Georg Kell is the founder and former executive director of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative with over 8,000 corporate signatories in more than 160 countries.

As its founding executive director, Kell helped to establish the UNGC as the foremost platform for the development, implementation and disclosure of responsible and sustainable corporate policies and practices.

In a career of more than 25 years at the United Nations, Kell also oversaw the conception and launch of the Global Compact’s sister initiatives on investment, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), and on education, the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), together with the Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative. Mr. Kell is currently chairman of Arabesque, an asset management firm that integrates environmental, social, and governance data with quantitative investment strategies.

He started his career as a research fellow in engineering at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology and Innovation in Berlin. He then worked as a financial analyst in various countries in Africa and Asia before joining the United Nations in 1987. A native of Germany, Kell holds advanced degrees in economics and engineering from the Technical University of Berlin.

Mr. Kell has received numerous recognitions and has been named among the "100 Most Influential in Business Ethics" every year since 2011.