Late last year, the world lost one of its greats when Maurice Strong, the founding Executive Director of UNEP, passed at the age of 86 – just days before the Paris Agreement that is, in many ways, a legacy of his life of environmental leadership. Maurice Strong was a truly exceptional human being and a leader in the global family. Few individuals can claim to have shaped the course of history over the past 50 years in the way Maurice Strong did, and he continued to exert huge influence until the last days of his life.