Interview Series: Liam Stoker

This week’s read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to the Green Digest Interview Series, our weekly feature showcasing conversations with the industry’s leading voices - CSOs, sustainability directors, and other senior professionals shaping the sustainability landscape. Each edition dives into their professional journeys, hands-on insights, and outlook on the challenges and opportunities defining corporate sustainability.

These interviews are designed to be quick, insightful reads, offering you actionable takeaways and a personal glimpse into the people leading the way. Stay tuned for stories, strategies, and lessons that matter to you.

PROFILE

This week’s guest:

Liam Stoker

Head of Reuters Insights

Liam Stoker is Head of Reuters Insights, part of Reuters Professional, which delivers strategic, bespoke research solutions for clients globally and with responsibility for the Reuters Events series of annual trends reports. 

This includes Reuters Events’ flagship Reuters IMPACT Sustainability Trends Report, and its annual Sustainability Reporting and Data Outlook. With 15 years+ of experience in editorial, content and market analysis roles, Liam has built a reputation for delivering engaging, detailed custom research to drive commercial success. ​

A Member of the UK’s Market Research Society, Liam has worked on a number of notable research projects, including the Reuters x Siemens Industrial AI ‘A New Pace of Change’ reports and SS&C Intralinks’ Global M&A Dealmakers Sentiment analysis. 

For those who may not be familiar, could you start by explaining what Reuters Events does and how it supports business and sustainability leaders?

Our aim at Reuters Events is to provide senior executives and professionals with the information and relationships they need to navigate change, unlock opportunity and shape their strategy. We work across numerous sectors and industries, sustainability being just one of them. 

This isn’t just through industry events that happen two or three days a year, but through year-round engagements encompassing webinars, workshops, content programmes and in-depth market research reports. 

Our Sustainable Business series is well established within the industry, covering event series like Responsible Business, Sustainability Reporting and Reuters IMPACT, the latter two we also run annual research projects around to provide that deep, strategic insight that decision makers need, especially during periods of volatility and uncertainty.

Could you give us an overview of the kinds of reports and studies you deliver at Reuters Insights and how they help companies and professionals?

Reuters Insights provides deep research through mixed-methodology programs to provide trusted insights across key themes and disruptions impacting industries and businesses today. We want to understand the big issues – what’s keeping senior leaders up at night, and what can they do to strategically to ease those concerns. 

We do this through a mix of industry surveys and qualitative research methods, culminating in detailed research reports that we publish throughout the year. 

Our main objective here is to provide content that’s of real, tangible value, something that someone’s going to save to their desktop or cite in a presentation to business leadership, rather than flick through and forget. In an age when there’s a such an oversaturation of content, especially that created through generative AI, we aim to cut through that noise with strategic insight that’s driven by research, informed by peers and is of substantial value to the communities we serve.

Reuters Events has also become known for bringing together some of the most influential voices in sustainability. From your perspective, what makes your events special?

We consider the strength of our research to be our secret sauce. Our teams conduct a significant amount of research with their communities and networks before we begin to plan our events, ensuring that they get to the very core of the challenges and disruptions shaping those industries. 

We’re constantly challenging that research to ensure we’re getting sufficient depth. Then it’s about getting the right people in the room, ensuring those peer networks are present so there’s mutual sharing of ideas and information so that people are leaving with actionable insights and takeaways – something which is going to resonate in the days, weeks and months after the event. 

We also take great care over the experience, what an event looks and feels like on the day and into the evening. When all three of those factors are correct, it makes for a truly engaging, insightful and memorable experience for industry professionals.

You have two major sustainability events coming up this month - one in Europe and one in the US. What themes or speakers are you most excited about?

The events we have coming up showcase different but complementary aspects of the sustainability landscape.

Our Sustainability Europe event in London (October 21-22) brings together an impressive roster of more than 20 C-suite executives (more to come!), including CSOs from Opella, Lego, P&G, Radisson, and Essilor Luxottica.

What excites us most is the breadth of topics across our core pillars: strategy and cross-departmental action, new regulations and reporting, supply chain impact and AI in sustainability.
The IMPACT sessions featuring Cherie Blair and Saker Nusseibeh I think will offer particularly valuable insights, plus our new buddy group initiative will help attendees form working groups with peers at the event who are facing similar challenges.

Meanwhile, Sustainability Reporting USA in Boston (October 9-10) focuses specifically on demystifying the complex reporting landscape we’ve seen emerge. We're thrilled to feature Senator Sheldon Whitehouse as our keynote speaker, alongside a state-level reporting townhall with Catherine Atkins and Sydney Vergis from CARB. The Strategy Squads will provide hands-on problem-solving for attendees' most pressing reporting challenges.

Check out the full Reuters Events Sustainable Business portfolio here to explore upcoming events, workshops, and research initiatives.

PARTNER WITH US

Increase your brand awareness and visibility by reaching the right audience and target market. Showcase your company, solutions, services, products, reports, surveys, events, or other content in front of our highly targeted audience of +5,000 Sustainability & ESG professionals. Contact us at [email protected] if you think we can partner in some way.