Marga Hoek
Boards have spent a decade declaring sustainability commitments. The harder question is whether those commitments now show up in capital allocation, operating decisions and supplier choices, or remain narrative. The pressure on ESG has shifted from disclosure to substance, and the executives held to account for it are no longer the sustainability team.
Marga Hoek is a Dutch business leader, three-time CEO and author who helps boards and investors turn sustainability commitments into capital decisions and operating practice.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Marga Hoek
- She has run the institutions she now advises on. As founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, she built the policy-side organisation that pushed Dutch business onto a sustainability footing, then took the same argument to the supervisory boards of Aegon, SUSI Partners and Earth Capital.
- Her three books have set a sequence: New Economy Business (2014) framed shared value, The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) mapped the SDGs as a business opportunity, Tech For Good (2023) translated Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies into specific corporate use cases. Both later books carry Axiom Business Book Awards.
- She speaks with operating credibility on sustainable capital, which is rare. Most ESG voices come from academia or activism. Hoek sits on the supervisory boards of institutions allocating billions into the energy transition, infrastructure and real estate.
- Her argument that “Business for Good is Good Business”, coined in 2014, has aged into the dominant board framing for ESG. She is one of the people who put it there.
Biography highlights
- Three-time CEO across private and public sectors, including Thunissen (Dutch construction) and the Municipality of Haarlemmermeer.
- Founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, from 2009 to 2017.
- Author of three Routledge titles: New Economy Business (2014), The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) and Tech For Good (2023).
- Gold Axiom Business Book Awards for The Trillion Dollar Shift (2019) and Tech For Good (2024).
- Thinkers50-recognised; featured on the Thinkers50 podcast.
- Supervisory and advisory board roles at Aegon Nederland, SUSI Partners, Redevco, ArcTern Ventures and Earth Capital.
- Media coverage in Financial Times, MIT Technology Review, Forbes and Fortune.
Biography
The argument that sustainability is good business is now uncontested in principle and unevenly applied in practice. Marga Hoek has spent fifteen years closing that gap from inside the institutions that allocate the capital. As founder and CEO of De Groene Zaak, the Dutch Sustainable Business Association, she built the body that pushed corporate Netherlands onto a sustainability footing between 2009 and 2017.
That operating background is what differentiates her work. She sits on the Supervisory Board of Aegon Nederland, the Supervisory Board of SUSI Partners, the International Advisory Council of Redevco, and advisory boards at ArcTern Ventures and Earth Capital. Each of these is a vehicle for capital flowing into the energy transition, sustainable infrastructure or climate technology. She is not describing the shift, she is helping govern it.
Her three Routledge books form a sequence. New Economy Business (2014) won Management Book of the Year and established shared value as a commercial argument. The Trillion Dollar Shift (2018) mapped the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals as named market opportunities and won the Gold Axiom Business Book Award in 2019. Tech For Good (2023) translated artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics and other Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies into specific corporate applications against climate, biodiversity and inequality, and won Gold Axiom in 2024.
Thinkers50 recognises her, and the Financial Times, MIT Technology Review, Forbes and Fortune have covered the work. The reason senior buyers commission her is more specific. She has the rare profile of an operator who has been responsible for sustainability decisions at executive level, an author whose frameworks have been adopted by boards, and a non-executive sitting on the capital side of the transition.
Key speaking topics
- Sustainable business and capital
- ESG and the Sustainable Development Goals
- Energy transition and climate finance
- Purpose-driven leadership
- Technology for good and the Fourth Industrial Revolution
- Sustainable investing and capital allocation
- Board governance of ESG
Ideal for
- Boards and supervisory boards setting or reviewing ESG and net zero commitments
- CEOs, CFOs and Chief Sustainability Officers translating commitments into operating decisions
- Asset managers, institutional investors and family offices allocating into the transition
- Financial services, real estate and infrastructure leadership teams
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of where ESG narrative is failing to convert into capital allocation, and where it is.
- Named examples of companies and investors who have made the commercial case for sustainability work.
- A framework for using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies against specific sustainability outcomes rather than as generic transformation.
- A board-level vocabulary for distinguishing substantive ESG progress from disclosure activity.
Talks
A keynote on leading through geopolitical conflict, technological disruption and economic volatility, with purpose treated as an operating compass rather than a values statement.
Key takeaways:
- How purpose functions as a decision filter under conditions of compound uncertainty.
- The specific moments in restructuring, capital allocation and M&A where purpose becomes commercially load-bearing.
- Why CEOs who treat purpose as marketing lose credibility with investors and employees simultaneously.
A keynote drawn from the 2023 book on how Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies can be applied to climate, biodiversity, inequality and poverty.
Key takeaways:
- Named technologies (AI, blockchain, robotics, IoT) mapped to specific corporate use cases.
- Where technology accelerates progress against the Sustainable Development Goals, and where it creates new risks.
- A practical filter for boards reviewing technology investment against sustainability impact.
A keynote on ESG investing, sustainable banking and capital allocation against the transition, drawn from her supervisory board experience.
Key takeaways:
- How institutional investors are translating ESG mandates into asset allocation decisions.
- The governance gap between stated ESG policy and live capital decisions.
- What boards of financial institutions are being held accountable for that they were not five years ago.