Redefining Good Business: Spring 2006




OTHER NOTABLE NEWS



Gap Inc. CSR Scholars Announced for Haas MBA Class of 2008

Three members of the incoming full-time Berkeley MBA class of 2008 have been awarded a fellowship with the Gap Inc. Scholars in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), offered through a partnership between the Center for Responsible Business and the Gap Foundation.

A selection committee composed of Center staff, Haas alumni, and Gap Inc. executives chose the three recipients – Jeffrey Denby, Elizabeth Lombardi, and Aaron Pick – for their demonstrated commitment to the field of corporate social responsibility. Each student will complete six units of CSR study and an independent project for Gap Inc., and receive $5,000 for each year of the two-year scholarship. This is the second class of Gap Inc. Scholars at the Haas School.

"In addition to supporting students, these fellowships reflect Gap's commitment to CSR as a critical component of business education and management training," says Kellie McElhaney, adjunct assistant professor and executive director of the Center for Responsible Business. "Gap continues to take a leadership role in strategic CSR, and we are fortunate to benefit from that. We look forward to welcoming our class of 2008 Gap Scholars to Haas this Fall."

The awardees bring diverse experience to the scholarship:

Jeff DenbyJeffrey Denby is a graduate of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and has focused his career on responsibility in business regardless of the industry. As a design coordinator for Kerr & Company, a product design consulting firm specializing in research-based innovative product development, Jeff has first-hand exposure to the consequential dilemmas of the design world in his work with Asian factories. He believes that “for every product that degrades the environment or jeopardizes human safety, there is an alternative”.
After his time at Haas, Jeff aspires to establish his own sustainable manufacturing company.


Elizabeth LombardiElizabeth Lombardi, a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, has worked in various roles at Clif Bar & Company for the past six years. During her tenure, Elizabeth pioneered the Clif Bar’s sustainability initiative, which helped to reduce the company’s ecological footprint and created change at the product level through the elimination of shrinkwrap and virgin paperboard use. As brand manager for Clif Bar’s LUNA brand, she developed a successful cause-marketing relationship with the Breast Cancer Fund, a Bay Area non-profit. Post MBA, Elizabeth hopes to continue in a brand management role with a social responsible food & beverage or retail company. Ultimately she hopes to lead her own firm, one that couples her passion for the outdoors and environmental stewardship.

Aaron PickAaron Pick is a graduate of Santa Clara University and the founder and director of La Vida Education, Inc., an organization that provides educational resources and extracurricular programs to schools and communities in Nicaragua. A management former consultant, Aaron's career progression points to a focus on leadership opportunities that place a heavy emphasis on life transformation. He founded La Vida Education in 2003 with the goal of integrating his background in business, education, youth development, and team mobilization to help create widespread community transformation. Aaron's long-term goal is to create an accredited sustainable educational community center model that can be replicated throughout Nicaragua.


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Haas MBAs Review McDonald's CSR Efforts for Report


McDonald's CSR FellowsLast Fall, a globally diverse set of second-year Berkeley MBA students conducted a deep stakeholder engagement study on McDonald's beef supply chain, giving the company a fresh perspective and new insights into its business.

As part of its continuous improvement process, McDonald’s goal for this innovative program was to open doors and invite people into its business and to create opportunities to engage and interact with various stakeholders. Through research, stakeholder engagement and intensive field experiences, the six MBA students – known as McDonald's CSR Research Fellows – had the unusual opportunity to get behind the scenes with McDonald’s beef supply chain, from fork to farm.

Portions of the Fellows report, in their own words, will be included in McDonalds’ 2005 Corporate Responsibility Report, which will be released in July. The Fellows also delivered a written and oral analytical report for McDonalds’ senior management.

For more information on McDonald’s and the company's corporate responsibility activities, visit http://www.mcdonalds.com/.


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New Joint BSR Initiative on New Skills for New Challenges: Infusing Environmental, Social & Governance Skills into the MBA Core Curriculum

In collaboration with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and Net Impact, the Center for Responsible Business hosted a March 10 roundtable with faculty and business practitioners that explored how to better integrate ‘business in society’ concepts into core MBA curriculum courses.


