Date: 2025-08-20 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028904
TPB PERSONAL CONTACTS
LISA SACHS
Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
LISA SACHS
Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
Original article: https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/lisa-e-sachs
Research Scholar; Director ... Adjunct FacultyOfficers of Research
Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment.
Lisa Sachs is the Director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. Since joining CCSI in 2008, she established and oversees CCSI’s robust and interdisciplinary research portfolio and advisory work on the alignment of investment law, investment practice, and investment policy with the sustainable development goals. She is a globally recognized expert in the ways that laws, policies and business practices shape global investment flows and affect sustainable development. She works with governments around the world, regional and international development organizations, financial institutions, companies, civil society organizations and academic centers to understand the inter-relations of investment flows and sustainable development, and to influence investment policies and practices to promote the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.
She has developed and teaches highly acclaimed courses on Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development and on Investment Law and Policy at Columbia and lectures at Universities and other global institutions. Her course has twice been ranked among the top 5 courses at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She has served on World Economic Forum Global Future Councils and currently serves on several advisory boards, including of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights and the SDG Academy.
Before joining CCSI, she worked at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and at Amnesty USA, in both cases on shareholder engagement. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard University, a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School, where she was a James Kent Scholar and recipient of the Parker School Certificate in International and Comparative Law.
CONTACT ... Email: lsachs1@law.columbia.edu ... Phone: (212) 854-0691
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Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
There was a time when I went to a lot of 'events' at Columbia University mainly to do with international development and high profile visitors to the campus. This eneded with Covid and my advancing age, but it was generally a positive experience.
It was interesting to meet students while they were at Columbia, and then a few years later to learn something about their subsequent careers. One of my impressions was how many of the very principled students had to rethink things as they tried to navigate and optimise a career path in the 'real world'.
I know that in my own case I worked very little with academia and the university world. A series of disagreements between my rather considerable real world experience and academic theory generated 'bad blood' which was toxic. I have no problem with 'disagreement' but I do have a problem with 'closed minds'! One of the things I learned during my 'real world experience' was that a lot was changing in this real world while much of academia was out of date and getting worse!
I got to know Lisa Sachs a little bit during a period when I was attending Columbia's public events. I had worked on many assignments that were in the same domain as Lisa Sachs' father, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who was head of the Earth Institure at Columbia. To me, it was interesting and valuable to see the juxtaposition of development practice and the legal issues involved. My own work over many years had me handling compromise between multiple legal frameworks ... who wins when two systems of law are in conflct?
Mostly there is space for reasonable compromise ... and that was always my goal.
I remember one significant incident in Nigeria. The American company had invested in a new Nigerian start-up acquiring a controlling interest and providing most of the financing qned technical know-how. The American company 'insured' its investment through OPIC in the USA. About three years after making its commitments, and after a substantial change in 'managment', the American company decided it 'wanted out' and deployed 'US lawyers' to plan and implement an exit. It was brilliant but disgusting. OPIC ... a US Government Agency got to pay for everything that this investment initiative had cost the company, even though all the 'loss' was caused by the company's decisions and incompetence.
The management team that orchestrated the 'win' over OPIC subsequently imploded. Good riddance! Accounts being talked about in an air-conditioned confrence room are worthless if the readers of financial statements do not understand the numbers. In this case, one of the susidiaries owned around 100 fishing vessels that had cost around $100,000 each ... a total cost of around $10 million ... and were around 20 years old ... mostly out-of-date and ready for replacement! The replacement cost would have been about $3 million. The net book value of the existing fleet was essentially zero. While the business has substantial profit potential, cash flow as going to be a disater because of the urgent investment needs! Huge fail! But prefectly predictable!
Peter Burgess