David Rodin is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the ethics of conflict and security, and has more than two decades’ experience in helping some of the most influential organizations in the world overcome their most difficult ethical and cultural challenges and build more ethical organizations. A distinguished moral philosopher, David worked for almost two decades at the University of Oxford where he was co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict and co-founder of the Changing Character of War program. He is credited as one of the founders of ‘Revisionist Just War Theory’, which has revolutionized academic thinking on military ethics in the past two decades. He is a recipient of the European Prize for Military Ethics and the Presidential Medal of the French Republic for services to security ethics. In 2011 he was honored by the World Economic Forum as a ‘Young Global Leader’, recognizing the most distinguished young leaders in all fields below the age of 40.
David founded Principia Advisory to bring leading academic research and innovations into global organizations committed to becoming more ethical and responsible. Besides his role as Founder and Chair, he acts as an advisor and thought partner to executive teams and Boards of some of the world’s largest organizations. He is a strong advocate for the role that ethics can play in forging a more responsible and sustainable economy.
Sarah Miller is Chief Executive at Principia. She has twenty years’ experience in global leadership roles in complex international settings, including significant strategy, people leadership and operational management responsibilities. Much of her career and expertise lies in designing and facilitating organizational change processes, focusing on the intersection of culture and conduct, political dynamics and systems and structures. Her areas of expertise include organizational development, strategy and governance, ethical decision making, diversity and inclusion and speak-up culture. Sarah has led much of Principia’s work across these domains since joining the firm in 2020.
Sarah holds an M.S. in International Affairs and has spent most of her career working extensively across the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. She began her career working on immigration, refugee resettlement, mental health and housing and homelessness issues in the United States, and continues to be actively engaged in these issues as a Board member. She is now based in Edinburgh, U.K. with her husband and two daughters.
Stacey Axten is Operations Manager at Principia. Prior to joining Principia, Stacey spent thirteen years with the Royal Navy, where she held a variety of leadership roles across HR, finance and operations. Stacey is responsible for coordinating Principia’s global operations and logistics, as well as the firm’s HR and recruitment.
Lakshmi is a law practitioner specializing in Corporate Law, M&A and Finance. At Principia, she is a Specialist Advisor and currently focuses on the intersection of ethics in M&A. Her research interest lies in Corporate Governance, Responsible Investments, Climate Policy and Sustainable Finance. Lakshmi aims to use her expertise and understanding in law, corporate governance and finance to find solutions to ethical and moral challenges faced by corporations for conducting business responsibly and sustainably.
Lakshmi previously worked within reputed law firms including as the Lead Counsel for a prominent Fintech player in India. She holds an LL.M (Finance) degree from the Institute for Law and Finance, Goethe University, Frankfurt and B.A.LL.B (Hons) from the National University of Advanced Legal Studies, Kochi, India.
Steven started working with Principia as a Senior Advisor in September 2020. He joined Principia from the Promontory Financial Group where he led the Group’s Australian practice, specialising in reviews of culture, governance and accountability programs and non-financial risk management frameworks in the financial sector.
His career has included leadership roles in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the International Organisation of Securities Commission and in the compliance and risk functions of a major Australian financial institution. He has also worked in Government as a political advisor, in strategy consulting (with a focus on financial services, professional services and telecommunications), in academia and as a lawyer in an international law firm.
He currently serves on the Board of the New Zealand Financial Markets Authority and consults to the World Bank on regulatory design and architecture.
Steven holds degrees in Law and Economics from the Australian National University and an MBA from the London Business School. He has also undertaken further post-graduate studies at Queens University at Kingston, Ontario Canada and the Wharton Business School.
In his spare time, he swims, plays an average set of tennis, supports local chamber music initiatives and tends a large mountains garden.
Sabrina Bushe is a Principal at Principia. Prior to joining Principia, Sabrina led the Advisory Services practice at Business in the Community – the UK’s largest responsible business network. She specializes in organizational diversity, inclusion and culture change, and has advised leaders across a wide range of sectors including professional services, banking, media and publishing, consumer goods and the public sector. Sabrina holds a Masters in Global Governance and Ethics from University College London.
