Katie Fry Hester is the Americas Regional Director for TPI. She leads Business Partnership Action (BPA) which supports the creation of locally-owned and run country-level platforms or Hubs that systematically bring together government, business, donors, the UN and NGOs to demonstrate the alignment of interests, facilitate innovation and directly support ‘win-win’ partnerships between companies, international agencies, government and NGO to achieve sustainable development priorities.
Katie has over fifteen years of international experience in the fields of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, including deep expertise in multi-sector partnerships, stakeholder engagement, strategy development, research, facilitation and training. She is a Professionally Accredited Partnership Broker.
Katie has a proven ability to distill opportunities and risks emerging from complex situations, translate societal expectations into strategies, and constructively challenge clients to achieve more. Katie is a highly motivated, results oriented, creative and critical thinker, with a strong appetite for change grounded in the realities of today’s world.
For several years, Katie ran SustainAbility’s Engaging Stakeholders Program, a membership forum for leading multinational companies on accountability, reporting, disclosure, and stakeholder engagement. Her recent work with TPI has included partnership strategy, governance, management and brokering.
Katie has worked with a diverse group of organisations including: Starbucks, Novo Nordisk, Abbott Laboratories, Alcan, The World Bank, Novartis, HP, McDonalds, The International Finance Corporation, Sodexo, WWF and the Pan American Health Organization. Katie is the author or co-author of many published articles and reports, including The Road to Credibility – A Survey of Sustainability Reporting in Brazil and Tomorrow’s Value – The Global Reporters 2006 Survey of Corporate Sustainability Reporting.