The Impact Report

Transitioning to the Circular Economy: Thomas Singer Profiles Seven Companies Making the Shift Thomas Singer felt that there was already plenty of good writing about the theory behind the circular economy. So, when he and his Conference Board colleagues thought about what they wanted to contribute to the conversation, they focused on case studies: “real, practical examples of companies that have been involved in these types of initiatives.” The resulting 2017 report, Business Transformation and the Circular Economy: A Candid Look at Risks and Rewards, profiles the strategies and successes of seven companies at the forefront of the transition to an economy based on recovery, reunse and regeneration. Bard MBA student Carolyn Pincus spoke recently with Singer about his work and what he learned about why companies like Philips and Waste Management are increasingly pursuing circular economy initiatives. Thomas Singer is a Principle Researcher in corporate leadership at the Conference Board. His work focuses on

When “Made in America” Means “Made Sustainably” Currently, fewer than 2% of shoes worn in the United States are made here. Most are manufactured overseas by a labor force that works in conditions that would not be acceptable for American workers. In contrast, Okabashi, a family-owned and operated footwear manufacturer, makes all of its shoes in America, employing more than 200 people at its factory and headquarters in Buford, GA. As a result, its flip flops, sandals and clogs travel almost 10,000 fewer miles than the average imported shoe, substantially reducing their carbon footprint. The Bard MBA’s Cory Skuldt recently spoke with Kim Falkenhayn, the company’s President, about the challenges and opportunities presented by Okabashi’s commitment both to local manufacturing and to closed-loop recycling.

Using Finance to Shatter the Fossil Fuel Economy Nick Silver — actuary, economist and onetime mainstream finance professional — understands the consequences of the financial system continuing in its current form. Which is why his new book, "Finance, Society and Sustainability: How to Make the Financial System Work for the Economy, People and Planet," argues that to avoid collateral damage to the economy, society and the environment, we need to re-engineer the system. Silver is also the managing director of Callund Consulting, a specialist consultancy that advises developing country governments on social insurance. He has advised the U.N., U.K. and EU on carbon markets, climate finance in developing countries and managing risk from climate change.  Bard MBA faculty member Kathy Hipple spoke recently with Silver about his background in finance and how it led him to write his book. Their conversation explores both the book and Silver's work with Climate Bonds Initiative, which Silver co-founded to mobilize the

Bard MBA graduates Sam Levine and Alex FitzGerald spoke recently with Rebecca Hamilton about Badger’s business model and how it goes beyond the B Corps standard. Hamilton is a co-owner and the vice president of research and development at Badger, where she sources new raw materials and oversees the sustainability and quality of Badger’s supply chain, among other responsibilities. She is also involved in safe cosmetics legislation and toxic chemical reform and has served as the chair of the Natural Products Association National Personal Care Steering Committee. As of January, there were 1,000 certified B Corps — companies certified by the B Lab, a nonprofit, to create social and environmental benefits — in the U.S. alone. This number is even more impressive when you realize that fewer than two years ago, there were only 1,000 B Corps worldwide. Badger, a family-owned, mission-driven certified B Corp company nestled in the woods of Gilsum, New Hampshire, exemplifies and extends the B Corps model. The company

In September, Mars unveiled its Sustainable in a Generation plan, which sets a new standard for its responsible growth as a business. Mars believes that transformational, cross-industry collaboration is required to fix the extended global supply chain, and the plan leads the way by investing $1 billion to tackle threats such as climate change, poverty in its value chain and resource scarcity. The private, family-owned brand has been in business for over a century and sells its products in nearly every corner of the globe. Its six businesses — from chocolate to pet products — reach billions of consumers and earn more than $35 billion in global sales. Bard MBA student Alistair Hall talked with Mars’s Kevin Rabinovitch shortly after the launch of Sustainable in a Generation about the plan and how it evolved. Rabinovitch, Mars’s global sustainability director and chief climate officer, was instrumental in developing the plan. His team manages a global portfolio of renewable energy projects in conjunction with

