst at Macquarie Capital and was part of the founding team of Kerogen Capital, a specialist in international energy investments with over US$2 billion AUM.

My Sustainability Goals for 2025:

1. Educate more investors about opportunities in climate investing to catalyse more deployment, towards HK being a financing hub.
2. Identify technologies that can be applied in the HK context.

Sam is a Chartered Environmentalist (MIEMA, CEnv) with over 10 years’ experience in business & sustainability. At Swire Pacific, one of Sam’s responsibilities is managing a Group Sustainable Development Fund, supporting trials and roll-out of cleantech innovation within the business. In addition to advising senior management of key developments and policies related to sustainable development, he is responsible for supporting the implementation of the Group’s sustainability strategy, SwireTHRIVE, with a focus on waste & circularity, and nature-related risks and opportunities.

Sam has extensive experience on strategy development and ESG disclosures. He is currently an expert member of the IUCN’s Climate Crisis Commission. Prior to his role at Swire Pacific, he worked for Swire Coca-Cola and Finlays (B2B coffee & tea supplier) in commercial, logistics and sustainability roles. He also worked for the UN on climate and multilateral diplomacy topics. Sam holds a MBA from IE Business School in Madrid alongside two Master’s degrees including an MA in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute Geneva, and a Bachelor’s degree in Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford.

My Sustainability Goals for 2025:

Managing the Swire Pacific Sustainable Development Fund always provides me a boost of optimism as we get to see amazing new technologies – some of which are homegrown in Hong Kong – to help us achieve our sustainability goals. We have added a new metering & AI channel this year, and so one of my goals is to have applications come in for this channel. Outside of my role, I’m particularly keen on seeing the development of global biodiversity financing, and through my membership of IUCN, I intend to highlight mechanisms and actions to support nature in cities.

Ir Dr Shelley Zhou is currently Head of Corporate Sustainability at Hang Seng Bank. Prior to joining Hang Seng, Dr Zhou led ESG services in APAC for Capco, where she developed ESG products and solutions for financial institutions in Asia-Pacific, established a capable team to deliver net-zero strategy advisory and ESG consultancy services, and provided internal capacity-building and external executive training on climate and ESG related topics. Dr Zhou is a sustainability professional, has 20+ years’ experience in corporate sustainability, environmental and carbon management consultancy, new energy and biotechnology in Hong Kong, China and Singapore, covering government, banking, financial, real estate and retail sectors.

Shelley holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the National University of Singapore and a Master of Philosophy degree in Civil Engineering from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She is also Adjunct Professor at HKUST and has offered carbon management courses since 2010.