We started with a simple, uncomfortable observation

Most organisations operating near communities do not fully understand them. Not because they do not care. The tools they have been given - the frameworks, the reports, the engagement processes - were never designed to surface what communities actually think, fear, and organise around. CIG was founded to change that.

Founding story

In 2002, Ana Maria set out to build something the industry did not have: a consultancy that treated community understanding as a rigorous discipline in its own right – not a subset of environmental compliance, not a communications exercise, and not something you outsource to whoever is cheapest nor delegate to a colleague because they are ‘good with people.’

She had seen, from inside local government, what happens when projects proceed on assumption rather than evidence, when social risk is managed as a reporting obligation rather than a genuine operating reality. When the people most affected by a project are the last to be genuinely heard.

Breakthroughism, another way of describing CIG’s founding approach, was built in direct response to that pattern.

Over twenty years on, the projects have grown more complex, the scrutiny has intensified, and the cost of getting community wrong has become impossible for boards to ignore.

Our values and operating principles

These are the standards
we hold ourselves to on
every engagement.

Senior-led, by design

The people who scope your engagement are the people who deliver it. We do not hand work to junior staff once the contract is signed.

Honest before comfortable

We will tell you what the evidence shows, not what is easiest to hear. If your social performance has gaps, you will know. That is the only basis on which good decisions get made.

Insight that changes decisions

We are not in the business of producing reports. We are in the business of changing what organisations do. If our work does not influence a decision, it has not done its job.

Built for your environment, not borrowed from another one

Communities are not interchangeable. Neither are the political, cultural, and historical contexts they exist within. We build our approach around the specific reality in front of us.

The people
behind the work

CIG is deliberately small. It means every client works directly with senior practitioners who have spent careers inside the issues we advise on.

DR ANA MARIA ESTEVES

Founder

Ana Maria has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of major projects and the communities they affect – in extractives, energy, infrastructure, and development finance, across some of the world’s most demanding operating environments.

She founded CIG on the conviction that community insight, done properly, is one of the most consequential things an organisation can invest in. Not only because it is the right thing to do – though it is – but because decisions grounded in community reality consistently outperform those that are not.

Ana Maria is a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde’s Faculty of Engineering and Honorary Professor at Australian National University. She holds a PhD and MBA from the University of Melbourne and qualifications in Executive Coaching and Team Coaching from INSEAD. She co-authored the IAIA’s Guidance for Social Impact Assessment, led the development of the Code of Ethics for Social Performance Practitioners, the SPGrow360 competency framework for social practitioners, SIAhub—an online platform used by a global community of SIA practitioners—and contributed to the world’s first certification scheme for SIA practitioners.

Ana Maria is based in the Netherlands.

VICTORIA COLLINS

Chief Operating Officer

Victoria believes that genuine balance between a company and the communities it affects is only possible when the organisation fully recognises its responsibility to understand and mitigate its impact on people.

She brings over 25 years of experience in consulting for both public and private sectors, specialising in the intricate terrain where community rights, expectations of benefits, and business imperatives intersect. As COO of CIG, she also helps ensure we are accountable, operationally feasible and grounded in our values.

Victoria’s advisory work spans feasibility studies, due diligence, social investment strategy, benefit-sharing design, monitoring and evaluation, and performance monitoring. She has worked in over 30 countries, bringing deep understanding of how social performance challenges differ across contexts and how solutions must be tailored to specific political, cultural, and operational realities.

What drives Victoria’s work is the conviction that companies can only sustain their operations when they genuinely understand the communities they affect and commit to tilting the balance toward positive impact. She holds a Master’s degree in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and is fluent in English, German, and French.

Victoria is based in Germany.

VERA OGORODNIKOVA

Advisory Services Manager

Vera believes that the viability of businesses hinges on an essential principle: operational success must always be intertwined with the wellbeing of local communities.

She brings over 20 years of expertise in social performance management and capacity building for international energy, mining, and infrastructure businesses, and the institutions that finance them, to strengthen how they understand and manage social risk.

At CIG, Vera spearheads advisory services, leading teams of experts that conduct social risk assessments and human rights impact assessments, and benefit-sharing projects with focus on local content, community investment, and equitable benefit distribution.

Vera’s career reflects her commitment to building capability within organisations. She has worked across diverse sectors and geographies, bringing understanding of how social performance challenges and solutions differ across contexts. She holds an MSc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Vera is based in the United States.

DR SÉRGIO MOREIRA

Learning and Coaching Manager

Sérgio is a psychologist who has spent his career applying social psychology to strengthen how projects and communities relate to each other. His core motivation is helping social performance teams develop the skills that create genuine common ground between projects and affected communities.

He believes this opens the door to collective transformation, where projects can be genuinely shaped by communities and that communities, in their sovereignty, can be transformed by projects.

