Daron Acemoglu
2024 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences | MIT Institute Professor | Institutions, Democracy & the Future of AI
Isabel Garro
Chief Sustainability Officer, Votorantim Cimentos (EMEA) | Founder & CEO, 3a4b | Former Director General, UN Global Compact Spain | Professor, IE & UCM
Isabel Garro is one of Europe's most experienced sustainability strategists, with over two decades translating the SDGs and ESG into practical business value. Chief Sustainability Officer for EMEA at Votorantim Cimentos, founder of 3a4b, and former Director General of UN Global Compact Spain, she speaks on sustainability, ESG, and the 2030 Agenda with rare authority and irreverent clarity.
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Isabel Garro biography
Isabel Garro is one of Europe’s most experienced sustainability strategists, with over two decades at the intersection of business, government, and international frameworks. An economist by training, she began her career in financial advisory and auditing before dedicating herself entirely to the vectors of sustainable development — working across the private sector, civil society, and public administration in roles that few people have held and fewer still have held across all three simultaneously.
As a sustainability speaker, Garro currently serves as Chief Sustainability Officer for EMEA at Votorantim Cimentos, a global cement and building materials company headquartered in Brazil and one of the largest in the world by production capacity. She has held this role since November 2023, leading ESG strategy and implementation across the company’s European and African operations. Simultaneously, she is the founder and CEO of 3a4b, a consultancy she founded to help organizations translate sustainability frameworks into competitive business strategy, drawing on her unique combination of corporate, governmental, and international institutional experience.
Before her current roles, Garro was Global Sustainability Leadership Manager at ACCIONA, one of Spain’s largest infrastructure and renewable energy groups, where she worked on sustainability strategy at a multinational scale. She also served as Special Adviser to the High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda of the Spanish Government, advising on the national implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — placing her at the center of the political and regulatory dimensions of sustainability in a major European economy. For over a decade before that, she served as Founding Executive Director and Director General of the UN Global Compact Network Spain, the largest UN Global Compact local network in the world by number of member companies, building the network from its founding and establishing it as the leading corporate sustainability platform in the Spanish-speaking world.
Teaching, Research, and a Practical Approach to the SDGs
Garro is an Associate Professor in the Master’s Degree in Competitive Social Transformation at the Complutense University of Madrid and at IE Business School, two of Spain’s most respected institutions for business and management education. Her academic work connects directly to her practitioner experience: she teaches executives and future leaders the same frameworks she has applied in the field, with a particular focus on how the SDGs and ESG can function as strategic assets rather than compliance burdens.
As a speaker, Isabel Garro is known for combining deep technical knowledge with wit, real-world examples, and a sense of urgency that makes abstract sustainability frameworks feel concrete and immediately relevant. She tackles SDGs, ESG, regenerative design, climate resilience, and stakeholder management with a directness that senior audiences rarely encounter from sustainability experts. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to book Isabel Garro for your next event.
Isabel Garro Speaking Videos
Interview with Isabel Garro, Global Sustainability Leadership Manager at Acciona.
Isabel Garro - The Path to Sustainability: How Will It Affect Economies and Businesses?
Isabel Garro Keynote Topics
Most organizations treat the Sustainable Development Goals as a reporting obligation or a communications tool. Garro, who helped design Spain's national SDG implementation strategy and spent over a decade building the UN Global Compact's largest national network, argues that the SDGs are a roadmap for identifying where the world is going and positioning your organization to get there first. In this keynote she presents a practical framework for mapping the SDGs to specific business opportunities, using case studies from her work with multinationals across infrastructure, energy, materials, and finance to show what it looks like when sustainability stops being a cost center and starts being a growth driver.
ESG has become one of the most discussed and least consistently understood frameworks in business. Garro, who has worked with ESG strategy across corporate, governmental, and regulatory environments for two decades, cuts through the acronym fog to present what ESG actually requires of organizations, what the regulatory trajectory looks like across major jurisdictions, and what the practical difference is between ESG as a risk management exercise and ESG as a genuine transformation agenda. She gives leaders a specific diagnostic and action framework — tools she has field-tested with multinationals from ACCIONA to Votorantim Cimentos — for assessing where their organization stands and where it needs to go.
The business of climate has changed: it is no longer about commitments and targets but about operational resilience, regulatory exposure, and supply chain continuity. Garro presents the case for climate action not from a moral framework but from a business risk and opportunity framework, using data and real examples from industries that have already had to confront the physical and transition risks of climate change. She examines what a credible climate resilience strategy looks like across different sectors, how to engage internal and external stakeholders on climate in ways that produce alignment rather than resistance, and what the organizations that will emerge strongest from the energy transition are doing differently from those that are still treating climate as a future problem.
