Yafit Cohn is Vice President, Chief Sustainability Officer and Group General Counsel at The Travelers Companies, Inc., where she is focused on developing the company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) engagement and communications strategies, as well as executing on broader, strategic company initiatives. Since joining Travelers in September 2017, Yafit has helped guide the company through the evolving ESG landscape and has led the company’s effort to produce its first (and subsequent) comprehensive and integrated sustainability reports, including reports aligned with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards for the insurance industry and the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Yafit chairs Travelers’ ESG Committee and serves on the company’s Disclosure Committee. She is also the first Chair of the Society for Corporate Governance’s Sustainability Practices Committee and sits on the board of the Society for Corporate Governance. In 2019, Yafit was named on the list of 2020 Insurance Executives to Watch by Risk & Insurance, and in 2021, she was included in Insurance Business America’s “Hot 100” list.
Before joining Travelers, Yafit was Counsel in Simpson Thacher’s New York office and a member of the Public Company Advisory Practice, where she advised public companies, corporate management and boards of directors on a broad array of issues pertaining to securities law and corporate governance, including SEC reporting and disclosure requirements, shareholder proposals, the impact of proxy advisory firms, and responses to formal and informal SEC inquiries. Prior to that, Yafit spent nine years as a litigator at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, focusing primarily on securities litigation and government investigations. Yafit has been a prolific writer and speaker on disclosure and corporate governance matters, as well as a frequent commenter in the press.
Yafit has a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar, and a Bachelor of Art degree in Political Science, summa cum laude, from Columbia College.