Global Finance Campaign Director, Rainforest Action Network

When most people think of climate change, they picture giant smokestacks from a coal-fired power plant, or traffic-clogged freeways, or maybe a melting glacier or polar bear. But one primary cause of global warming often goes unnoticed: deforestation. Burning or cutting down forests – particularly in the tropics – accounts for as much as twenty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions each year. It’s the reason why Indonesia ranks #3 in global emissions, and Brazil is #4. The reality is that we can’t stop climate change unless we also stop rainforest destruction. To protect our climate, we also have to protect our forests.

Over the last twenty-five years, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has organized some of the country’s most effective efforts at changing corporate behavior.  RAN helped to convince Burger King to stop selling rainforest beef, Home Depot to phase out wood from endangered forests, and last year convinced more than two dozen companies to discontinue purchases of paper from Indonesian rainforests. Please join RAN’s program director Rebecca Tarbotton to learn more about current consumer campaigns to address the primary drivers of tropical deforestation, namely the food and paper industries. Rebecca will also give an update on recent developments in Copenhagen and the U.S. to link forest and climate protection.

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Senior Program Officer, Hitachi Foundation

To quote Thomas Paine, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”  Hard times make for hard choices.  And choices made and actions taken in the tough times are the true gauge of the depth and durability of our values.  We see concrete evidence for cautious optimism based on the attitudes, actions, and investment decisions emerging from a large, national, representative sample of business leaders surveyed at the heights of the economic recession.

The economic shocks of the past two years are the strongest since the Great Depression.  The consequences are the centerpiece of daily headlines.  The economy skidded from robust growth to a hair-raising decline.  Jobs vanished as unemployment soared.  Real estate and the stock market plummeted.  Another cycle of egregious wrongdoing and corporate misdeeds emerged.   The toll of these trends on businesses pushed some to their demise, and left many others gasping for survival.  People and communities are suffering greatly as many are losing hope of recovery.  The effects of these forces on businesses are also amply documented in our results.  Most suffered drops in sales or revenues and many were forced to cut jobs, pay, and benefits.

The hopeful message in our data is that, despite the extreme turbulence, most businesses are committed to being good corporate citizens.  In fact, over half believe that corporate citizenship is even more important in a recession.  Overall, corporate citizenship efforts have been maintained and in key cases advanced in these difficult times.  The report offers hope that corporate America is deciding that applying for full corporate citizenship delivers significant value to their business as well.  It is a series of fairly encouraging signs in the midst of a great economic upheaval.

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Principal and Co-Founder, Harmeda LLC

Max Dufour

Senior Manager, Sungard Consulting

The last decade has seen vast increases in both the number of corporate responsibility reports and methods of reporting. The volume and variety of information included in often lengthy reports can be confusing to professionals, let alone first-time readers. The Institute for Responsible Investment’s recently published guide, entitled “How to Read a Corporate Social Responsibility Report,” is intended to help CSR report readers of all experience levels determine what information is useful and what is not. In this call, the principal author of the guide will discuss some of the major challenges that arise in analyzing CSR reports and highlight the characteristics of strong reporting.

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Founder Director, Tomorrow’s Company

The banking crisis has cost shareholders and taxpayers billions. What can be done to prevent such corporate failures in the future?

In a word, the answer is “better stewardship”. In 2008 Tomorrow’s Company In completed a major study of ownership. It concluded that shareholders had four functions. The first is to provide finance. The second is to elect the directors and hold them accountable. The third is to trade shares and through this to set the market price. And the fourth – too often neglected – function is stewardship.

In this call Mark Goyder will describe the background to the ground breaking work of Tomorrow’s Company on stewardship and governance, and describe in detail the stewardship principles and how they can be used to assess the performance of boards and investors.