The afternoon’s discussion focused on the increasingly complex operating environments that require new skills of today’s managers and explored options for enhancing the MBA curriculum to better prepare MBA graduates for these challenges. Facilitated by BSR Research Manager, Emma Stewart, more than thirty corporate practitioners, Haas faculty members, and current MBA students participated in the event.


The convening helped to lay the groundwork for a joint BSR, Net Impact, and Center initiative that will work with companies, business school faculty and MBA students to infuse environmental, social and governance concepts and tools into the core MBA curriculum. Early in the development stage, this new project will seek to introduce MBA students to the skills and management tools they need to tackle these challenges through the development of a new generation of case studies, more company presence in the classroom, and more experiential learning for students to address these gaps.


For more information on this new initiative, contact Emma Stewart at 415-984-3248 or estewart@bsr.org.


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Mobil Medics for India Wins Annual Global Social Venture Competition


GSVC LogoAn international team bringing mobile and affordable health care to rural India won the $25,000 first prize at the Eighth Annual Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) at Columbia Business School on April 7.

The Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC), which was founded by Berkeley MBA students in 1999, has grown into a global partnership between the Haas School of Business, Columbia Business School, and London Business School. In 2005, the Indian School of Business became the first school in Asia to help run the Global Social Venture Competition.

Mobile Medics is a traveling healthcare service that would provide private sector, high quality, and affordable medical care through mobile clinics to paying villagers in India. The team is comprised of Columbia MBA students and students from the Indian school BITS Pilani.

Second place ($10,000) went to Advanced Transit Enterprises (ATE), a venture presented by a team from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. ATE commercializes heavy truck aerodynamics technology to reduce global oil consumption by over 200 million barrels annually.

The Highland Tea Company, a Columbia MBA team, won third prize ($5,000). The Highland Tea Company seeks to create a Fair Trade for Tea program that will contribute to the economic growth of Kenya.

The Social Impact Assessment Prize ($5,000), awarded to the team that demonstrates the best social impact assessment analysis, was earned by OneWorld Medical Devices. This Sloan MBA team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is introducing an innovative and safe vaccine service that they estimate could save the lives of 4.3 million people each year, primarily in developing countries and during natural disasters.


In addition to this year's winning teams, Haas also had a strong representative contingent in the competition. Two second-year MBAs, Darren Miao and Ben Cain, respented the finalist team, MicroPlace, a venture enabling efficient retail investments in the microfinance industry through a web-based marketplace. Haas Alums, Zach Gentry and Josh Mooney, both 2005 MBAs, were also finalists. Their company, Adura Technologies, manufactures a new wireless lighting management system for commercial buildings that reduces lighting energy use by more than 50 percent. “We enjoyed being part of GSVC and had a great time presenting in New York,” says Mooney.


For the eight Haas student organizers in attendance, the final competition was a time to see their hard work come to fruition. “Seeing the entrants in person gave so much life to this huge project we have been working on all year - it was really energizing. It is clear that the entrepreneurs that compete in GSVC are going to have a huge positive impact on the world,” commented Haas GSVC co-chair, Ellen Martin.


The GSVC was the first competition in the nation to reward business plans with quantifiable social and financial goals. It is supported by The Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Omidyar Network.


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Center Launches Alumni Engagement Program with "The State of CSR" Event


On February 8, the Center for Responsible Business hosted its first Alumni Engagement Event on “The State of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)” at Varnish Art Gallery in San Francisco. More than ninety Haas alumni and current MBAs attended the event.

The Market for Virtue Featured speakers for the evening included Kellie McElhaney, the Center’s executive director, and Haas professor, David Vogel, who commented on his recent book, The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of CSR?

The thought-provoking evening gave Haas alumni and current students interested in CSR the opportunity to connect with each other, to discuss the evolving world of CSR, and to learn more about the Center’s activities and how they can become more involved.


The event was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Net Impact Club and the Haas Alumni Network San Francisco Chapter. The next Center-sponsored alumni event is planned for Fall 2006.


