Biography
Sophie L’Hélias is a recognized corporate governance and ESG expert with extensive experience in shareholder activism. She is President of LeaderXXchange, a trusted advisory that develops strategies to integrate diversity and sustainability in governance, leadership and investment. In 2018, she launched an innovative and award-winning app that tracked, compared and benchmarked 3,900 companies in 38 industries across 27 countries on gender diversity in leadership.
Sophie serves as independent non-executive Chair of Suez SA, and on the Boards of Herbalife (NYSE) where she chairs the ESG committee and Banque Agence France Locale where she chairs the nomination, governance and remuneration committee. She also serves on two investment funds: Africa50, a pan-African investment infrastructure fund supported by the African Development Bank and Echiquier Positive Impact SICAV family of funds, a leader in ESG and impact investing. She served as lead independent director of Kering (Euronext), a global luxury group until 2021.
Sophie is a co-founder of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) with membership investors representing assets under management in excess of $34 trillion (USD). She is Senior Fellow at The Conference Board Environmental, Social and Goverance Center in New York, a member of the International Advisory Board of the Hawkamah Governance Institute in Dubai and served as an advisor to the UN Global Compact’s Blueprint for SDG Leadership. She is also a Board member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) since 2021.
She holds an MBA from INSEAD, an LLM from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a Masters of Laws from the University of Pantheon-Sorbonne, and after studied at the European Law Institute of the University of Saarbrücken in Germany.