Winner – Outstanding Contribution to Industry Award
Posted on: November 28th, 2025
I am delighted, humbled – and still rather shocked – to report that I was given a very special award on Wednesday evening, at the Investment Week ‘Women in Investment’ awards event.
The judges kindly awarded me the ‘Anne-Marie McConnon Outstanding Contribution to the Industry Award’ .
I can not comment on Anne-Marie McConnon as I did not know her. However a little research tells me that she was highly respected and much loved. From her husband’s heartbreaking LinkedIn post I could see there many people in the industry that I know and respect who knew her. So all I can say is thank you for inspiring this award – and I will continue do my best …
For my part, I have spent three decades working to help to grow and improve sustainable, responsible, ethical, SRI and ESG (the names have shifted and evolved) investment – in order to help and encouraging others to take sustainability seriously for the benefit of our clients, the planet and people everywhere.
Comments on the day
In my brief acceptance speech, after thanking the judges, Investment Week’s Katrina Lloyd – and our fund manager partners who enable me to do what I do – I talked about what scares me most. Namely that as an industry, and as a species, we do not take climate and nature related risks anything like seriously enough.
I briefly quoted research from the Institute of Actuaries describing that if ‘business as usual’ continues we are likely to see a 19% GDP drop by 2050, and a 50% mortality rate / 4 billion deaths by 2100.
I then explained what keeps me going, and gives me hope. Namely: people, the knowledge that investment can be a force for good, and that much is already changing faster than most people realise.
I ended by asking the audience to be strong, and to help drive change (or words to that effect – as none of this was scripted!)
For the benefit of the audience that was were I left it. No one wants to hear long speeches at 11 pm!
My hope is that the audience (of investment professionals) will have understood from that all this means that sustainability issues are firmly ‘material’ (there are few winners in collapsed markets), and that sustainability will only grow in importance (physics and related business imperatives will trump geopolitics – and immense progress is already being made…)
If I had had more time…
Had I had more time I might have added that we all have different roles to play in driving change – and that whilst environmental issues are not the only issues that matter to clients – environmental and social issues, risks and opportunities are deeply relevant to everyone, everything and every investment. And also in everyone’s sphere of influence.
We won’t always get things right. Neither SDR or the ASG report I have been working on was ever likely to be perfect.
And our free to use Fund EcoMarket fund tool – that has now been going for 15 years – improves continually. What matters is that we keep improving, keep building on what we know – and move forwards ever faster. Which I believe is perfectly possible.
There is a huge reservoir of knowledge about sustainability across many different areas of our industry. However, right now it feels all too often undervalued, underused and under-appreciated.
This is worrying as change can come very quickly.
So I hope this award benefits everyone who has invested time, effort and care into understanding environmental and social risks and opportunities – and building them into funds, products and services.
This award gives me hope that our efforts are not unnoticed.
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The Investment Week announcement included the following:
“This year’s winner of the Anne-Marie McConnon Outstanding Contribution to the Industry Award was Julia Dreblow of SRI Services. The judges wanted to honour her significant individual contribution to supporting understanding of sustainable investing across the industry for over three decades. Julia has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to use her influence to impact regulation and guide investors, advisers and asset managers”
Links:
https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4522533/night-gallery-women-investment-awards-2025
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-dreblow-49873b16/