Sérgio co-developed CIG’s 360 Competency Diagnostic, Role Alignment Diagnostic and Capability Sprint programs. He brings extensive experience from diverse development projects across energy, transportation, and extractive industries. His published work appears in leading journals including Frontiers in Psychology, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, and The Extractive Industries and Society. He is an invited assistant professor at Nova SBE in Lisbon, where he teaches Research Methods and Data Analysis applied to social sciences. His academic work reflects his commitment to grounding social performance practice in rigorous evidence and psychological insight.

Sérgio’s approach to coaching and learning is grounded in the belief that practitioners can deliberately strengthen their capability to work across difference and complexity. He works with individuals and teams to translate learning into changed practice – helping them develop the psychological and interpersonal tools to take on the most difficult terrain in human rights and social performance work.

Sérgio is based in Portugal.

Suelen Haidar Ronchi

Finance Manager

Suelen believes that at CIG, the team is more than just a group of people working together – it is a family. She is convinced that organisational strength comes from the synergy of well-structured processes combined with highly qualified and dedicated people.

Fueled by a collective ethos of shared purpose, Suelen invests in the future and success of the company. While financial management is often seen as a technical function, Suelen understands it as central to enabling CIG’s mission – ensuring that resources are managed with integrity and efficiency so that the firm can deliver rigorous, uncompromised advisory work to clients.

Suelen brings over a decade of experience in project administration and financial coordination, with a background in leading Brazilian educational institutions including Fundação Getúlio Vargas and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.

She holds a Master’s degree in Accounting with specialisation in financial management, accounting, and project administration. Her Master’s thesis work applied multi-criteria decision analysis to performance evaluation in distance learning courses, reflecting her commitment to rigorous, data-informed decision-making.

Suelen is a Certified Management Accountant and brings multilingual capability to her work, as a native Portuguese speaker who is fluent in English and speaks intermediate Dutch and Spanish. Her background across multiple countries and institutional contexts gives her understanding of how organisational systems must adapt to different cultural and operational environments. She recognises that supporting CIG’s global team requires both financial discipline and cultural awareness.

Suelen is based in Brazil.

LUCIANA DA SILVA CASTRO SOUTO

Human Rights Practice Lead

Luciana finds it an privilege to help enhance business practices that respect rights and improve lives on the ground. She brings 15 years of human rights expertise and deep conviction that businesses which earn trust, uphold human rights, and meaningfully engage with local communities can pave the way for positive social transformation. Her work is grounded in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and other international standards – but always with focus on how these principles translate into real change in how companies operate.

Luciana excels in human rights due diligence, human rights impact assessments, and designing capacity-building initiatives for social risk management. She has specific expertise in grievance mechanisms and has been responsible for implementing non-judicial complaints mechanisms for impacted communities in disaster contexts. Her experience spans Latin America, Africa, and Europe with particular depth in labour rights, resettlement activities relationships with local communities and Indigenous Peoples. She understands that human rights work is not abstract – it is about ensuring that affected people have genuine voice in decisions that affect them and that companies understand what they owe.

What distinguishes Luciana’s approach is her commitment to moving beyond compliance toward genuine respect for rights. She holds an LLM in International Legal Studies from Newcastle University and a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She is a native Portuguese speaker, fluent in English and Spanish.

Luciana is based in Brazil.

JACQUELINE TEDALDI

Senior Consultant

Jacqueline is convinced that we are entering a new era where soft law voluntary initiatives like the UN Guiding Principles are evolving into hard law.

She believes that over time, a critical mass of companies will shift their perspectives, civil society will be more empowered, more students will be taught business and human rights, and the integration of human rights into business practice will become ingrained. This vision drives her work supporting global companies in fulfilling their responsibilities to respect human rights.

Jacqueline draws on international business and human rights experience to conduct human rights impact assessments and human rights and social due diligences, develop capacity-building and awareness-raising on human rights topics, and design internal human rights management systems.

She has led human rights studies across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America in extractive, renewable energy, and agriculture sectors. She co-developed the Danish Institute for Human Rights’ Human Rights Impact Assessment Guidance and Toolbox and has developed internal company guidance and methodologies on human rights for major organisations.

Jacqueline holds an MSc in International Business and Politics from Copenhagen Business School and a BA in Political Science from Hofstra University. She is a native English speaker, fluent in Danish and Spanish, with basic Portuguese.

Jacqueline is based in Denmark.

FRANCESCO MAZZEI

Consultant and Business Development Coordinator

Francesco is deeply committed to emphasising the vital link between social responsibility and business success.

He believes that promoting social performance is not just a moral imperative but also a sound business decision that propels companies toward sustainable growth and enduring success. His work focuses on developing purpose- and data-driven initiatives that resonate with clients and, more importantly, with the people they are designed to benefit.

