An SDG Pioneer for advocacy of sustainable solutions
Regan Leahy engages colleagues, communities and clients at one of the world’s largest law firms with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
As an Assistant Manager on the Citizenship team at Hogan Lovells, Regan hasn’t stopped her momentum to achieve the Global Goals at the cubicles of her colleagues. Regan helped create an online game to educate colleagues about the SDGs — The World We Want — as well as an interactive workshop — The Global Goals — for the legal firm’s clients. When delivering these workshops, Regan aims to inspire participants to think about how their businesses — which encompass a wide range of industries — can advance the Goals.
Her energy continues in communities around the world. Through the firm's global shared-value partnership with the Indian-based social enterprise Barefoot College, Regan developed Barefoot Futures, the firm’s first global investment community programme to inspire the next generation as SDG advocates. Volunteers from Hogan Lovells go into schools to teach young people about Barefoot and the SDGs. About 250 volunteers have reached 1,000 young people in 23 schools spread across eight countries. The results: ninety per cent of the students have agreed to make changes in their daily routines to help achieve the Goals.
Altogether, these ventures are working to reach seven of the 17 Global Goals, with particular emphasis on Goal 5 (Gender Equality) and Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). Through the firm's partnership with Barefoot College, Regan has helped raise awareness among 2,500 colleagues and external stakeholders. The law firm’s employees, clients and communities have logged in 1,500 pro bono hours (work undertaken without charge) of legal advice, given five educational workshops and held 25 skills-based volunteering workshops.
And the ventures have change attitudes. The online Global Goals game, The World We Want, for Hogen Lovells’ employees have helped users learn about the Goals, their employer’s activities to achieve them and the Goals’ commercial importance for the law firm. Forty per cent of the game’s players stated the firm should embed the Global Goals in its strategies and functions. Colleagues at all levels — from assistants to partners from Singapore to Moscow — now understand the Goals and are deciding how to align their legal advice for clients to help them advance the Goals.
By exposing employees and clients to the ambitious targets, Hogan Lovells is laying the foundation for integrating the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact into its business strategies and functions. The firm has been a participant of the UN Global Compact since December 2015.
Regan shares her knowledge and absorbs new ideas by attending events hosted by Global Compact Network UK. For example, she attended the Making Global Goals Local Business – UK at London South Bank University. She supports other members of the law firm’s Citizenship team, who manage its wider relationship with the UN Global Compact.
