In a new twist on companies elevating their top in-house lawyers to the C-suite, The Travelers Cos. Inc. has promoted an associate group general counsel to chief sustainability officer.

Yafit Cohn, chief sustainability officer of Travelers.

Yafit Cohn will lead Hartford, Connecticut-based Travelers’ environmental, social and governance, or ESG, efforts across the organization in the newly created role, the property casualty insurance giant said Thursday in a statement. This is the latest example of in-house lawyers across industries moving into higher C-suite positions as well as filling new positions created especially for their legal expertise.

“A chief sustainability officer will enable us to deepen the sophistication of our sustainability efforts, tell our story more effectively and engage more broadly as a thought leader in the related and evolving public policy dialogue,” Alan Schnitzer, chairman and chief executive officer of Travelers, said in the announcement.

Cohn, who joined Travelers in September 2017, recently helped launch a new sustainability website that addresses the 16 topics the company plans to address as part of its efforts: business strategy and competitive advantages, capital and risk management, climate strategy, community, customer experience, data privacy and cybersecurity, disaster preparedness and response, diversity and inclusion, eco-efficient operations, ethics and values, governance, human capital management, innovation, investment management, public policy, and safety and health.

“With the publication of our first comprehensive sustainability site, which takes an integrated approach to sustainability reporting, I look forward to regularly engaging with our stakeholders on our approach to sustainability and our various efforts in the space,” Cohn told Corporate Counsel in an email. “I’m also focused on further contributing to the public dialogue that has been developing around sustainable business practices and continuing to help guide the company through the constantly evolving and increasingly complex ESG landscape.”

A graduate of Columbia Law School, Cohn began her legal career as an associate in the New York office of Cahill Gordon & Reindel before moving to Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where she served in the public company advisory practice for nearly four years, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“Since joining Travelers in 2017, I’ve spent a significant portion of my time becoming intimately familiar with the developing ESG ecosystem through research and extensive conversations with governance professionals, sustainability leaders and the company’s stakeholders,” Cohn said. “Importantly, to better understand investors’ views with respect to ESG disclosure, I led our sustainability-focused engagements with institutional investors representing approximately 50% of Travelers’ shares outstanding. These engagements served as the foundation for our approach to reporting, the frameworks and standards with which we have aligned our disclosures and the specific topics we cover on our site.”