Andrew Droste is Vice President, ESG Stewardship, Engagement &  Proxy Voting at Columbia Threadneedle Investments.

Prior to joining Columbia Threadneedle, Andrew was a member of the Proxy Voting Management Team at BNY Mellon. Andrew served as an ESG risk expert on the proxy voting teams at both BNY Mellon and Nuveen.

At BNY Mellon, Andrew led ESG engagements, research, and risk analyses for the firm’s Proxy Voting and Governance Committee. This included setting internal ESG engagement priorities, conducting bespoke ESG risk assessments for each of the company engagements, and providing recommendations to portfolio managers vis-à-vis ESG-related shareholder proposals.

Prior to BNY, Andrew was a member of the Responsible Investing Team at Nuveen (TIAA’s investment services arm). While at Nuveen, Andrew generated and executed ESG engagement policies, crafting recommendations for executive compensation and shareholder proposals, proxy contests, “vote-no” campaigns, and other governance matters.

Andrew has participated in over 1,000 investor-NEO-director engagements with roughly 700 different U.S. and international public companies across all market sectors.

Andrew has a B.S. in Government from Suffolk University, and a Juris Doctorate from Northeastern University School of Law.