Helping Refugees & Conflict-Affected Entrepreneurs Launch & Grow Their Businesses in the Middle East: Alice Bosley & Patricia Letayf of Five One Labs. What do you think when you hear the word refugee? For Alice Bosley and Patricia Letayf, Co-Founders of Five One Labs, it makes them think of innovation, passion, creativity and grit. Since the war began in Syria in 2011, nearly five million Syrian refugees have been displaced across the Middle East and Europe. Five One Labs has launched a startup incubator in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to help some of the 250,000 Syrian refugees and over 1 million Iraqi refugees in the area rebuild their lives and livelihoods. The program is designed to provide training, mentorship, inclusive communities, and support to build businesses. The name “Five One” comes from the 1951 Refugee Convention that gives refugees the right to work. Their incubator will empower young men and women from displaced and host communities in starting scalable, innovative businesses -

The Democratization of Entrepreneurship: Sherry Youssef Younes & Alejandro Crawford With a surge in the growth of the youth population worldwide there is, and will continue to be, a job shortage. The solution to this is self-employment or entrepreneurship but access to entrepreneurship is not keeping up and we may face a lost generation of job creators.  Enter Sherry Youssef Younes and Alejandro Crawford both working to democratize entrepreneurship by using technology and breaking open access points that are typically closed to budding  entrepreneurs outside of well-established networks. Sherry Youssef Younes is a Youth, Workforce Development, ICT4Development and Women's Economic Empowerment Consultant with over 23 years experience in international economic development programme design, development and management.  Alejandro Crawford’s mission is to expand access to the knowledge, space and alliance innovators require to bring new solutions to market and scale them. As a consultant, he is is managing d

Impossible Foods cooks up a new paradigm for the food system Animal protein consumption is rising worldwide. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Association estimates that the raising of livestock for meat and dairy products contributes to 14.5 percent of human-induced GHG emissions. Meat and dairy production is also heavily resource-intensive, with 30 percent of the world’s land surface used for this purpose — a landmass larger than North and South America, Europe and Australia combined. In March, Bard MBA students spoke with Rebekah Moses, sustainability and agriculture manager of Impossible Foods, to learn about the company's unique approach to reducing the impact of livestock food products. Moses shared the story of the company’s founder, a long-time academic, and other researchers who are taking solutions out of the lab and into the market.

Recycle-A-Bicycle: Fostering Job Training, Environmental Education, and Community Engagement   On average, New York City’s Recycle-A-Bicycle salvages 1,800 bicycles each year from the waste stream, diverting a total of 45,000 pounds of waste from the city’s landfills. In the past year alone, more than 1000 Recycle-A-Bicycle youth collectively refurbished 500 bicycles, pedaled 24,000 miles, and burned 1,750,000 calories. Recycle-A-Bicycle recycles the metal from donated bikes that are too damaged to use—literally 12,000 of aluminum and steel each year. The person behind these impressive numbers, Recycle-A-Bicycle Founder and Executive Director Karen Overton, talked recently with the Bard MBA’s Meghan Altman about the organization’s growth and vision.   Overton began her bicycle advocacy career in Mozambique as a planner for Bikes for Africa. When she returned to the US, she took a position with Transportation Alternatives in New York City. That’s where she was when the city’s Department of Sanitation cal

How Years of Living Dangerously Communicates the Urgency of Climate Change “Climate change isn’t stopping with the second season”—that’s Jon Meyersohn, co-executive producer of the Emmy-award winning Years of Living Dangerously, on why he hopes the series extends to a third season. Meyersohn is a journalist and producer with a thirty-year career spanning print, radio and television. As co-executive producer of the second season of Years of Living Dangerously, he worked closely with the two founding executive producers and senior staff to provide a sweeping narrative look at some of the most urgent climate change problems threatening the planet. In an interview with the Bard MBA’s Katie Ellman, Meyersohn provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how the team decided which topics to feature, who originated the idea of celebrity correspondents, and why the show’s social media presence is so powerful. Sustainable Business Fridays brings together students in Bard’s MBA in Sustainability program with leaders in

