Tessa Tennant did so much for ethical finance. For that and our friendship we'll miss her

ARC's friend and long-time collaborator on ethical finance Tessa Tennant died yesterday, July 7, of cancer. She was 59.

"Tessa was someone to whom it was impossible to say 'no'," said ARC's Secretary-General Martin Palmer. "She was so convinced and convincing that turning around the world of finance to be generous to all life on earth was not just possible but was simply what had to happen."

"She inspired me, working with the worlds of the great faiths, to challenge them to live out their ecological beliefs and convictions not just through their practical projects but through the right use of their investments. Without her insistence that of course faiths would be leaders in ethical finance - or ought to be - I don’t think the many great changes we now see in faith finance would be taking place.

"As the major faiths begin to seriously look not just at what they are against - leading in the disinvest movement from fossil fuels for example - but at what they are for the voice of Tessa will echo down the years. She believed the faiths could be one of the greatest engines for change and it is this which we now see slowly coming to be.

"I have to say that whenever she called, I always knew with a slightly sinking heart that I would end up with new, fascinating and always demanding jobs to be done. But I also knew that Tessa would be alongside to help and make sure it happened."

	So many ethical finance plans were cooked up at Tessa's kitchen table that during a lifetime award ceremony at Aviva last month a photo of her kitchen table symbolised her work, collaborations and friendships.

Tessa was one of the first Human Environmental Studies graduates at Kings College London, and then worked for the Green Alliance developing the conversation around ‘green growth’.

She co-founded the UK’s first green investment fund, the Merlin (now Jupiter) Ecology Fund, in 1988 and worked to build the green investment industry ever since, including the UNEP Finance Initiative the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia based in Hong Kong and The Carbon Disclosure Project. She received the OBE this year.

And last month she was given the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Financiel Times/IFC Transformational Business Awards.

She was also behind Our Voices (a faith-led campaign on climate change) in 2015, standing alongside religious environment campaigners.

She lived at Glen in Scotland , a house where so many ethical finance plans were cooked up at the kitchen table that during a lifetime award ceremony at Aviva last month (which sadly Tessa was too ill to attend) a photograph of her kitchen table was selected to symbolise her work, her collaborations and her friendships.

She had two grandchildren, children of her son Euan, which, as she said on her website, "means her stake in the future has extended at least 90 years."

We will miss her energy. And her laughter.