ABOUT
Corporate Governance and Sustainable Strategies
Corporate Governance and Sustainable Strategies, LLC (CGSS) provides global consulting services for investors, government and non-profits on corporate governance and sustainable investment strategies. CGSS’s Managing Partners, Beth Young and Meredith Miller, have content expertise in climate, compensation, governance, and human capital board and workforce issues. CGSS services include strategic advice, research and public policy support.
Our Team
Beth Young
Managing Partner
Beth Young is a lawyer and consultant on ESG issues, including shareholder proposals, “vote no” campaigns, corporate engagements, regulatory matters and proxy voting. Her clients include pension funds, religious organizations, employee-owners, policy groups and foundations, for whom she has designed approaches to climate change board accountability, executive pay, drug pricing disclosure, human rights due diligence and director elections.
As a consultant, Beth is principal advisor to several large investor coalition initiatives on climate change, human capital, opioid and pharmaceutical accountability, and health equity. In this capacity, she has been instrumental in developing innovative solutions on a wide range of issues including the framework for misconduct clawbacks, operationalizing the Rooney rule, and the foundational principles for proxy access. Chief among her achievements is her contributions to SEC rulemaking on compensation consultants, proxy access, and human capital.
Her policy work also includes co-authoring reports for the Council of Institutional Investors on monitoring delegated proxy voting and the limits of private ordering that was recognized as a seminal work in the governance field. Beth is nationally recognized as an expert on proxy plumbing and the 14(a)8 Securities and Exchange rulemaking process and uniquely provides auditing services of proxy advisory voting for clients.
Throughout her career, Beth has contributed to investors’ initiatives on ESG issues. Most recently, she has conducted research on how investors can enhance current ESG policies and processes within their fund’s investment frameworks.
Prior to her consulting business, Beth served as the Shareholder Initiatives Coordinator in the AFL-CIO Office of Investment and as a Senior Research Associate for The Corporate Library/GMI. Beth also co-taught a Harvard Law School seminar on Shareholder Activism for several years and has taught Corporations at Fordham Law School.
Beth received her Bachelor’s degree from Yale and her Doctor of Law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Meredith Miller
Managing Partner
Meredith is a corporate governance and ESG professional with areas of expertise in ESG business strategies, board risk oversight, human capital management, compensation and ESG corporate reporting. Throughout her career, she has engaged with top global fund managers and Fortune 100 companies. Meredith has extensive board service as a director.
Prior to CGSS, Meredith served for eleven years as the Chief Corporate Governance Office for the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust (“UAW Trust”). The UAW Trust was established in 2010 to provide health benefits to over 600,000 UAW retirees and their dependents and currently has $62 billion in assets under management. In this capacity, Meredith had responsibility for several large investor coalitions on healthcare issues, human capital and board diversity. Her team reported to the Chief Investment Officer and she reported directly to the UAW Trust board on program matters.
Before joining the UAW Trust, Meredith was the Assistant Treasurer for Policy for the Office of the Connecticut State Office of the Treasurer, Denise L. Nappier. In this position, Meredith was responsible for carrying out the Treasurer’s initiatives on corporate governance for the $26 billion state pension plan, the state college savings program, financial education, and local economic development. Meredith also staffed the Treasurer in her ex-officio duties on the Bond and Banking Commissions.
Meredith came to the Connecticut Treasury after having served five years as the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the federal U.S. Department of Labor, Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration which oversaw the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Meredith’s employee benefit expertise was informed by her decade long work previously on pension and health policy at the AFL-CIO and by her collective bargaining experience for the Service Employees International Union; both of which resided in Washington, D.C.
Meredith received her Bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass and her Master of Science from the London School of Economics.