HSBC has recruited Jennie Harris, formerly the marketing manager with the George Gregan foundation, to its corporate social responsibility (CSR) program on a contractual basis.

Harris will take on a program previously attended to by Verity Blackman, the bank’s full-time CSR manager, in a year-long tenure while Blackman takes maternity leave. The program includes HSBC’s ‘climate partnership’, an initiative aiming to combat the threat of climate change by spurring governments, business and individuals into action.

For the partnership, the bank is collaborating with The Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature in five-year projects whose aims include cleaning-up and promoting New York, Shanghai, London, Hong Kong and Mumbai as model cities, protecting some of the world’s major rivers and researching the long-term impacts of climate change on the forests globally.