At Principia, Mary supports data analysis and research for client projects and the development of new methodologies. She graduated from University College of London (UCL) with an MSc in Cognitive and Decision Sciences, and from the University of Milan with a BA in Philosophy.
Her first work experience was with a private equity firm where she analysed data of potential investments to highlight and assess their strengths and weaknesses. Through her work and academic experiences, Mary defined her long-term goal to increasingly specialise in practical ethics, implementing the intersection of philosophy, behavioural and cognitive sciences and applying this knowledge when analysing and critically evaluating business data.
In her spare time she volunteers at Shelter and loves to paint.
Jovana has worked on a range of organizational ethics and culture projects for Principia, including for large professional service firms, multinational banks, and international humanitarian organizations. She helps lead the analysis of the place of ethics in organizational systems, process and policy frameworks. Jovana’s consulting work also includes building ethical decision-making frameworks and leading ethical risk assessments for a range of bio-tech and ed-tech firms as well as the military.
Jovana is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, where she also holds an appointment at the Law School and the Center for Human Rights. Jovana’s research focuses on organizational ethics, international law, military ethics and the ethics of AI.
James Dempsey is a Specialist Advisor at Principia. James started his career at Accenture Consulting before returning to academia to complete a PhD in philosophy at the University of St Andrews, and a three-year post-doc at the University of Warwick, where he also taught at Warwick Business School. His research has focused on the nature and distribution of moral responsibility in business organizations, and on moral responsibility in the 2008 financial crisis.
Linda’s work brings normative analysis to bear on issues of public concern and into organisational practice, drawing on her research in moral, political, and legal philosophy. Linda brings specific expertise to Principia on ethical decision-making, the intersection of human rights and business, and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence.
Linda is an Interdisciplinary Ethics Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University. She is also a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Previously, Linda was a Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Linda holds a doctorate in political theory from the University of Oxford.
Catherine Greene has over 20 years’ experience in the financial sector, much of it as an allocator to hedge funds and private equity funds. Before returning to academia, she was Director of Alternative Assets for Prudential M&G. She has PhD in Philosophy from the LSE and is now a Research Associate at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at LSE, where her interests include the philosophy of finance, and ethics. She is a CFA Charterholder.
In her spare time, Catherine enjoys running, and writing science fiction.
Rob Hayward is Chief Strategy Officer at Principia, where he also serves as Client Services Director overseeing our consulting and advisory engagements. Rob has fifteen years’ experience in C-suite strategy consulting engagements across FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies and civil society organisations including the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.
Before joining Principia, Rob spent a decade at Accenture Strategy, where he started his career in finance, private equity, and M&A before joining the firm’s growing sustainability and ESG practice. In this role, Rob led the development of Accenture’s work on ethical culture, as well as its longstanding partnership with the UN Global Compact on responsible and sustainable business.
Rob works principally in the financial, professional services, and nonprofit sectors, with a particular interest in supporting leaders to build and strengthen an ethical culture that enables their people to consistently do the right thing.
Rob is an experienced board director and charity trustee, serving on the board of Shelter, the UK’s leading housing and homelessness charity, and as Chair of Shelter Scotland.
Rob holds a degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford, and is based in Edinburgh with his wife and daughter.
Beth Anne is an organizational behavior researcher and PhD candidate at London Business School. Her research examines the psychology of ethical decision making – when and why do well-meaning people act unethically? Her ongoing work focuses on the psychological processes behind condoning lies and how giving and receiving advice affects ethical decision making.
Beth Anne’s research has been published in leading academic journals such as Journal of Experimental Psychology: General and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and has been funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She holds an B.S. in Psychology and M.Sc. in Organizational Behavior from Queen’s University, Canada.
Kei’s work at Principia draws on his academic expertise on moral and political philosophy and his prior work experience at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, a New York-based non-profit organisation devoted to research and education in ethics.