Publishing As A Tool for Effecting Cultural Change: Margo Baldwin of Chelsea Green Publishing Book publishing is a $28 billion industry in the United States. While there has been growth in e-books and audio books, the printed word is still the way most Americans read their books.  However, it is also a resource intensive industry that produces approximately 12.4 million metric tons of carbon annually.    Enter Chelsea Green Publishing. Founded in 1984 by Ian and Margo Baldwin, Chelsea Green is recognized as a leading publisher of books on the politics and practice of sustainable living. It produces foundational works on topics ranging from regenerative agriculture to local economies, to green building and renewable energy.   Chelsea Green also leads the industry with its environmental practices, printing 95 percent of its books on chlorine-free recycled paper and minimizing its carbon footprint by working exclusively with North American, rather than overseas, printers. It includes an environmental impac

Value-First Impact Investing: Cary Krosinsky on Driving Change by Doing Well   Values-first versus value-first investing. Cary Krosinsky argues that the “s” that differentiates the two represents a significant shift in the impact investing field.   Krosinsky talked with Bard MBA in Sustainability Director Eban Goodstein about the shift from negative to positive approaches to sustainable investing, and about the business case for value-first investing. Krosinsky’s latest book, Sustainable Investing: Revolutions in Theory and Practice (with Sophie Purdom), came out last December. The author of two other books on sustainable investing, he’s also a noted educator, teaching at Brown, Yale, Maryland and Concordia. His advisory work includes acting as Lead Consultant to a PRI Working Group that resulted in a Climate Change Asset Owner Strategy Framework for COP 21.

President Trump built his personal brand on wealth using tag lines like, “You have to be wealthy in order to be great.” Shortly after Trump’s election, Bard MBA in Sustainability students Heather Bowden, Lauren Hill, Nick Shore and Catherine Tedrow spoke with filmmaker John de Graaf, who documented the consumption phenomenon of the 1990s. Their conversation explored the connections among consumption, income inequality, social media and climate change in the context of the election. John de Graaf is a documentary filmmaker and author. Fifteen of his films, including the popular Affluenza, have been broadcast nationally on PBS. He is also the co-author of the books Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, now in its third edition, and What’s the Economy For, Anyway? De Graaf’s work investigates the intersections of sustainability, consumerism, health and happiness. He is a senior advisor for Earth Economics, a non-profit ecosystem services organization. He is also a co-founder of the Happiness Initiative and r

Allan Savory — Zimbabwean ecologist, farmer, soldier, exile, environmentalist, international consultant and president and co-founder of the Savory Institute — has a world-saving message: The answer is in the soil. In the 1960s, Savory originated the concept of holistic management, which has been popularized by several articles and a TED Talk that has been viewed nearly 4 million times. Holistic Management is a framework, most commonly applied to grassland management, that when properly practiced has the potential to regenerate damaged land. It focuses on mimicking the evolutionary grazing patterns of cattle to regenerate soils and restore grasslands. This technique has proved effective in hundreds of areas across the globe, one of the most popular being via Operation HOPE, winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. In December, Bard MBA student Alexander Lykins sat down with Savory to discuss holistic management, how it can be applied to business and how young entrepreneurs can become involved.

There are 3.6 million female students in Afghanistan today, compared to zero in 2001. However, social limitations for women still exist — women make up only 16 percent of the current Afghan labor force. Fereshteh Forough, founder and president of Code to Inspire (CTI), the first coding school for girls in Afghanistan, has a passion. She wants to empower young Afghan women by hitching their economic and social advancement to the country’s growing tech industry. For businesses and governments strive to align with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Code to Inspire is an organization to watch, as it encompasses the aims of Goal 4 (inclusive education) and Goal 5 (gender equality). Bard MBA in Sustainability student Esra Elshafey spoke with Forough to discuss how CTI educates Afghan women with in-demand programming skills, empowers them to add unique value to their communities and inspires them to strive for financial and social independence.

