Acre is proudly supporting GRESB in their search for their next Director, Infrastructure & Data Centre Standards.
GRESB is the leading sustainability benchmark for real assets, shaping how capital flows across infrastructure and the built environment globally. As investor expectations evolve toward decision-useful, investment-grade sustainability data, GRESB’s Infrastructure Assessments and Standards sit at the centre of market transformation.
This role is pivotal in ensuring that GRESB’s Infrastructure Standards and wider product offering remain authoritative, credible, and responsive to the needs of global investors and managers. It combines standards leadership, governance, market engagement, and strategic development, including expansion into new areas such as data centre assessments.
To meet this moment, we have created SPARK - a new internal team that will serve as the connective tissue between the GRESB Foundation and GRESB BV. SPARK's remit spans standard setting, ratings integrity, innovation, thought leadership, and VIP customer success. It is, in short, where GRESB's authority is built, defended, and renewed.
The Role
The Director, Infrastructure Standards & Market Engagement is responsible for leadership of GRESB’s Infrastructure Standards, including governance, methodology development, and industry alignment.
The role operates at the intersection of:
- Standards governance and methodological rigour
- Investor and industry relationships
- Strategic product and market development
You will act as:
- Secretary and strategic leader for the Infrastructure Standards Committee (ISC), enabling effective governance, prioritising value-add developments, and facilitating industry-led decision-making
- Leader of infrastructure standards development, ensuring relevance, credibility, and innovation
- A senior external representative of GRESB, maintaining deep relationships across the global infrastructure ecosystem
- A senior leader internally at GRESB, promoting the development of the standards and raising awareness of the role of GRESB in assisting our customers
What You Will Do
Standards Leadership & Methodology Ownership
- Lead the development and evolution of the GRESB Infrastructure Standards, ensuring they remain credible, decision-useful, and aligned with investor needs
- Own the underlying methodology, ensuring technical rigour, consistency, and integrity across assessments and benchmarks
- Drive a multi-year roadmap for standards evolution, including alignment with performance-based frameworks and emerging market expectations
- Lead the development of new modules and thematic areas, including ownership of the new Data Centre Standard and Assessment
Governance & ISC Leadership
- Serve as Secretary to the Infrastructure Standards Committee (ISC) and the Data Centre Working Group (DCWG), shaping agendas, facilitating discussions, and enabling high-quality, investor-led decision-making
- Build trust and alignment across ISC members, balancing technical, political, and market considerations
- Ensure governance processes are efficient, transparent, and reinforce GRESB’s authority as a global standard setter
- Lead other industry groups as required, including acting as Chair of the GRESB/IIGCC Net Zero Investment Framework Working Group
Market Engagement & Strategic Relationships
- Develop and maintain deep relationships with institutional investors, asset managers, and infrastructure operators globally
- Act as a credible peer to senior stakeholders, translating GRESB standards into investment-relevant insights
- Maintain and expand GRESB’s network across the international infrastructure investment community, ensuring strong connectivity to market sentiment and priorities
- Build and sustain relationships with industry associations, standard setters, and framework bodies, ensuring alignment and influence across the ecosystem
Strategic Insight & Product Development
- Work closely with members to understand pain points, data challenges, and evolving needs, translating these into actionable changes in GRESB standards and products
- Shape GRESB’s strategic objectives and roadmap for infrastructure, ensuring alignment with market demand and growth opportunities
- Identify opportunities to expand the benchmark and membership base through innovation, improved value proposition, and new thematic areas
- Contribute to cross-functional initiatives within SPARK, linking standards, data, product, and customer engagement
Thought Leadership & External Representation
- Represent GRESB at industry events, conferences, and working groups, positioning the organisation as a leader in infrastructure sustainability
- Contribute to thought leadership, publications, and market commentary
- Articulate GRESB’s approach to sustainability in the language of capital markets and investment decision-making
Who You Are
You combine standards expertise, market credibility, and stakeholder leadership:
Standards & Technical Expertise
- Deep experience in sustainability standards, benchmarks, or frameworks within infrastructure or real assets.
- Experience working in sustainability for an investment fund for a minimum of 3 years. Advantageous is additional experience gained in an asset manager or in infrastructure assets.
- Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, decision-useful outputs that add value and ease pain points at the intersection of the relationships and data flows between investors, managers, and assets.
- Strong understanding of other external frameworks, particularly the work of the IIGCC, including the Net Zero Investment Framework (NZIF) and the Climate Resilience Investment Framework (CRIF)
- Previous experience working in tech and software is a significant advantage
- Master's level qualification in Finance or Economics
Market & Industry Credibility
- Strong network across the global infrastructure investment community, including investors and managers.
- Experience engaging with and coordinating senior stakeholders and operating in multi-stakeholder environments
- Understanding of how sustainability data is used in investment decision-making and portfolio management
- Demonstrable experience in leading industry fora and technical working groups
Leadership & Influence
- Proven ability to lead through influence in complex governance structures
- Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills
- Ability to build consensus across diverse groups of stakeholders while maintaining clarity and direction
Mindset
- Proactive, externally oriented, and highly engaged with market developments
- Willingness to work closely with members to deeply understand challenges and respond with agility
- Highly collaborative, with the ability to work across teams and functions
About SPARK
SPARK stands for Standards · Partnership · Advocacy · Research · Knowledge
SPARK is GRESB's centre of excellence for standards integrity, ecosystem intelligence, thought leadership, and VIP customer engagement. It is a small, empowered team that operates as the connective tissue between the GRESB Foundation and GRESB BV - moving with the agility and intellectual ambition that a global standards body of GRESB's scale and importance demands. SPARK's mission is to evolve GRESB from guardian of a static benchmark into steward of a living sustainability ecosystem - translating participant data, investor demand, and market intelligence into standards that are trusted, ratings that are credible, and relationships that endure.
About GRESB
GRESB is a mission-driven organisation and strategic partner for sustainable and high-performing investments across real assets and climate-critical industries. We help investment professionals mitigate risk and build portfolios that are resilient, efficient, and financially attractive for long-term success.
Vision: An investment industry that plays a central role in creating a sustainable world.
Mission: To provide financial markets with actionable sustainability insights, data, and benchmarks. More than 150 global institutional and financial investors with USD 53 trillion in assets under management rely on GRESB to help guide their investment decisions, mitigating risk, improving portfolio quality, and driving long-term financial success.
If you are interested in this role, please apply below.