Kei is the Assistant Professor and AIAS-COFUND Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is the author of Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin (Princeton University Press) as well as a number of essays and book chapters in scholarly journals, academic presses, and media and think tank outlets. He received his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford and previously held fellowships at Oxford and l’Institut d’études avancées de Paris.
Christine Jakobson is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, with an MSt from the University of Oxford and a BA from the Amsterdam University College. Her academic work focuses on the intersection of aesthetics, moral and political philosophy. She is interested in how the purpose of technology can be subverted to address national and international humanitarian crises. Christine has been invited to present her research at international conferences from London to Sydney.
As a Senior Associate at Principia, Christine has advised Silicon Valley companies, financial institutions, and top-tier global professional services across North America, Europe, Australia, and Africa on organisational ethics, ethical use, as well as ethics at the frontiers of emerging technology.
In addition to her work at Principia, Christine is a research analyst and consultant working on platform accountability and transparency, particularly in relation to democracy, with research which has been covered by international media outlets. Christine is frequently invited as a keynote speaker and panellist discussing her work on the intersection of ethics and technology. Christine chairs Amnesty International’s Kent Refugee Network.
Dr. Ryan Jenkins is an associate professor of philosophy and a senior fellow at the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He studies the ethics of emerging technologies, especially automation, cyber war, autonomous weapons, and driverless cars. His work has appeared in journals such as Techné, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and the Journal of Military Ethics, as well as the Washington Post, Slate and Forbes.
Ben brings more than five years’ experience working with FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies across various sectors (finance, technology, pharmaceutical, law, non-profit) in order to help them build ethical capabilities. He is a Research Fellow in Ethics at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich and visiting research fellow at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
Ben received his PhD and MPhil in Philosophy from the University of Oxford and his BSc from the LSE. His research focuses on political philosophy and ethics, including business ethics, the ethics of technology, and organizational ethics. He has published in world-leading journals including Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Utilitas, and Philosophy & Economics.
Ted Lechterman is a research fellow at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. His work with Principia draws on expertise in political philosophy and applied ethics to help organizations navigate complex ethical challenges.
Lechterman’s academic research has made important contributions to the ethics of philanthropy, business ethics, and the ethics of technology. A common theme in his work is that efforts to benefit others or solve social problems can sometimes constitute objectionable exercises of power. His work seeks to expose these problems and show how they might be overcome.
Lechterman has held fellowships at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, the Centre for Advanced Studies Justitia Amplificata at Goethe University Frankfurt, and the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and his A.B. from Harvard University, spending time in between to work professionally in grassroots organizing and social policy research. Besides translating his insights into solutions for organizations, Lechterman contributes to public debates and appears frequently in media outlets across Europe and North America.
Veronika is a behavioural scientist, specialising on moral psychology and financial behaviour. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where she conducts research on how people deal with inconsistencies in their moral judgments.
She started her professional journey as a consultant for a leading management consultancy, advising clients across different industries and geographies, primarily on strategy and sales excellence topics. Afterwards she joined an international e-commerce company as a project manager, focusing on improving cross-border trade and operational excellence. She then pivoted her career into behavioural science and worked as an advisor for the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team, designing and evaluating solutions to help people better manage their money.
Veronika holds an MSc in Behavioural Science from LSE, Postgraduate Diploma in Theology from The University of Oxford, a Master’s degree in Law from Charles University in Prague and a Master’s in Economics from the University of Economics in Prague.
Marco Meyer is a Director at Principia. Marco specialises in organizational ethics, organizational psychology, and quantitative analytics, with a focus on the financial sector. Marco teaches and researches on topics at the intersection of ethics and economics, with a focus on how concepts from moral philosophy apply to organizations operating in a competitive environment. Marco holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Economics from the University of Groningen.