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Winner Selected at Second Annual Undergraduate CSR Case Competition


By successfully balancing innovation and responsibility to solve a real-world case on marketing in the context of an overall corporate social responsibility strategy, a team of Berkeley Undergraduate students took top honors at the second annual Gap Undergraduate CSR Case Competition organized by the Center for Responsible Business on April 12.

The Center and Gap Inc. co-hosted the competition, won by Jessica Chen, Howard Cho, Morgan Kyauk, Michelle Taing, and Jacqueline Yu, who were awarded $1,000 from Gap Inc. They competed against four other finalist teams, selected from the eleven original teams of Berkeley Undergraduate students who entered the competition.

Finalists presented their solutions to the case to a judging panel comprised of Gap Associates Chris Wrede and Monica Oberkofler; Professor Priya Raghubir; Lecturer Lynn Upshaw; Center associate director, Katharine Brewer; and Seth Bindernagel, MBA 2006.


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YEAH Events Showcase Youth Accomplishments and Community Outreach

YEAH LogoMore than thirty Haas MBA students are making a difference in local disadvantaged high schools as mentors for Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH), a program of the Center for Responsible Business. YEAH uses the principles of business, finance, and entrepreneurship to excite, educate, support, and prepare local underserved youth for academic and economic success through its After School Business Clubs for middle school students and Saturday Academy for high school students. This spring, YEAH celebrated the success of these programs with events showcasing the work of participating youth.

At its Second Annual Business Consulting Showcase on April 9, thirty-two tenth-graders from the Saturday Business Academy presented their recommendations on a marketing case that featured the Levi Strauss Signature brand. Haas MBA students have been serving as project managers to the high-school teams throughout the year.

The Youth Venture Capital Competition on April 30 featured the work of thirty-three ninth-graders who dedicated two weeks this past summer and every other Saturday throughout the school year to create business plans that could realistically be executed while the business owner is in high school. Students split into teams of four, with each team coached by two Haas MBA mentors. The competition was judged by venture capitalists, educators, and community leaders, awarding prizes and a savings bond for each participating student.


The After School Business Clubs for middle school students concluded the 2005-06 school year with a showcase held Sunday May 7, highlighting the micro-businesses the clubs and Haas undergraduate mentors developed over the course of the school year. They included custom T-shirts, crafts, bar-b-cues, candy sales, and family movie nights. The four clubs contributed more than $3,000 in profits from these businesses to local non-profit organizations such as the American Red Cross, Lindsay Wildlife Museum, Habitat for Humanity, Oakland Zoo, and Oakland Children’s Hospital.

YEAH is dedicated to strengthening the business skills and future higher education opportunities of youth in forty-four Bay Area secondary schools that are primarily located in the school districts that surround the University of California, Berkeley.


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2006 CSR Conference: "Corporate Responsibility and Global Business: Implications for Corporate and Marketing Strategy"


The London Business School will host the third in the Annual CSR conference series, "Corporate Responsibility and Global Business: Implications for Corporate and Marketing Strategy", July 13-14, 2006. To help cultivate continued research in the CSR field, the Center is part of this annual collaboration with Boston University's School of Management, London Business School, and the Aspen Institute's Business and Society Program.


Corporate social responsibility has never been more prominent on the corporate agenda – indeed it has been suggested that the joint pressures of corporate competitiveness, corporate governance, and corporate citizenship and the linkages between them will play a crucial role in shaping the agenda for business leaders in the coming decade.


Aimed at practitioners, business leaders, policy-makers and academics, the forthcoming conference focuses on the implications of: consumer behaviour, branding & corporate responsibility; marketing communications and corporate responsibility issues; 'mainstreaming’ corporate responsibility; marketing strategies for the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’; metrics & reporting; and corporate responsibility in developing economies.


Conference co-chairs are N. Craig Smith with the London Business School, C.B. Bhattacharya with the School of Management at Boston University, and David Levine with the Haas School of Business.


Click here for registration information. For more information regarding the conference, contact Anne Sandford at the London Business School at asandford@london.edu.


