Luba Nikulina, Chief Strategy Officer, IFM Investors

Luba has almost thirty years of global investment experience and oversees strategy for IFM Investors, a profit-to-member global private markets firm owned by Australian pension funds. IFM has more than US$140bn of capital under management and owns some of the critical infrastructure assets around the world providing essential services to local communities, such as ports, airports, toll roads, water and power utilities. Luba’s team includes more than a hundred professionals globally responsible for the development and execution of IFM’s strategy, shareholder and client engagement, government and public relations. Luba is also responsible for IFM’s strategy in sustainable investment focused on climate change, human capital and human rights. Luba joined IFM in September 2022. Prior to that, she spent 17 years at WTW, a global investment consulting firm, where she was Global Head of Research and a member of the Global Steering Committee. Luba started her career in private markets in 1996 and was involved in a number of private equity transactions at the time of the large-scale privatisation and business restructuring in Eastern Europe. She also owned her own timber business in Russia. Luba is a non-executive director of the Investor Forum, a not-for-profit organisation and also chairs the Taskforce for Social Factors that was set up with the support from the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK.