Feike Sijbesma Appointed New Co-Chair of the Board of the Global Center on Adaptation

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, Dec. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) has appointed the outgoing CEO and Chairman of the Managing Board of Royal DSM, Feike Sijbesma, as the Co-Chair of the Board alongside Co-Chair Ban Ki-moon, 8^th Secretary General of the United Nations. This appointment will be effective from March 2020.

Sijbesma is a widely respected international leader in sustainability. He is credited for repositioning Royal DSM from a chemicals company into an innovative science-based company in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living. In transforming Royal DSM's portfolio, Sijbesma more than tripled the company's value over the last decade; demonstrating that doing well by doing good can go together. He took the company into a partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme, earning him the UN's Humanitarian of the Year award. He also introduced carbon pricing into Royal DSM to future proof the business and facilitate the transition to a low-carbon and climate resilient economy. 

Sijbesma is a Climate Leader at the World Bank, member of the Supervisory Board of the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) and non-executive board member of Unilever. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the World Economic Forum and heads the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders. In 2016 he received the Fortune Award for Circular Economy Leadership and in 2018 he was ranked as one of World's 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine, as well as one of the global best performing 100 CEO's by Harvard Business Review in 2019. 

Sijbesma studied medical biology at the University of Utrecht and business administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He also received an honorary doctorate from Maastricht University, the Netherlands.

The Global Center on Adaptation is an international organization, hosted by the Netherlands, dedicated to accelerating adaptation to climate change at speed and at scale. Among its key activities, the GCA is the lead partner institution for the Climate Adaptation Summit being hosted in Amsterdam on 22^nd October 2020 by Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, the first major international leaders gathering entirely dedicated to adaptation.