Helen is an advisor with Principia, supporting executive leadership teams and Boards on ethical practice. Much of her current work focuses on the ethical implications of fiduciary duties, including issues relating to interpretations of responsibilities of trusteeships from an ethical perspective. She is a Lecturer in Organizational Studies at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University where she teaches Organizational Behaviour on the Executive MBA, and an Honorary Research Associate at the Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
Her highly interdisciplinary work focuses on organizational ethics, including fiduciary duty, trust, and power in organizations, and she is published in philosophy, economics, business and feminist ethics, and social psychology. Prior to academia, Helen worked in media and publishing, where she engaged with organizational culture issues regarding gender, leadership, and management in the workplace.
Helen holds an MPhil and PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge.
Michael is responsible for managing Principia’s data infrastructure and reviewing and implementing necessary security controls. He has experience in software development, infrastructure management and cyber security. He is particularly driven by a strong enthusiasm for cyber security, and brings the latest thinking and trends into Principia’s work.
Outside Principia, Michael spends time volunteering and mentoring those trying to establish a career in the IT sector. He is an active leader in the Black Codher programme in the UK which aims at empowering black women with technical skills needed to kickstart a career in the Information Technology sector.
Is an Associate Principal at Principia. She specialises in organizational culture and the integration of social and behavioural sciences with data analytics. Marta began her career in energy and emissions trading, before transitioning to sustainability and ethics consulting, leading environmental impact assessments, effectiveness and feasibility studies, and large primary research projects across ethics, responsible leadership, and sustainable development. She has extensive experience advising corporate and NGO clients across the Americas, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
As an Associate Principal at Principal, Marta is responsible for projects in the area of organizational ethics and culture. Currently, she is focussing on ethical start-ups and how to help them scale in a responsible manner. Marta graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in Environmental Economics, and the University of Amsterdam with a BSc in Economics and Business. Marta is an active runner and yoga enthusiast. She is a member of one of the major urban movements in Poland, Miasto Jest Nasze.
Kinanya Pijl is Assistant Professor in Private Law at the University of Amsterdam and specialises in sustainable finance and international responsible business conduct. For her doctoral research project, Kinanya has conducted extensive empirical research in the banking sectors in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom to investigate the potential and limitations of Europe’s market-based approach to aligning the banking sector with the goals of creating a sustainable economy. Her dissertation provides a counter-narrative for more sustainable ‘sustainable banking’ in Europe.
Kinanya is interested in the relationship between banks and society; legal tools that serve a more sustainable economy; de facto regulation and regulators in our global economy; corporate purpose; and stakeholder accountability. She teaches company law, contract law and financial law at the University of Amsterdam and divides her time between Amsterdam and Florence. Kinanya aims to use her academic insights to help companies transform the way they do business.
Wessel Reijers is a Research Associate at the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute in Florence. He is a visiting scholar at the WZB Berlin Social Sciences Centre and the University of Hamburg.
Wessel’s research interests are philosophy and ethics of technology, responsible innovation, and the impact of emerging technologies on citizenship. In his current research, he explores the new mode of governance represented by social scoring systems, with the infamous Chinese Social Credit System as a central example, and is currently co-authoring a popular scientific book on social scoring and how it affects our everyday lives.
Wessel has published widely on topics including blockchain governance, hermeneutic philosophy of technology, and virtue ethics in responsible innovation. He has also recently published a monograph, Narrative and Technology Ethics, with Mark Coeckelbergh.
Wessel’s research and work for Principia Advisory are driven by questions on how to live well with technology, questions that are increasingly pressing in a world saturated with smart devices, artificial intelligence, and systems for automated decision-making. Wessel’s focus is on turning abstract ideas in ethical and political theory into practical applications for engineers and policy makers.
Katherine is a psychiatrist and philosopher, with an interdisciplinary knowledge of psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. Her clinical practice has taken her to Afghanistan and DR Congo, with Medicins Sans Frontieres earlier in her career. She has since then practiced General Psychiatry, mainly in the UK, and also in Australia and New Zealand.
