Carol Liao

Dr. Carol Liao is an Associate Professor at the UBC Allard School of Law and the UBC Sauder Distinguished Fellow of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at the UBC Sauder School of Business. She is internationally recognized for her expertise in corporate law and sustainability, climate governance, ESG and EDI, and has widely published in these fields.

Dr. Liao has delivered over 175 invited talks around the world on sustainable business and has been featured and cited over 100 times in TV, radio and news media on corporate governance, ESG and equity issues. She is a research excellence cluster member of Decision Insights for Business & Society and the Future Minerals Initiative at UBC.  From 2019-2023, Dr. Liao was the Director of the Centre for Business Law at UBC, where she oversaw two experiential learning programs and hosted over 125 professional and scholarly events on contemporary business issues.

Dr. Liao is a current director of the Canadian Foundation for Governance Research at the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre – Museum of Migration Society. She is a member of the Solicitors’ Legal Opinions Committee of BC and serves on the Advisory Council for BCBusiness. At UBC, Dr. Liao sits on the Steering Committee of the Climate Solutions Research Collective and the Advisory Board for the Phil Lind Initiative.

Prior to academia, Dr. Liao was a senior lawyer in the New York Mergers and Acquisitions Group of Shearman & Sterling LLP (now A&O Shearman), where she represented private and public multinational corporations in a variety of transactional and governance matters.

Dr. Liao is the recipient of the BIV Influential Women in Business Award, BCBusiness Women of the Year Award, TELUS Community Service Award, Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women Award, and in 2024 was named as one of Canada’s Clean50.