Lara Luten

Lara is Chief of Staff at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). She serves as a strategic advisor (internally and externally), leads the team that supports WBCSD’s CEO and Senior Management Team, and supports WBCSD’s daily organization. 

Prior to joining WBCSD, Lara worked as an Account Director at Edelman, in the Amsterdam and London offices, where she set up and led the European Food Network, did in-house secondments at PepsiCo and Shell (for which she was part of the team that set up Shell’s award winning Energy Future Programme and the Powering Progress together stakeholder platform) , and led the team supporting Ahold Delhaize after their merger. 

She has a strong background in corporate communications, including crisis communication, executive positioning and stakeholder management. 

In addition to this, Lara has founded and is still managing Blikverruimers, an award-winning organization focused on corporate governance and creating more opportunities for a younger (including female) perspective in supervisory boards, actively “challenging the status quo”. Every year, we train around 25 young talents to become tomorrow’s supervisory board members. We also serve as a public voice for more diversity in boards, and develop inhouse programs for companies like Rabobank and Deloitte. 

Lara also serves as a Supervisory Board member at the World Press Photo Foundation, a global organization that connects the world to the stories that matter through their global photo exhibitions and education programs. 

Lara studied in Leuven (Belgium) and Groningen (Netherlands) and currently participates in WBCSD’s LEAP program. She is Dutch-Finnish and lives in Geneva, Switzerland.