More than half the U.S. population lives in states with medical or adult use cannabis laws on the books. As the nascent cannabis industry grows, some business owners are careful to establish sustainable operations from the beginning. Maya Elisabeth, co-founder of Whoopi & Maya and founder of Om Edibles, is one of those smart business owners. Maya Elisabeth began working in California’s cannabis industry after graduating from San Francisco State University. In 2008 she formed Om Edibles, an all-female collective, focusing on high-quality ingredients, including sun-grown cannabis. Om Edibles products have won seven High Times Cannabis Cup awards and Elisabeth enjoys a reputation as one of the best creators of medical cannabis products in California. In 2015, Elisabeth partnered with Whoopi Goldberg to create the Whoopi & Maya line of medical cannabis products, focused on providing relief from menstrual pain. In this episode of Sustainable Business Fridays, Bard MBA student Jennifer Shelbo explores how

All politics is local—none more than climate policy in the US after January 20, 2017. In the absence of the prospect of wider national action, local businesses have a significant opportunity to enhance the local economy and combat climate change through their operations. Glen’s Garden Market, based in Washington, DC, has been doing just this. From sourcing products within the Chesapeake Bay watershed to powering its stores with clean energy to providing living wages, Glen’s has been quietly pushing the environmental and social sustainability envelope while also incubating other small businesses as suppliers. Emily Robichaux, a student in the Bard College MBA in Sustainability program, sat down with Danielle Vogel, a former Capitol Hill staffer and creator of Glen’s Garden Market, a local grocery store sourcing “good food from close by,” to discuss the role of mission-oriented small business in sustainable food systems and local economies. Vogel earned a law degree and worked for ten years in federal policy,

Wendy Gordon never set out to become a tech entrepreneur. But, after several decades working with environmental organizations, she saw an opportunity. Wendy and her co-founder David Sand thought to themselves, “Wouldn't it be nice if there were a program where you could get reward points not just for spending money but for spending money wisely and for making other smart choices - like walking or biking to work, opting for renewable energy or a certified pre-owned iPad, or choosing clothes based on where and how they were made?” And so, they embarked on a journey to create PIPs Rewards. An experienced entrepreneur and pioneer in the conscious consumer movement, Wendy is founder and CEO of ‘Positive Impact Points’ or PIPs Rewards. A trademarked brand of 3P Partners, a Certified B Corporation, PIPs leverages the power of points, smart tools and games to record and reward daily life choices that deliver personal and planetary benefit. PIPs won Best Game prize in NYC BigApps 2014, the nation's leading civic inno

Sustainable Business Fridays: Entrepreneurship and Giving Before Taking Martin Freeman of Bard's MBA in Sustainability spoke with Adam Kearney, Founder and CEO of Propsboard, to discuss his early beginnings as a community organizer. Kearney raised over $96,000 in four months for a family in need, taught himself how to code, and founded Propsboard-- a peer recognition start-up that uses office TVs to amplify company’s superstars. Kearney's company digitized Google’s Peer Recognition tool, giving Propsboard the edge that it needed to compete in today’s marketplace. This interview also dives into Kearney's successes, failures, and timeless lessons on the road to becoming a serial entrepreneur.   Prior to founding Propsboard, Kearney was the CEO of Connectome, now acquired, a music intelligence company that specialized in search, discovery, and recommendations. He sits on the board for The Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, his alma mater. He is also the cofounder of Philly Startup Leaders, a flagship progr

Sustainable Business Fridays: Recycling the Unrecycleable with TerraCycle Alistair Hall from Bard’s MBA in Sustainability spoke with Tom Szaky, Founder and CEO of TerraCycle, to dig into this question, ‘why does garbage really exist?’ What is garbage? It’s a question that Szaky has been working to solve. Szaky and Terracycle start from the premise that everything can be recycled. Glass, metal, plastic are all recycled because there’s a straightforward business case to do so, but how about cigarette butts, paint, diapers, and more? Terracycle’s imaginative approach and drive has taken them to 20 different countries, three seasons of a hit reality TV show, “Human Resources,” and the title of “The Coolest Little Start Up in America” by Inc. Magazine (to name just one of their many accolades). The following Q&A is an edited excerpt from a Sustainable Business Fridays (SBF) podcast. SBF brings together students in Bard’s MBA in Sustainability with leaders in business, sustainability and social entrepreneur