Meet Dr Helen Redmond
Our shareholder community is made up of hundreds of passionate shareholders, who - like ACCR - hold shares in a variety of companies. Your ongoing support keeps us ready to file resolutions and gives us the leverage to engage with these companies and their investors.
Dr Helen Redmond, a Sydney-based rehabilitation medicine physician and member of Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA), holds shares in a number of heavy emitting companies, which she’s used to participate in recent ACCR company engagements and AGM filings.
As a member of DEA’s Healthy Investment Special Interest Group, Dr Redmond has long participated in the divestment movement - trying to remove financial support from fossil fuel companies - but after coming across ACCR’s work at a conference a few years ago, decided to try responsible investment.
“It was the first time I’d really looked into the concept of shareholder advocacy,” says Dr Redmond. “I’ve been across the climate science for decades now, but ACCR has revealed a path to influence a company from the inside. While divestment has achieved much in removing the social licence of fossil fuel companies, the fewer responsible shareholders a fossil fuel company has, the less likely they are to change. Keeping invested means having a say.”
Dr Redmond says she is impressed both by ACCR’s work, and the opportunities it creates for meaningful change.
“ACCR’s research output is impressive in quantity and quality, and highly topical. Their advocacy allows companies to feel the heat and the need to transform. They engage wherever possible to push for honest emission disclosures and reductions, but if needed are not shy about using shareholder power to point out the obfuscation and lack of clear pathway to net zero of a company.”
“One hundred shareholders are powerful when backed by clear sighted financial analysis and a clear view of where we need to get to. That is, to have long-term financial value we need a liveable world too, not one collapsing into chaos from climate impacts. The interesting thing is that there is so much opportunity in the green transition, so much money to be made! Short-sighted companies will be left behind, and see their value decline and eventually fall off a cliff.”
If you are interested in learning how to acquire shares in ACCR’s focus companies on the ASX, please contact ACCR’s Shareholder Engagement Officer, Alia Hutchison. If you have shares you would like to register for use by ACCR, you can do so at our Shareholder Hub.
