Championing Nature and Biodiversity: Dianna Enlund, WiBF ESG and Sustainability Initiative of the Year 2025

For Dianna Enlund, winning the WiBF 2025 ESG and Sustainability Initiative of the Year Award is both a career milestone and a personal validation of the work she has championed over the past four years. After a successful career as a fixed income product specialist within the asset management industry, Dianna shifted her focus to sustainability, motivated by her passion to make a meaningful impact at the intersection of finance, climate and nature.

Her award-winning initiative relates to S&P Global’s Nature and Biodiversity Solution and the team’s market engagement efforts in Australia. Dianna led the strategy and implementation of educational webinars, panels, and roundtables for corporates and financial institutions to highlight the importance of understanding nature-related risks, opportunities, impacts, and dependencies and the critical link between nature and climate. “Being able to make an impact in the industry and then to be recognised for our work through this WiBF Award is incredibly rewarding,” she shares. “I am truly grateful to my managers for their support and to my colleagues who worked with me on these initiatives.”

Dianna’s journey into sustainability is rooted in an extensive career in asset management. She spent 16 years in Singapore working for major global asset managers, focusing on Asian fixed income markets. Returning to Australia, she worked as Head of Institutional Sales at Allianz Global Investors, promoting a broad range of products including equities, fixed income and alternatives. During this time, she became a regional champion for sustainability helping to communicate the asset manager’s sustainability products and approaches. She then transitioned to a role that focused on ESG analysis within the Global ESG Research Team.

In 2021, Dianna joined S&P Global Sustainable1 as a Sustainability Solutions Director, working with financial institutions and corporates to integrate sustainability data into investment processes and workflows. In the lead up to mandatory climate reporting, getting the industry to focus on nature and biodiversity was a challenge. “Our clients were interested in the topic, but understandably, their resources were focused on mandatory climate reporting requirements,” she explains. “However, since climate and nature are so interconnected, we believed it was important for our clients to consider nature in their climate reporting efforts.” This sparked a series of initiatives aimed at educating the market about nature-related risks and how to begin reporting on them.

Leading initiatives in ESG and sustainability has provided some invaluable insights and learnings. “At S&P Global, we have an exceptional Nature & Biodiversity product, that I believe deserves to be recognised as market leading”, she says. “But it is not just about having a great product, we needed to build awareness, educate our clients on our unique differentiators, and actively engage with the market to communicate our approach”. Achieving this required gaining support from stakeholders, fostering collaboration both within and across teams, and being creative to secure the necessary resources for the initiatives.

Her advice to other professionals, especially women, is to: speak up and share your ideas. “If you have a great idea, don’t hesitate to put it out there,” she encourages. “Yes, there’s a chance that people might not agree, but you are still bringing new perspectives to the table, and that is incredibly valuable in itself.” She adds that women often shy away from having their achievements recognised. “Awards like WiBF’s are a wonderful opportunity to celebrate what we do and inspire others.”

Dianna Enlund’s career trajectory exemplifies resilience, adaptability, and leadership with a passion for making a meaningful impact. Her recognition at the WiBF National Industry Awards shines a light not just on her personal career achievements, but also on the impact of her work in advancing understanding of sustainability practices in Australia.