ESAC was established in 2025 to provide ING with an outside-in perspective on sustainability developments, to constructively challenge our views, and to provide suggestions as to how we can continue to put sustainability at the heart of what we do. Their insights will help inform ING’s sustainability vision, strategy and actions in the longer-term. ESAC outcomes are purely for information purposes and ESAC has no formal decision-making authority.
Society is transitioning to a low-carbon economy – so are our clients and so is ING. We finance a lot of sustainable activities, but we still finance more that’s not sustainable. See climate action for more information.
Members of the ESAC
From left to right, bottom to top: Kaitlin Crouch, Nicola Kimm, Jakob Thomä, James Vaccaro and Sébastien Treyer.
 Kaitlin Crouch
Kaitlin is executive director of Climate Finance at RMI and head of the Center for Climate-Aligned Finance. She leads RMI’s work to advance credible, high-impact climate finance across the global financial system, convening major banks, investors, and insurers to develop practical approaches for mobilizing capital for the energy transition. Her focus is on increasing the visibility and bankability of post-demonstration clean technologies and resilience investments, and on moving financial institutions from commitments to decision-useful insight and measurable investment outcomes.
Under her leadership, the Center has developed leading frameworks and initiatives including the Sustainable Steel Principles, the Pegasus Guidelines, the Sustainable Aluminum Finance Framework, Client Transition Intelligence, and the RMI Deal Lab.
Prior to joining RMI, Kaitlin spent over a decade in banking, most recently as Global Climate lead at ING. She developed and oversaw implementation of multiple climate programmes, including the Terra portfolio alignment approach, the Sustainable Procurement Programme, ING’s Global Environmental Programme, and the Executive Climate Change Committee.
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 Nicola Kimm
Nicola serves as a board member at Climate Arc and Advisory Board member at Boehringer Ingelheim. Previously, she was a Board of Management member at Heidelberg Materials, overseeing Sustainability, Technology & Partnerships, and R&D, and executive vice president at Signify. During her 13 years as Heidelberg Materials’ chief Sustainability officer, she developed leading sustainability programmes across materials, electronics, and chemicals sectors. Further, Nicola has served on the boards of EQT and Dunlop footwear and is recognised as one of Germany’s ‘top 100 most influential women’.
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 Jakob Thomä
Jakob is a professor in Practice for Sustainable Finance and Senior Fellow at the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance. He is the co-founder and Research director of Theia Finance Labs (formerly known as the 2° Investing Initiative) and director of the Inevitable Policy Response. Over the past 10 years, Jakob has led the development of a range of sustainability solutions, with a focus on designing business models for both public and commercial goods. Jakob led the incubation of PACTA, the first methodology and tool to measure the alignment of financial portfolios with climate goals. Jakob has also supported the development of a number of additional ventures including AssetImpact, tilt, and 1in1000.
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 Sébastien Treyer
Sébastien is executive director of IDDRI, an international think tank based in Paris, dedicated to sustainable development. He is also chairman of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the French Global Environment Facility (FFEM) and member of the Lead Faculty of the Earth System Governance Network. A graduate from École Polytechnique, general engineer of the Corps of Bridges, Water and Forests, and PhD in environmental management, he was in charge of foresight studies at the French Ministry of the Environment, and played an active role in leading the interface between science and policy and scientific programming at the European Commission, the French National Research Agency, and territorial actors such as the Seine Normandy Water Agency.
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 James Vaccaro
James is a sustainability strategist and systems thinker with twenty-five years’ senior management experience in sustainable finance and business. He has provided leadership for organisations and projects and served on a wide range of business and charity boards and governing bodies.
Through RePattern, James is a strategy advisor to a number of regenerative agriculture-tech companies and has led the development of the WWF Nature-based Solutions Accelerator. James was previously Group director of Strategy for Triodos Bank, where he set up and managed the UK investment business comprising corporate finance and crowdfunding services, venture capital fund management and fund distribution.
James is now Strategy director at Regeneration Wealth Management, which enables wealth holders to catalyse transformative change through strategies spanning philanthropic to investment capital.
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