Acknowledgments

This book came together due to a combination of good timing and happenstance. Since 2019, my consulting work gave me an opportunity to observe first-hand how companies – public and private, large and small – are dealing with the giant squid that has become ESG. This provided the inspiration and the springboard for the book.

A number of friends, mentors, clients (many of whom prefer to be anonymous), and professional contacts provided me with advice, counsel, pushback, and assistance. They include the following who generously provided the time for the interviews – V, Shankar (Gateway Partners), Deniz Harut (Pollination), and Nick Lovegrove (Georgetown University). I appreciate the support of Gatehouse Partners (Sir Nigel Greenstock, Nick Greenstock); Chatham House (John Kampfner, David Lawrence, Courtney Vance); and the Atlantic Council (Jeremy Mark, Josh Lipsky). I also benefitted from class-room conversations with undergraduate and graduate students at Georgetown University last fall, facilitated by Nick Lovegrove and David Wallis. Thanks as well to the editors at Forbes (Rob Olsen, Jeffrey Marcus), Asia Global Online (Alejandro Reyes), and Fortune (Nicholas Gordon), where I write regularly and previewed some of the themes in the book.

There are a number of other individuals who also provided great insights and provided me with a platform to discuss ESG issues. They include Sunil John and colleagues at BCW (Chad Latz, Stephen Worsley, Dima Maaytah, and Rajeev Nair), Kamar Jaffer, Anil Dua, Andrew Bainbridge, Charles Rigoux, David Fennell, Jessica Keough, Gary Litman, Aziz Mahdi, Rhodri Williams, Rem Korteweg, Champa Patel, Roland Rajah, Nandan Mer, Milan Dalal, Jonathan Charles, and Mark Bergman. My agent, Chris Newson of Newson Wallwork Media did a stellar job in sharpening and successfully pitching the book proposal, and thanks to the terrific team at Emerald Publishing (Nick Wallwork, Thomas Creighton, Kousalya Thangarasu in particular) for bringing the project to fruition. Needless to say, any errors and omissions in the book accrue to me and not to any of the folks listed above and below.

As always, my wife Ferzine and daughter Neha were hugely supportive and remarkably patient, as I squandered the glorious summer of 2022 to finish the book. This book is dedicated to my late mother, who raised me against the odds as a single mom in my formative years and to Singapore, where I got my first break in regional media.

Vasuki Shastry

Washington, DC and Dubai

December 2022