Keynote SpeakerPia Heidenmark Cook

Pia Heidenmark Cook enjoys a portfolio career, dividing her time between board, senior advisory and keynote speaking roles mainly across Europe and North America. She is serving as non-executive director on corporate boards across healthcare (Bupa), materials innovation (Origin Materials) and fast-food restaurants (MAX Burgers), and chairs the advisory board of the professional services company The DO Group. She is also Senior Advisor to the private equity company Eurazeo’s Planetary Boundaries Impact Fund, and to Teneo (CEO Advisory Firm). She just stepped down from the advisory board of global sports retailer Decathlon.

She is also a frequent keynote speaker/lecturer on sustainability and business transformation at e.g., Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership, INSEAD, Boards Impact Forum and ESG/Climate Competent Boards’ Executive Training in addition to a wide variety of corporate events. An international speaker, Pia was also globally recognised for her TED talk, titled “How IKEA is Growing Business Whilst Shrinking Emissions” and in 2024, a survey named her one of the most sought after speakers on sustainability. Pia has been recognized as one of the world’s top female leaders in sustainability and one of the world’s leading influences on climate change. In 2023, she was named Top 20 Sustainability Voices by the CEO Magazine and received the Global 50 Women in Sustainability Awards by SustainabilityX® Magazine. Pia was named top 10 female leaders in sustainability by WBCSD in 2018, and top 5 influencers on climate change agenda by the Climate Group, as well as top 100 climate influencers on Twitter in 2020. Her first book, “Embedding Sustainability” (Kogan Page, 2024) was released in July 2024. She is also mentoring young professional women in the sustainability space.

Prior, Pia worked at IKEA/Ingka Group for 13 years. The last five years (2017-2021) as Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO). At IKEA she led the development and implementaeon of the IKEA People and Planet Posieve strategy and led a team of sustainability professionals in the global office, as well as sustainability experts integrated across the Retail, Shopping Centre and Customer Fulfilment business across 30 countries in Europe, Asia Pacific and North America. During this eme, IKEA ranked in the top three most sustainable brands1 and managed to decouple carbon dioxide emissions from its commercial growth across the value chain. Morover, during Pia’s tenure.

For several years, ending in 2017, Pia served as co-chair of REAP, Retailers Environmental Aceon Programme, together with the EU Commission. Prior to IKEA, Pia worked as Vice President Corporate Social Responsibility at the Rezidor Hotel Group, operator of hotel brands Radisson Blu and Park Inn (300+ hotels in 50+ countries). During this period, Pia chaired the tourism branch of Prince of Wales Business Leader’s Forum, a membership organizaeon for all major internaeonal hotel brands.

Pia has worked with sustainability topics since 1996, across academia, consuleng, and business. Pia holds both a Technical Liceneate degree and a M.Sc. in Environmental Management, from the University of Lund, Sweden, and a M.Sc. in Internaeonal Business Administraeon and Economics from Uppsala University, Sweden. More recently she obtained a degree from the Internaeonal Directors Programme at INSEAD, France. She has lived in France and Belgium, but today lives in southern Sweden, with Canadian husband and two teenage daughters.