Esohe Denise Odaro, World Bank

In the inaugural episode of Cri de Cœur in podcast form, Esohe Denise Odaro and Cambray Crozier discuss the meaning of advocacy, the role global finance can play in addressing climate change, career pivots, resilience, and the power of storytelling.

Esohe Denise Odaro is the head of investor relations at the World Bank’s International Finance Company (IFC). She also chairs the steering committee of the Green, Social and Sustainability Linked Bond Principles, the most referenced framework globally for thematic bonds. Esohe’s leadership in the development of the sustainable bonds market led to her being named “Personality of the Year” by Environmental Finance Magazine.

Click here for more information about Esohe’s mum, Princess Dr. Irene Ododo Odaro.

What can you tell me about your career and your background?

Esohe: I was from an early age obsessed with all things that lead to civil liberties and human rights that essentially led me to study law and to qualify as a barrister. And from then on just a series of events and passion and interest, led me to the World Bank, where I have essentially worked on what I would say is this nexus of how finance can actually do good in the sense of fighting through the power of finance, you can actually make changes that impact human rights, and civil liberties, or anything like all the things that we’re dealing with today, climate change as an example, and who suffers the most from the effects of these physical effects that we’re seeing. They are, of course, the most world’s most vulnerable. So I feel I’ve come full circle from, you know, studying law, and then kind of being sidetracked into finance to this junction.

How do you define the word advocacy? What is it? What does it mean to you? And I’m especially curious to know, given that you are a barrister, and, as you know, in French the word advocate is also the word for lawyer.

Esohe: When I was doing my first year at university, I happened on a documentary, and it followed a group of young men who were trying to escape Africa for no other reason than that they literally had no opportunities. It showed how people risk their lives going through the desert. Words cannot express how much of a challenge this is, right — to attempt to reach Europe, an unknown land, not knowing what might be waiting for them, just because they hoped for better prospects. They left their families and what have you, and some of them died during this arduous journey. And that seeing that actually really changed the course of my career. Because at that point, I was certain what I wanted to do was I wanted to be an advocate for people who had no voice. And so to me, I think my personal definition of advocate is that as giving voice to those who needed who need a forum, or who need a stage, so to speak, so it’s taking the opportunity and power to those who are further away from that stage. That’s what advocacy is to me.

I’m curious to ask you, given that definition, has that changed for you at all over time, as you have grown in your career and had different experiences? What has that been like for you?

Esohe: It has changed in that I perhaps am becoming a more effective advocate. And the other thing that has changed has been what I was advocating for. So as I alluded to, initially, I’d started off, you know, human rights. And, you know, I led, I was the president of the Amnesty International Group at university, but under the Law Society, so I was focused on that. And at the time, we had a huge refugee crisis in England, and I was dependent, you know, as hell bent on ensuring that, you know, people who had been persecuted had a safe place to be. So one of the things that I’m working on are no longer working on refugee, you know, or immigration and human rights law, etc. What I’m working on now is sustainability issues, climate change, gender, equity, etc. Those things have changed. My style of advocacy has also changed, along with the times, and also with my knowledge. Through my experience, I have a bigger stage where I am now than where I was. I’m at working at the World Bank Group, which of course, the world’s premier development finance institution, and there is a larger boom box, so to speak, from this seat.

Speaking of this “stage” that you hold — with the background that you have, and the different experiences that you’ve had throughout your life, what led you, if the right word would be to ‘pivot’, from working as a barrister into into finance? Was that a natural path?To me, it seems like it might be a bit of a change.

It’s not a natural path at all. Certainly not. I wish I could say that it was planned. I think this is really important lesson. So I was pretty damn sure where I wanted to go — I wanted to be essentially an advocate for human rights. I was hell bent on that. Then I graduated from university, and no organization that was at the forefront of the work I wanted to do seem to be very interested in me! So I did a lot of pro bono work. Through that, I ended up being recruited — it sounds very bizarre — but by Goldman Sachs, to work in investment banking. initially, I thought it was a little bit of a crazy idea.

But, I love learning new things and I took it as an opportunity. I began doing a legal job in investment banking, and at the same time doing a Master’s in Development Economics. That intersection came from my interest in both those areas, from learning about finance, from using my my advocacy skills as a barrister and from my research skills.

This is how I’ve essentially created this path today — it’s certainly not a natural path. But I will say that, that this led this road less traveled is in fact, is getting paved now, because of the emergence of sustainable finance. This, in fact, did not exist up until, approximately 2013 when it was niche, niche, niche, niche.

Now, you cannot read a financial newspaper without seeing something related to sustainable finance within the first few pages. You cannot talk to policymakers without talking about green bonds or climate change or social bonds for other social issues. I hope that that for the next generation, this becomes a more visible career path. At the time, for me, it was something that just didn’t exist. So I found my way to it through a combination of passion and seeking, seeking my ikigai.

I really think the ability to move from such specific areas of expertise is rare. I don’t know that I can think of anybody I’ve ever met who has done this — what is the word for it? The word that’s coming to mind is polymath!

That’s funny. I think it’s resilience, really, and being thick skinned. Just knowing that, you know, at every point, there’s weighing what you have to lose with what you have to gain. When I went to Goldman, you know, a lot of my friends were like, ‘what are you doing’? But I also recognized at the time that it was Goldman Sachs. I mean, you couldn’t get, you know, higher than that in terms of a brand name for the industry, right. This opened doors for me, it basically opened up a new audience for me. I think as an advocate, that’s incredibly important, because you’re speaking to the same people about the same issues. Take the example of climate change, right? Scientists have been talking about the same thing for decades. And nobody was listening, because guess what: they were talking to the same people. When your advocacy widens, and you have a larger audience, then you will see momentum.

