Michelle Edkins
Managing Director, BlackRock Investment Stewardship
Michelle Edkins is a Managing Director in BlackRock's Investment Stewardship team of over 45 specialists covering the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Asia-Pacific. The team engages companies and others in the investment stewardship ecosystem to promote the governance and business practices aligned with long-term value creation by the companies in which BlackRock invests on behalf of clients. Michelle is responsible globally for institutional relations, policy on investment stewardship issues, and communications related to BlackRock's investment stewardship perspectives and activities. She also serves on the firm's Global Operating and Government Relations Steering Committees. She is an alumna of BlackRock's Women's Leadership Forum, Enterprise Leadership Program and Human Capital Committee.
Michelle is an active participant in the public corporate governance debate and regularly speaks and writes on the importance of good stewardship for company performance. She was named in the NACD (the US National Association of Corporate Directors) Directorship 100 Governance Professionals list for the past seven years. She is also a Fellow of the Aspen Institute's First Movers program and a former Chair of the Board of Governors of the International Corporate Governance Network. She currently serves on a number of industry initiatives to enhance governance and sustainable business practices including the US chapter of the 30% Club, a market initiative to increase the number of women on boards and in senior management, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Investor Advisory Group and the CECP's Strategic Investor Initiative.
Prior to joining BlackRock in 2009, Michelle was Managing Director at Governance for Owners, an independent partnership offering products that support responsible long-term share ownership. She started her corporate governance career in the UK in 1997 at Hermes Pensions Management, where she spent eight years, initially as the head of the corporate governance team and thereafter as Director of Institutional Relations. An economist by training, Michelle has also worked for New Zealand's Reserve Bank and the British High Commission in Wellington. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.
BlackRock
BlackRock's purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, our clients turn to us for the solutions they need when planning for their most important goals. As of March 31, 2020, the firm managed approximately $6.47 trillion in assets on behalf of investors worldwide. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com