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Successful Spring MBA "Strategic CSR & Projects" Course


Clif Bar TeamMore than 30 Berkeley MBAs have just completed another successful year of CSR experiential consulting projects! Full-time MBA students in Kellie McElhaney’s Strategic CSR class are engaged in eleven hands-on projects with companies ranging from Gap Inc., Clif Bar, Nokia, Ernst & Young, Levi Strauss, Cisco, Aquilian, Brown-Forman, and Pepperidge Farm. These eleven projects were selected from a total of twenty-eight project proposal submissions.


The projects are a core element of the Center’s curriculum, allowing students to bring the theoretical frameworks developed in class to real-world, real-time issues faced by companies. Topics covered this year include supply chain management, brand communication and marketing, sustainability report benchmarking, employee engagement, and partnering with non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

If you would like to learn more about these innovative CSR projects and work with a team of Haas business school students, please contact Katharine Brewer at (510) 642-5581 or kbrewer@haas.berkeley.edu.


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New Fall MBA Course: Governance of Global Production


A new graduate seminar, "Governance of Global Production", taught by UC Berkeley Assistant Professor and Center Faculty Board Member, Dara O'Rourke, will become a new Center MBA course offering this Fall.


The College of Natural Resources (CNR) course, which will also be cross-listed at the Haas School, explores critical policy and theoretical questions regarding the governance of global production. Using cases from the wood products, electronics, garments, shoes, coffee, food, chemicals, and oil industries, the seminar explores the potentials and limitations of new governance strategies, including: corporate voluntary self-regulation, codes of conduct, multi-stakeholder monitoring systems, certification and labeling schemes, fair trade programs, transparency and reporting initiatives, legal strategies, and international accords and agreements.


The addition of this CNR course enhances the breadth of our course offerings at the MBA level. For more information, visit http://nature.berkeley.edu/orourke/courses.html.


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Another Successful Berkeley Net Impact Firm Night



The annual Berkeley Net Impact Firm Night broke records again this year by hosting twenty-five socially responsible companies and nonprofits looking to hire MBAs. More than ninety graduate students took advantage of this unique networking opportunity at the Bancroft Hotel on March 21.

As most MBA students looking for careers and internships in CSR or nonprofit know, there is no traditional recruitment schedule and most opportunities come from individual persistence and a little luck. Firm Night brings companies to campus that are looking for MBAs with nontraditional values and skills.

The event was cosponsored by Gap, Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Whole Foods, and the Center for Responsible Business; in partnership with the Haas Education Club and Haas Energy & Resources Collaborative (HERC).


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Haas Students in Spring CSR Competitions


This Spring, the Center for Responsible Business sponsored a team of six MBA students at the 3rd Annual Daniels Race and Case Competition on February 9-12. The competition was held at Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver and Vail Mountain Resort. The Haas team, “Jerome and the Haastronauts”, was lead by second-year MBAs: Kirsten Tobey, Seth Bindernagel, Eric Potts, Vasey McClory, Jerome del Porto, and Will Coleman. The case focused on the oil industry and required the team to explore the pros and cons of investing in a civil war-torn African nation. "Jerome and the Haastronauts" finished a respectable second in the ski portion of the competition.


The Center also support the team of first-year MBAs - Robert Kaplan, David Good, Julia Gilfillan, Colleen Kearns, and Ayesha Khan - at the Garvin School of International Management's Second Annual Global Citizenship Challenge on March 31. The Global Citizenship Challenge is the largest global case competition in the world focusing on corporate citizenship, sustainability, and international development. The competition brings together 100 teams from more than fiteen countries.

The Center also sponsored a team of four at the 5th Annual Net Impact/Leeds International Case Competition hosted by Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado. The Leeds/Net Impact Case Competition challenges teams to formulate sustainable and profitable solutions to a current company’s business issue. The team consisting of Robert Kaplan and Sami Iwata, both first-year MBAs, and Grethe Peteresen and Darren Miao, both second-year MBAs, identified a successful growth strategy for US carpet manufacturer Tandus that would allow it to remain a leader in sustainability and achieve its financial goals over the next five years.


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Support the Center's Mission: Make a Gift Today!

You can make an individual gift to support the Center's mission to educate all of our stakeholders on the roles and responsibilities of business in society. Visit our Give to Cal website now to lend your support!


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