In the different rooms that you’ve been in, and as you’ve grown as a leader in your career, what tactics do you use to influence others? How would you approach building coalitions or driving change sort of on a tactical level?

It’s interesting. Woman-to-woman and mom-to-mom, I would say: the more confidence you have in yourself, the more you will find that the answers are quite simple. My tactic is very simple: the art of storytelling and human experience. It doesn’t matter who you are.

I will be the first to admit this, this was an issue for me initially, especially given that pivot from law into finance where everyone is — it’s almost like a contest as to who can make things sound the most complicated, right? It’s who wins. From a legal perspective, it is the other way around. So, in order to have a very wide audience, you need to dial things back and basically come to one common thread, which we all have, which is in the end that we’re human beings.

Last summer, during our workshop, I had to had to wake up at 4am in order to speak to Parliament in England. At 7am, I was on a panel at NASDAQ with the leader of the World Economic Forum. And at the same time, I’m still having to do things that are essentially what I did is an analyst, right? So you have to be able to touch each point with the same level of emotion, in a sense. The way that I would speak to a graduating class, is the same way I would speak to a CEO. I try to keep it simple: take a message, deconstruct it, and make it accessible to everyone. That is my tactic.

What do you think is the role that finance should play in adapting and responding to climate change and to implementing sustainability?

There is not one role. Nothing will happen without finance.

It is like having a car without having a way to fuel the car. It’s nice as a maybe a salon to sit in, but it’s not going to move.

For us to move to achieve 2030 goals or beyond, you need to finance to get there. The second aspect is policy which impacts how the financing goes where it goes to. To address decarbonization, there are solutions that are viable: for example the success that we’ve seen in terms of falling prices for renewable energy like solar and wind over the last 10 years. This is a result of policy and finance. Then, we must look at harder to hard to beat sectors, like cement. Right now we do not have a viable alternative. We may have to continue using cement but in a greener way, or seek new alternatives. This takes investment. Once a significant number of people say “I would like my money in this bank to go toward a sustainable outcome.” That’s the incentive for the bank to make such decisions.

Likewise, you see the success that investors have had appointing directors at ExxonMobil with climate science backgrounds. This is where the rubber meets the road, in terms of the decisions that need to be made to lead us to decarbonization. This will take all the will in the world — if you meet a genie, I think that your first wish should be for these things to be financed.

There is no way we can achieve any of our goals: gender equity, decarbonization, the sustainable development goals, without it. Finance is the avenue.

I’m curious to know, if you see a role that finance can play specifically in policy development or policy implementation.

When we speak about things like the “risks of climate change to finance”, for some people this seems abstract. To break it down, when you get paid your salary, it goes into a bank account. Apply that to all the other people around you, and this equates to millions, billions of dollars. The bank has all that money, and while they’re waiting for you to take your money out from the ATM, they decide to invest it in something — this is how they make money. So they go off and they invest in things like, let’s say, coal plants for example. So they have money tied up in coal plants, hoping that they’re going to get returns on that, and the projections they had for that coal plant investment were over a span of 30 years.

Now, policy comes in and says: “No more coal. Our national determined contribution is XYZ in this country and as of 2025, we are phasing out coal.” What does the bank do? The bank knows that it can no longer get the return that it had hoped for from this investment, and it may not even get its initial capital back. So how, then, do you achieve equilibrium?

This is one example of how policy can, almost overnight, impact and change the direction of finance and the direction of private sector decisions.

When you think of yourself as an individual, how do you think about your role? And what do you think is the role of an individual?

As an individual, I think that there’s power in education, and education that need not be something that is, you know, formal and drawn out. Education can be simply raising awareness of how each one of us can make a difference, and how every little helps in the way that we live our lives and the decisions that we make in terms of just even our diet, for example. As individuals, it’s the decisions we make, and then you know, as a mum, making sure that my children as they are, as they are growing, already begin life recognizing and making sustainable choices.

I’m very fortunate in that I have managed to have a career, as I said, that overlaps with what is my personal interest and passion, which is sustainability. And I’m also fortunate to have the stage that being at the World Bank offers. And thirdly, that I’m not just at the World Bank, but I have a focus on the private sector, which, of course, is where innovation occurs, more so than the public sector.

Now, here is where I think that there is a huge impact. I’ve mentioned the role of finance in addressing sustainability challenges. Now, within that, in itself, when when I when you say finance, we’re talking about raising capital to meet these needs. To raise capital basically means borrowing money, or getting grants. The biggest way, the most voluminous capital market in the world, is through the bond market. It dwarfs the stock market, or bilateral loans. The bond market is probably the most forward in terms of embracing sustainable finance product. That is where the impact is.

I’ve also been heavily involved in creating bond products specifically for sustainability challenges. So the green bond, and the social bond, are two products that exist for no other reason, but to finance sustainability challenges. Now, people like you and me can walk into your broker or bank and say, “I would like my savings to be put in green, or social investments”. That is a huge, huge, just huge progress from where things once were where a lot of people had no idea where their pensions were invested.

This is another example of how education is incredibly important because as I said, for decades climate scientists have been talking about these issues. But now you see regular people actually conversing about them too — this is where we are seeing change occur.

You can find show notes and loads more content on our website at CrideCouer.uk

This podcast was made possible through the generous support of Fitzwilliam College’s Environmental Awards Program at the University of Cambridge.

All content © 2022 Cri de Cœur with Cambray Crozier.