Lucie Pinson

Why you should listen

Lucie Pinson is an activist for social and environmental justice. She founded Reclaim Finance in 2020 after several years of campaigning to push financial institutions to exit fossil fuels. She is driven by the conviction that people, individually and collectively, can make a difference. She rejects the culture of defeat around climate change and is convinced that we can win the climate war, but on the condition that we do not remain witness -- or party -- to the climate catastrophe.

From 2013 to 2017, Pinson worked as a campaigner for Friends of the Earth France. She convinced some of the largest French insurers, banks and investors to adopt the first policies to restrict support for several fossil fuel subsectors. In 2018, she started working for the Sunrise Project as the European coordinator of an international anti-coal campaign targeting insurers while continuing her voluntary work for Friends of the Earth France. This work bore fruit. By 2019, 15 of the world's biggest insurers and reinsurers had stopped supporting new coal mines and plants. By 2021, French investors managing more than seven trillion euros in assets had adopted stringent restrictions on the coal sector, with 16 French financial actors adopting robust coal exit policies.

Pinson holds a BA in history and political science from Rhodes University in South Africa and a double master's degree in political science from the Sorbonne University in Paris. She received the Goldman Prize for the environment in November 2020 in recognition of her work on coal.