Maria Zhivitskaya

Maria Zhivitskaya is an investment stewardship lead in Vanguard, responsible for voting and engagement in the UK financial services sector. Maria joined Vanguard from Legal & General (UK’s largest asset manager), where she was a sustainability and responsible investment manager working on exclusion lists and climate engagement. She worked on ESG integration in M&G Prudential before that.

She obtained a PhD from the London School of Economics, where her research focused on governance and risk oversight in financial institutions; she has authored articles in the Financial Times and Oxford University Press among others. She teaches master’s degree candidates at Paris School of International Affairs and MBA students at Saïd Business School in Oxford. She also serves as the trustee of The London Library, the largest independent library in the world. Maria has been named by Forbes as one of their 3 under 3 in the European Finance Sector.