Stephan Schmidheiny

Biografía

Stephan Schmidheiny (born 1947) is a Swiss entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author. After taking over leadership of the family business Swiss Eternit Group in 1976, he went on to diversify into a range of industries across Switzerland and Latin America, including a central role in the restructuring of the Swiss watch industry alongside Nicolas Hayek in the 1980s. In the lead-up to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, he founded the Business Council for Sustainable Development, later renamed the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and served as Principal Advisor for Business and Industry to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. He is credited with coining the term "eco-efficiency" and has authored or co-authored several books on sustainable development and business, including Changing Course (1992), Financing Change (1996), and Walking the Talk (2002). Schmidheiny is also a noted philanthropist and art collector, having founded the Avina Foundation and the Daros Collection, one of the notable collections of contemporary art.