About

Stephanie Villadiego De La Hoz, Ph.D., is the founder of Substrata.

Rooted in Colombia and based in Switzerland, she has spent over a decade at the intersection of international policy, business, human rights, and peace, across the private sector, academia, consulting, and multilateral institutions.

Background

Stephanie began her career in corporate social responsibility at a telecommunications company in Bogotá, coordinating CSR and human rights reporting aligned with GRI and ISO 26000.

As a consultant and project manager in risk advisory, she then managed fifteen multi-year human rights and socio-political risk mandates for extractive-sector companies in Colombia and Mexico, including during the final stages of the peace process with the FARC. This work combined risk assessments and scenario analysis, analysis of how prepared organizations were to address those risks, and stakeholder dialogues between executives, government representatives, and affected communities.

Her doctoral research at the University of Neuchâtel traced how corporate responsibility has been hardening from voluntary commitments into binding law, from the UN Guiding Principles to the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Alongside it, she taught responsible business conduct and sustainability governance to more than 300 Master’s and executive-education students.

Her most recent work entails policy research consultancy for the International Labour Organization on social innovation, the social and solidarity economy in the informal economy, and responsible supply chains. In this role she co-drafted a joint policy brief with the UNTFSSE and the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.