Stephan Schmidheiny is a Swiss entrepreneur, a pioneer of sustainable business and a philanthropist.

Stephan Schmidheiny took on responsibility in the family business at an early age and, over the following decades, built an international portfolio of holdings – from the Swiss watch industry to sustainable companies in Latin America. As chief adviser to the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio, he founded the Business Council for Sustainable Development, the predecessor of today's World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and coined the concept of eco-efficiency with his book “Changing Course”. His foundations – including the Avina Stiftung in Switzerland and Fundación Avina in Latin America – have invested more than 500 million Swiss francs in charitable projects to date.