Dawn Slevin

Dawn has over 25 years' experience on international complex risk management and sustainable finance providing expertise directly to the financial sector, industrial and commercial operators, and government regulatory & prudential authorities. Her experience spans a range of industries including construction & real estate, brownfield development, water treatment & supply, waste management, mining & manufacturing, renewable energy, oil & gas, petrochemical & refining, warehousing, transport & logistics throughout Europe and internationally.

Dawn is one of the thirty-five technical expert group (TEG) members of the European Commission’s Financial Stability, Financial Services & Capital Markets Union (DG-FISMA) on Sustainable Finance. In this capacity as a member of the Taxonomy Working Group (TWG) Dawn has contributed to the architecture and operationalisation of Europe's first green sustainable finance 'Taxonomy'.

Dawn is a Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) and Chartered Waste Manager (MCIWM), holds an MSc. with Distinction, Environmental Engineering from Queen’s University Belfast (2002) and Honours Degree Environmental Science from Trinity College Dublin (1994), and is a member of associated professional institutions.

Experience:

Dawn’s experience is drawn from projects that span a range of environmental disciplines including: strategic sustainability assessments, environmental liability risk assessment, contaminated land investigation, soil and water qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, soil, water & air remediation, waste & materials management, licensing compliance and surrender, environmental management systems, training and third level education. Dawn has furthermore deployed innovative data analytics, machine learning and natural language processing, working collaboratively with Fintech industry to maximise data analytic solutions.

Dawn’s Sustainable Finance experience is exemplified by her appointment as a member of the European Commission’s DG-FISMA Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance. The EU's Green Taxonomy is a key initiative aligned with the Paris Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) for the protection and improvement of the quality of the environment as well as the sustainable development of Earth's resources. The Taxonomy defines sustainable economic activities across Europe's economy thereby providing clarity, consistency, comparability and transparency to European and Global financial services industries, and the economic actors they support.

Dawn's contributions focussed on building the Green Taxonomy, the cornerstone of DG-FISMA’s overall aim to re-orientate capital flows towards sustainable investments in order to achieve sustainable and inclusive economic growth across Europe and internationally. Dawn’s sustainable finance experience also span’s corporate disclosures, green bond issuance and investment portfolio benchmarking. Drawing on 25+ years of environmental risk management expertise, Dawn co-chairs the Taxonomy Working Group development of ‘do no significant harm’ criteria across almost seventy economic sub-sectors selected for climate change mitigation criteria. In this capacity, Dawn provides leadership and strategic guidance and coordinated outreach to over a hundred experts from global industrial, finance, academic and NGO communities nedeed to assist with the development of technical screening criteria across the selected economic activities.

Dawn has chaired and moderated at numerous workshops and conference events within the Commission and externally to National Regulators, Trade Organisations, Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), United Nations (UN), the European Investment Bank (EIB), European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) and other multi-lateral development banks.

From 2015 to 2019 Dawn was International Environmental Strategist for American International Group (AIG). This role included risk engineering support to environmental impairment and general liability underwriters for loss control on complex multi-national accounts. In this capacity, Dawn has delivered internal technical support and training to environmental and general liability underwriters on risk selection, as well as, direct-to-insured strategic risk consulting solutions to improve customer’s overall environmental performance. In her role with AIG, Dawn was responsible for the strategic development of environmental risk consulting solutions executed in collaboration with AIG’s over 600 multi-disciplinary engineering experts, underwriting, claims, international public policy and legal experts.

Dawn also held a leading position in developing a General Insurance Sustainability Strategy for AIG, including heading up the baseline audit of products and services across international geographies and assisting with the development of a sustainability strategy. In this capacity Dawn explored general liability lines of business, products and services to identify those which have Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) and sustainability embedded and which contributed to the insurance companies profitability.

Prior to joining AIG, from 2003 to 2015 Dawn was Managing Director of Environmental Liability Services Ltd., providing environmental engineering support to a range of economic actors on permit compliance, prevention and remedying of environmental damage - including on numerous residential and commercial oil spills, chemical releases, licensed and unauthorised landfill operations, waste water treatment plants, transport infrastructure construction projects and insurance claims response and advisory services.

As a member of Insurance Europe, Environmental Expert Working Group since 2004, Dawn has furthermore assisted the Insurers of Europe to enhance the development of sustainable insurance solutions and the prevention and remedying of environmental damage with particular emphasis on the Environmental Liability Directive (2004/35/EC) and related EU legal instruments.

Prior to 2003, Dawn held senior management positions with Arup Consulting, White Yound Green Ltd., and International Environmental Services Inc (Chicago, Illinois).