Lucas Simons

• Founder and Chief Executive Officer
  NewForesight Holding

MSc in Environmental Eng., Wageningen Univ.; MBA (Hons) Tias-Nimbas Graduate School of Management. Former Consultant, KPMG Sustainability; TNO Strategy, Technology & Policy. 2002-08, Director, UTZ CERTIFIED-Good inside, resp. for setting up and implementing coffee, cocoa and tea certification programmes and developing traceability models now applied in several commodities. Founder, NewForesight and SCOPEinsight. Member, Board of Directors: VBDO (United Shareholders for Sustainable Development); Agri-ProFocus. Member, Economic Board Utrecht. Part of the World Bank Sustainability for the Future External Advisory Group (2012). Honours: Young Global Leader, World Economic Forum (2011) for commitment and accomplishments in sustainable trade, agriculture and rural development; named 19th out of top 100 most influential persons in sustainability in the Netherlands (2011). Lucas Simons is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NewForesight and SCOPEinsight. SCOPEinsight is the first agricultural rating agency, aiming to create access to finance and markets for producer organizations. NewForesight is a strategy consultancy in the sustainable market transformation of agricultural sectors, including palm oil, sugarcane, coffee and cotton. Both companies share the same vision: In order to feed the growing world population and with arable land and natural resources becoming scarce, we need to transform agricultural markets into sustainable, viable sectors. Lucas was Director at UTZ CERTIFIED from 2002-2008, pioneering mainstream certification programmes and traceability systems for coffee, cocoa and tea. He holds an MSc in Environmental Hygiene from Wageningen University and an MBA from TiasNimbas Business School (with Merit). In 2011, he was ranked 19 in the top 100 list of most influential people in sustainability in The Netherlands.