GeSI announces 2015 board of directors

The new Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) board of directors has taken office. Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, and ETNO representatives were elected Chair, Vice-Chair, and Treasurer respectively. BT, Ericsson, Orange, Microsoft, the ITU, and Swisscom, have also been officially inducted.

“This year, the membership of GeSI is focused on making sure information and communications technology solutions are taken into account in the policy dialogues around climate change, human rights, and sustainability,” said Luis Neves, GeSI chairman and group sustainability and climate change officer for Deutsche Telekom.

GeSI has therefore decided to establish four Committees to oversee its most important projects and programs, and the following appointments were made at the Board meeting: Gabrielle Giner, representing BT, will chair the Climate Change Committee; Chris Lloyd, representing Verizon, will chair the Human Rights & Empowerment Committee; Susan Seutter, representing Microsoft, will chair the Cross-Sector Engagement Committee; and Andreas Harker, representing Swisscom, will chair the Industry Responsibility Committee.

“With this leadership team, we believe that we are well positioned to champion the role of ICT in promoting sustainability this year,” Neves said. “As the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change talks approach next year, it will be important for policy-makers to better understand what ICT can do.”

The GeSI was founded by major global information and communications technology companies to study major sustainability challenges and develop recommendations for how the ICT sector might be able to address them. GeSI is well-known for its SMART2020 and SMARTer2020 series of reports , and is committed to thought leadership, cross-sector engagement, information sharing, and project development.