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Co-Founder and CEO, Room to Read

Erin Ganju, the Co-Founder and CEO of Room to Read, has been a key member of the team that has built and scaled one of the fastest growing social entrepreneur organizations. Room to Read was founded on the belief that world change starts with educated children, and envisions a world in which all children can pursue a quality education that enables them to reach their full potential. Room to Read’s mission is to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. In just 10 years, they have scaled from operating in one country in Asia, Nepal, to currently nine countries in Asia and Africa, reaching more than 4 million children with their educational programs. They have established over 9,000 bilingual libraries for children, published more than 330 original local language books, built 832 schools and funded over 8,700 girls through their Girls’ Education program. Room to Read’s annual operating budget of $25 million is funded by 60%+ individual donors and they have a unique volunteer chapter model that raises one third of their budget every year and operates in more than 43 cities worldwide.  During the call, Erin will share her perspective on the key lessons learned while growing and scaling Room to Read, including managing fast growth in fundraising, programs, expansion, monitoring and evaluation and operations.

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Associate Director with the Corporate Sustainability Initiative, Duke University

Sustainability is an idea whose time has finally come.  Everywhere you look these days, companies are touting carbon neutral goals, green consumer products, cleantech investment strategies and energy efficiency accomplishments.

But can you really find a job in this field?  Absolutely.  Join Katie Kross for a conversation about MBA career paths in corporate sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), socially responsible investing, sustainability consulting, renewable energy, and other green industries.  She’ll share practical tips, tools, and resources gleaned from hundreds of interviews with MBA students and alumni who have successfully navigated the sustainable business internship/job search.

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Senior Partner & Executive Director, One Acre Fund

75% of the world’s poor share one profession – they are subsistence farmers.

Despite the efforts of many organizations, these one-acre farmers are only getting poorer over time. One Acre Fund is a startup non-profit that is discovering innovative new ways of serving farm families. Our leadership team lives in rural areas of Africa, which we believe has allowed us to discover new ways to help. In less than four years, we now serve 12,000 farm families, are doubling in size every year, and are grantees of the Draper Richards Foundation and Echoing Green Foundations.

Andrew is the founder of One Acre Fund and lives in rural Kenya. He will talk about our team’s innovative work in subsistence agriculture. He also found his career passion and started One Acre Fund while getting his MBA, and will offer some ideas on how one can go about finding a career passion and/ or starting an organization.

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Chief Investment Officer, Domini Social Investments, Vice President, Domini Funds

The last decade has seen vast increases in both the number of corporate responsibility reports and methods of reporting. The volume and variety of information included in often lengthy reports can be confusing to professionals, let alone first-time readers. The Institute for Responsible Investment’s recently published guide, entitled “How to Read a Corporate Social Responsibility Report,” is intended to help CSR report readers of all experience levels determine what information is useful and what is not. In this call, the principal author of the guide will discuss some of the major challenges that arise in analyzing CSR reports and highlight the characteristics of strong reporting.

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President & CEO, GL Advisor

GL Advisor, a division of Graduate Leverage, was founded in 2003 after a Harvard Business School research project concluded MBAs were not getting proper information regarding their student loans. Since its founding, GL has assisted more than 60,000 graduate professional students with student debt management and other financial matters.  The brief webinar will cover the following issues:

• Review of the July 1st, 2009 changes to student loan forgiveness that will impact all MBAs entering the social sector.
• Explanation of who stands to benefit from student loan consolidation
• Critical tools to determine the financial tradeoff between working at a socially conscious for-profit firm versus a non-profit organization.

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Director of Operations, KIPP Schools

Matt Hill

Administrative Officer, Los Angeles Unified School District

Carolyn “Cate” Reed

Project Manager, Office of Strategic Initiatives, Pittsburgh Public Schools

If you’ve ever wondered how you could help kids get a better education in the public school systems, this call is for you.  You don’t have to have a teaching background to be of great value, as the featured speakers on this call can attest.  Broad Residency Alumni Delano Ford, Matt Hill and Cate Reed will discuss (1) their work in strategy, finance, and operations, reporting to senior leadership; and (2) their personal transitions into leadership positions in public school districts and charter school management organizations.  Delano and Matt came from management consulting (Accenture and Capgemini) to public K-12 education with little or no teaching experience, and Cate had to battle misperceptions of Teach For America. These Broad Residents have had to build relationships and get up to speed on issues and systems so they could quickly add value in strategic and operational areas.  Join us on the call to hear about their change management stories and about some of the latest challenges confronting public education in Los Angeles, New Orleans and Pittsburgh.

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