Eva Cairns

Eva is Head of Responsible Investment at Scottish Widows where she is leading the responsible investing strategy for one of UK’s largest asset owners, embedding it into the investments proposition to deliver good customer outcomes and driving efforts to engage and shape best practice across the industry. She has been actively involved in collaborative industry initiatives to drive forward best practice in responsible investing and advocate for a policy environment that enables investing in line with sustainability goals. She is a member of the UKSIF Board and IA Sustainability and Responsible Investment Committee.

Eva joined Scottish Widows from Aberdeen Investments where she was the Head of Sustainability Insights and Climate Strategy, responsible for leading research across key sustainability themes, including climate change, nature and social issues. She led Aberdeen’s climate strategy for Investments and has published a number of climate related papers including on net zero investing, climate scenario analysis, the credibility of net zero targets and the just transition. She graduated with an MSc in Economics with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh where her dissertation focused on the social cost of carbon.