Understanding ESG and sustainability and how to embed it in your business is a journey.
We are here to walk it with you.
Whether it's helping your business develop its ESG moonshot, build relevant and actionable insights, determine which ESG issues to focus on or how best to address the emerging needs of your business, clients, talent and broader society - we are here to help your business evolve its story.
We deliver first-class advice and support grounded in our corporate legal training and experience and bolstered by our qualifications and years of experience working and teaching in sustainability and ESG practice.
Stories Evolved offers a unique perspective and skill set crucial to successfully helping businesses navigate the transformations they face. Our strong appreciation of commerciality, risk, governance and the workings of legal systems is balanced with our commitment to listening, collaboration and continuous learning, and our understanding of the bigger picture: the imperative for businesses to choose to help tackle the grave sustainability challenges we all face.
We care about the impact of our work. This purpose motivates us to do more.
Stories Evolved recognises that diversity and an inclusion of different perspectives is key to innovation, overcoming the sustainability challenges we all face, and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We are committed to collaboration and inclusion. As a small, women-owned business we are considered an Exempt Micro Enterprise in South Africa.
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Meet Our Co-Founders
Christina Bartholomew
Christina is an American attorney and University Lecturer trained at the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership. Based in London since 2007, she landed far away from law school at the University of Texas and her practice beginnings in Dallas as a commercial litigator with a focus on the First Amendment.
But it was her work educating business students and developing course and programme content with the UN Global Compact that convinced her lawyers were too often missing from the sustainability conversation. So she set out to harness their sober, methodical analysis to help tackle humanity’s greatest challenges. Now, she is passionate about equipping both businesses and legal professionals with the training, support and strategies they need to become ESG influencers in their own organisations. We have a short space of time to solve global warming and inequality. Let's get cracking!
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“Christina Bartholomew is a great teacher with great explanations. She knows a lot about her subject and most importantly, has the ability to transmit her knowledge…I liked the direct application of each module into concrete business examples. Mixing the theoretical and the practical was excellent.”
Aimée Girdwood
Waking up to joy is founded on two things for Aimée: her family and her ability to connect her unique experience and skills and passion for responsible business, with the opportunity to make a positive impact. Aimée’s purpose is to work with businesses to translate their growing ESG and sustainability awareness and commitments into action, and to help them leverage their power to thrive - not by how they spend their money, but by how they make it in the first place.
Aimée believes in the importance of listening and asking searching questions, empathy, team work, showing up and always doing her best.
Aimée is a South African qualified and internationally experienced corporate attorney and sustainability professional with a Masters Degree in Sustainability Leadership from the University of Cambridge. She lives in Johannesburg with her family.
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“Aimée’s deep understanding of the complexity of ESG and sustainability is bolstered by her critical thinking, collaboration and communication skills. She is a person of grit and integrity who is committed to excellence. Confident and professional, I recommend Aimée to any leader, team or organisation serious about working with authenticity and purpose to overcome ESG challenges and maximise long-term value creation.””
Our Story
What turns a series of events into a story? Connection.
Ours began, as so many now do, over Zoom. A shared network led to the discovery of a shared conviction and, in time, a shared determination to increase credible business action on ESG at speed and scale. Our work with clients and a growing community of professionals, investors, lawyers and scholars have confirmed that we can each contribute something crucial to the Sustainable Development 2030 agenda.
Our contribution is to drive knowledge and solutions through education and practices built on the power of our legal skills and our belief in open-mindedness and collaboration.
Join us in evolving our collective story into one of hope and resilience.
“The economy won’t thrive unless people and planet are thriving.”
Our Partners
We recognise that embedding ESG requires that businesses apply a different lens to how they think, act and are held to account. This isn’t easy. To strengthen our ability to support your business to achieve its goals, we collaborate with credible organisations that are leaders in their field.
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The UN Global Compact Network UK is part of the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. Their support for our mission includes co-sponsored panels and webinars as well as certification for many of our upskilling programmes.
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Paragon +Impact enables verifiable impact on people and planet, alongside financial returns. Using a unique cloud-based impact assessment tool built upon fundamental global frameworks, we work together to provide our clients with a robust impact grading methodology aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other relevant ESG principles.
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Impact International works at the intersection of leadership and people development, change, and sustainable innovation. We work with their highly experienced coaches to help you transform key team members into sustainability leaders with the confidence and credentials to become ESG influencers and grow business opportunities.
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Britetrend offers end-to-end marketing and communications support to our clients including copywriting, digital marketing, and design. We work together to develop comprehensive integrated annual reports with sustainability at their heart and help businesses communicate the good they are doing globally, to their stakeholders, employees, clients and customers.
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Dallas-based Laurie Wallace and her team are strategy and operations experts with over 30 years of experience.
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Co-authors of the preeminent treatises on ESG and the Legal Profession ‘Chasing the Dragon’ and ‘Riding the Dragon’ Paul Clements Hunt and Paul Watchman work with us to provide strategic advice and programming to law firms. The Blended Capital Group uses capital to scale sustainable impact.
The horse has bolted.
Acting on ESG makes good business sense and presents commercial advantages for you, your business, and your clients.
Increasingly, shareholders, investors, civil society, governments, and regulators expect businesses to move beyond mere legal compliance to doing business in a way that is fair, appropriate and deserving of trust.
Regardless of whether the terms “ESG” or sustainability endure, the social license to operate imperative will.