Francesco brings over a decade of consulting experience supporting the development and implementation of social and health impact assessments and social impact management plans. His project experience spans governments (Indigenous and non), non-profits, international finance corporations, global health organisations, academic institutions, and the private sector. He has served as a Board member for the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA), reflecting his commitment to advancing the profession and ensuring that impact assessment practice serves communities as well as organisations.

Francesco holds a bachelor’s degree in Geography with specialisation in Population Health from the University of Victoria, Canada, and an MBA from Simon Fraser University, Canada. His academic background in both geography and business reflects his understanding that social performance requires integration of community perspective with organisational strategy.

Francesco is based in Canada.

FRANCESCO TRICOLI

Consultant

Francesco aspires to contribute to the emergence of a new business culture where every decision is inherently assessed for its social, environmental, and human rights impacts – moving far beyond mere compliance with regulations.

He is an experienced legal practitioner specialising in international human rights law and Business and Human Rights, with particular focus on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, community and environment, diversity and inclusion, and security.

After graduating in law from the University of Milan and passing the Italian bar exam, Francesco pursued a Master’s degree in International Human Rights Law at Nottingham University. His LLM thesis focused on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and the implementation of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) principle in the extractive sector from the perspective of the UN Guiding Principles. During his studies, he assisted his supervising professor in submitting to the European Commission regarding proposed legislation on mandatory human rights due diligence for businesses.

At CIG, Francesco has been involved in social and human rights impact assessments, evaluating corporate human rights plans and stakeholder engagement programmes with Indigenous and land-connected communities in extractive and renewable sectors. He has also worked on identifying labour rights risks in agribusiness supply chains and researched national ESIA regulatory systems. He has drafted guidance for stakeholder engagement and community consultation that emphasises ethical and inclusive business practices.

Francesco is a native Italian speaker, fluent in English and Spanish.

Francesco is based in France.

BENJAMIN CARROLL

Consultant

Ben is committed to the principle that positive impacts have lasting ripples, shaping experiences shared across families, communities, and generations. He believes that no impact ever occurs in isolation and that strengthening communities requires grounding decisions within community experiences. This conviction drives his work at CIG, where he focuses on ensuring that community perspectives are accurately and meaningfully embedded in ways that shape how impacts are understood and addressed.

Ben’s work at CIG includes Social and Human Rights Impact Assessments, human rights due diligence, advisory for livelihood restoration and resettlement plans for displacement impacts, evaluations of stakeholder engagement (including with Indigenous Peoples), and community investment program due diligence. His project experience includes in the energy, extractives, infrastructure, and agribusiness sectors. Ben conducted research into better approaches for livelihood restoration for people displaced by energy projects and also supported the development and delivery of CIG’s ‘Social Impact Assessment’ and ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Projects’ online courses.

Ben’s background reflects his long-standing commitment to human rights and social justice. Alongside his consulting work, Ben serves as Board Trustee for InterClimate Network, a charity working to enable young people in the UK to lead on meaningful action for environmental sustainability and societal change. Prior to joining CIG, he worked in the Offices of a British Member of Parliament. Ben holds a First-Class degree in Politics and International Relations from the University of Bristol, with focus on human rights issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ben is based in the United Kingdom.

Prof Frank Vanclay

Associate

Frank is dedicated to shaping policies and practices that give due consideration to social issues, driving society toward a future that is not only sustainable but also just.

An internationally acclaimed expert in Social Impact Assessment, he specialises in the management of social issues associated with large projects, social performance, business and human rights, and the social aspects of resource extraction. His work spans project-induced displacement and resettlement, the resource curse, and the social impacts of tourism and natural resource management. What unites this diverse body of work is a conviction that understanding social reality must be at the centre of how large-scale projects are planned and operated.

Frank’s influence on the field extends far beyond individual projects. On behalf of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA), he facilitated the process that led to drafting the International Principles for SIA in 2003 and the International Guidance for SIA in 2015. Both documents are landmark references widely cited by United Nations agencies, International Financial Institutions, regulatory bodies, consultants, community representatives, academics, and students worldwide. He co-edited the influential work “New Directions in Social Impact Assessment” and “Handbook of Social Impact Assessment and Management” with Ana Maria Esteves. His academic contributions have shaped how the profession understands and approaches social assessment at a global scale.

Frank is Professor of Social Impact Assessment at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. He partners with CIG on various projects, bringing academic rigour and global perspective to the firm’s advisory work. His commitment to the integration of social knowledge into decision-making reflects a lifelong dedication to ensuring that the people most affected by large-scale projects have voice in how those projects are designed and operated.

Originally from Australia, Frank is now based in the Netherlands.

Grounded in research, connected to practice

CIG team members maintain active relationships with leading academic institutions and professional bodies. The discipline of breakthroughism is stronger when research and practice speak to each other. This same approach underpins SIAhub, our platform dedicated to advancing and sharing Social Impact Assessment knowledge and practice.