SHARON FLYNN

Sharon has over 20 years working in the extractives, construction, development, and biodiversity conservation sectors in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. This work has included senior corporate leadership roles to assess and manage impacts on project affected people, and non-profit roles to support community participation in protected area management and peacebuilding. In her role as Senior Advisor, Sharon leverages her expertise and experience to support Article One’s extractives sector clients on human rights, social performance, and climate change. Sharon leverages this expertise to advise on HRIA methodology, findings, and recommendations.

Sharon is skilled in embedding social and environmental performance considerations and has wide-ranging knowledge of the business models, operation, and commercial arrangements required to achieve resource access and operational continuity.  This work is built on understanding the business risks—financial, reputational, and legal—that emerge from the social, political, and economic context.  The purpose is to avoid potential harm to land-connected people while contributing development benefits through the leadership and involvement of local communities.  Sharon is well versed in risk and impact management, communities and Indigenous People, government and external affairs, biodiversity, climate change, and human rights.

Sharon is board director with Okane Consultants and board co-chair with CDA Collaborative Learning. She is a member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at the University of Queensland and ICMM’s Expert Review Panel.

In both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, Sharon has worked with rural land connected communities to understand project impacts and avoid harm. This has included building collaboration with rainforest-based communities in Guatemala, highland subsistence farmers in Peru, small-holder agriculture in the Philippines and New Zealand, and indigenous communities from the cultural communities of the Philippines, to the Maori in New Zealand, and to the Nasa in Colombia.