She has a PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University, NYC, in the area of Moral Psychology, with a focus on emotions. She has taught extensively on topics in Ethical Theory, Moral Psychology, and in Applied Ethics, including Biomedical Ethics; the ethics of technology (especially medical data privacy); and Environmental Ethics. She also has experience consulting on strategic planning in educational and healthcare settings.
She brings expertise to Principia on: ethical issues in the pharmaceutical industry; the use of confidential data; AI technology, especially in consultations, mental health applications, and affect research; global health ethics and NGOs; and emotional health in the workplace. These applied interests are grounded Katherine’s wider theoretical interests in emotional regulation and well-being, social cognition, self-knowledge, personality theory, effective altruism, and moral concerns about health inequalities.
Justus specialises in data science, natural language processing and methodologies for problem-analysis. He applies his skillset across a wide array of sectors, including tech, education, manufacturing, management consulting, and policy. At Principia, Justus focuses on data analysis, modelling and natural language processing. He holds an MA in Philosophy from the Freie Universität of Berlin.
Basheerah Soomar is a Senior Associate at Principia. She has worked across multiple ethical culture, conduct and capability building projects in the tech, professional services and sustainable energy sectors. Basheerah began her career in consumer goods consulting and analytics across Southern Africa and the Middle East before transitioning to public sector consulting and delivery in South Africa. She has also worked as a strategy analyst in a start-up environment for an organization aiming to empower small business owners in previously marginalised communities with limited access to resources.
Basheerah graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Commerce in Economics and has a Postgraduate Diploma in Futures Studies at the University of Stellenbosch. In her spare time, Basheerah participates in activist and advocacy movements around human rights, particularly for those living under oppressive regimes.
A Finland-born organisational scholar with a current research focus on ‘regenerative creativity’, aligning with Principia’s commitment to helping leading global organisations rethink what it means to be sustainable, ethical and inclusive in the 21st century.
Holding the position of Reader at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, he leads the university’s bespoke MA Innovation Management programme for exceptional ‘hybrid creatives’ who come from diverse design, art, business and policy backgrounds to generate transformative solutions and future visions. Tuukka is also an Associate Professor (Honorary) at UCL’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy (STEaPP) and the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP). He teaches on various courses and units linked to creativity, regenerative design, organisation and entrepreneurship theory, social innovation as well as research methods.
His ESRC-funded research has been accepted for publication in esteemed peer-reviewed journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Stanford Social Innovation Review and the Journal for Social Entrepreneurship. He has also previously published a monograph on youth policy in Japan (Routledge) as well as two co-edited volumes. Tuukka holds a PhD from Oxford University.
www.tuukkatoivonen.org
Anahí Wiedenbrüg is a Leverhulme Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. Working at the intersections of political theory and political economy, her work focuses on drawing out the normative implications and socio-political impact of developments in the international financial architecture since the breakdown of the post-war system. Her applied research on sovereign debt and her theoretical work on responsibility of individual actors for complex social process has been published in leading journals.
Outside of academia, Dr Wiedenbrüg has extensive experience in working in multilateral forums, having worked as an advisor to the Economic and Social Council of the UN, the European Commission, and the Argentine Ministry of the Economy. Dr Wiedenbrüg has also represented Argentina in the G20’s finance track on topics including the reform of the international architecture for sovereign debt restructuring, the enhancement of the Global Financial Safety Net, and development finance.
Dr Wiedenbrüg holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and a MPhil from the University of Oxford.
Sopé brings her expertise to Principia on corporate governance and ethical systems and policies, while full time serving as Professor and the head of the department of Mercantile Law and the deputy director of the African Procurement Law Unit, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She specializes in public and private sector governance, integrity and ethics, public procurement, anti-corruption law and sustainable development law, and much of her consulting work focuses on assessing the governance systems and frameworks of multi-national corporations to assess their suitability, effectiveness and alignment with global best practices.
Sopé is a Vice-Chair of the anti-corruption sub-committee of the International Bar Association and a member of Transparency International’s Working Group on Debarment and Exclusion, advises international institutions and government bodies and trains the public and the private sector in ethics and anti-corruption law.