The next stage of the sustainability conversation is not about doing less harm but about doing more good — designing business models, products, and supply chains that actively restore natural and social capital rather than depleting it. Garro, who has worked at the intersection of corporate strategy and sustainability frameworks for over two decades, presents regenerative design as the emerging frontier of business model innovation, examining what it requires in terms of organizational culture, stakeholder relationships, and value chain architecture. A forward-looking keynote for organizations that have already addressed their baseline sustainability obligations and are looking for the next source of differentiation and purpose.
Speaker topics
FAQs on Booking Isabel Garro
Why Isabel Garro?
Booking Isabel Garro means bringing to your event one of the most credentialed and operationally experienced sustainability voices in Europe — someone who has designed national SDG implementation strategy for a sovereign government, built the world's largest UN Global Compact national network over a decade, led ESG for a major multinational infrastructure group, and now serves as CSO for a global company. She speaks from direct, senior-level experience across every dimension of the sustainability ecosystem, and she does it with the wit and directness that makes abstract frameworks feel urgent and actionable. Contact Aurum Speakers Bureau to check availability and fees.
What is 3a4b?
3a4b is the consultancy founded and led by Isabel Garro, designed to help organizations at all stages of their sustainability journey translate complex frameworks — the SDGs, ESG, the 2030 Agenda — into competitive business strategy. The name reflects Garro's belief that sustainability is not a values exercise but a strategic one: that the organizations which will lead the next decade of the global economy are those that understand how to turn sustainability obligations into business opportunities. Through 3a4b, Garro advises companies, governments, and civil society organizations on strategy, stakeholder engagement, regulatory positioning, and the cultural transformation that genuine sustainability leadership requires.
What is the UN Global Compact Network Spain?
The UN Global Compact Network Spain is the Spanish national chapter of the United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative. Isabel Garro was its founding executive director and served as Director General for over a decade, building it into the largest UN Global Compact local network in the world by number of member companies — a position it has maintained as the leading platform for corporate sustainability commitment and practice in the Spanish-speaking world. Under her leadership, the network established standards for corporate sustainability reporting, facilitated public-private collaboration on the SDGs, and connected Spanish and Latin American companies to the global sustainability governance infrastructure.
What topics does sustainability speaker Isabel Garro cover?
Isabel Garro speaks on the SDGs as a business strategy tool, ESG frameworks and their practical implementation, climate resilience and the business case for transition, regenerative business design, stakeholder management in sustainability transformation, and the regulatory and policy landscape for corporate sustainability across Europe and globally. She presents in Spanish and English and works with audiences ranging from corporate boards and C-suites to sector conferences and executive education programs. She is particularly effective with audiences in infrastructure, energy, materials, financial services, and consumer goods. Aurum Speakers Bureau can advise on the right topic for your event and provide full details on Isabel Garro's speaking fees and availability.
How to book Isabel Garro as a keynote speaker?
Aurum Speakers Bureau can help you book Isabel Garro as a speaker for your next event, conference, or board meeting. Simply fill out our contact form to inquire about Isabel Garro's availability for a speaking engagement. One of our booking agents will respond to your request immediately and contact the speaker to let them know you want to hire them. We will assist you with obtaining speaking fees, booking information, and confirming availability for Isabel Garro or any other top keynote speaker or celebrity of your choice.
How much is Isabel Garro speaking fee?
Isabel Garro speaking fees are determined by several factors, including the event's date, whether it's a virtual or in-person event, the duration, format, preparation required for their speech, and more. The same applies to the cost to hire any other top expert speakers and celebrities. The Speaker Fee Range listed on our website is simply a guideline and is subject to change without notice. If you would like to hire Isabel Garro to deliver a keynote speech for your event, please fill out the contact form or email us at info@aurumbureau.com with as much detail as possible. One of our experienced agents will get in touch with you and let you know exactly how much it will cost to book Isabel Garro.
How can I contact Isabel Garro?
We only work with Isabel Garro on paid speaking engagements. Aurum Speakers Bureau can assist you in booking Isabel Garro and will handle all negotiations, contracts, and logistics associated with having Isabel Garro speak at your event. We will be your sole point of contact throughout the process. Get in touch with Aurum Speakers Bureau today, and we will reach out to any motivational speaker or celebrity you want to enquire about speaking at your event. If you wish to contact Isabel Garro for any other reason, we will be unable to assist you as we are not authorized to provide personal contact information.
Can I book Isabel Garro for a virtual keynote?
Yes, Isabel Garro is available for virtual keynotes and webinars. To book Isabel Garro for a virtual event, please complete the contact form or send us an email to inquire about the special fees for virtual engagements.
