Biography
Thomas Kuh, PhD, is Head of ESG Strategy at Morningstar Indexes, a newly created role to advance Morningstar’s global ESG strategy and accelerate its growth in the index market. An experienced leader with over 30 years in sustainable investing, he is a pioneer in ESG indexing. Kuh was the first Global Head of ESG Indexes at MSCI, where he spearheaded the launch of low carbon indexes and initiated the collaboration with Bloomberg Barclays to develop the first suite of ESG fixed-income indexes. More recently, he was Head of Index at Truvalue Labs, integrating real-time ESG signals from unstructured data into index design. Earlier in his career, Kuh was Managing Director of Indexes at KLD Research & Analytics, creator of the first ESG index, where he collaborated with BGI on the launch of the first ESG ETFs. He was also Head of Indexes at RiskMetrics Group prior to its acquisition by MSCI and is founder and president of Benchmark ESG Consulting LLC. Kuh is on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Impact and ESG Investing. He was a director of Sustainable Investment Research International Company (predecessor of Morningstar Sustainalytics) from 2004 to 2009. He served on the board of directors of the US SIF, the industry trade organization for sustainable investors in the United States from 2000 to 2006.
As COP27 is set to kick off, 85% of asset owners believe ESG is “very” or “fairly” material to investment policy.