Net Impact students installing solar
Net Impact students installing solar
The DUC Net Impact chapter plans on doing this again next year for the 3rd annual solar installation.
Working the phones for KQED pledge drive.
Another team of GreenMBAs worked a KQED public television pledge drive on Thursday, June 10. Volunteers answered phones and took pledges in support of the station’s educational programming.
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Bill McKibben at Dominican. Photo: Stuart Lirette
The voice of doom emanated last week from a tall, soft spoken Vermonter speaking to a packed Earth Day audience at Dominican’s Angelico Hall. From ocean acidification to climate refugees to food crises and severe weather events, Bill McKibben laid out the scenario of devastation that we can expect to see around the world as global warming takes its toll. The statistics and stories were depressing, but McKibben was careful not to end like the “professional bummer-outer” he called himself.
McKibben applauded the GreenMBA and other sustainability efforts at Dominican. He spent the second half of his talk on the founding of 350.org, a global movement to raise awareness of the toll that climate change is taking now and will take in the future, and how unified action at the individual up to the international government levels is needed, and needed now.
The talk promoted Mckibben’s new book Eaarth–the extra A emphasizes that this is a whole new world to which we’ll be adapting. A highlight of the evening were selected photos and stories from last October 24, the day of dubbed by CNN the “most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history” with 5,200 actions in 181 countries.
McKibben described creating a movement from scratch. Among the challenges was picking a name: 350 refers to the 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that scientists have pegged as the limit we need to achieve if we want to preserve the earth’s current environment. The idea of 350 presented challenges: numbers are not the best way to tug on heart strings. But the number also is easily “translatable’ to the greatest number of people, and McKibben wanted to emphasize the global nature of the problem and of the movement. A video produced for 350.org by Free Range Studios has been nominated for a Webby (and Bill urged us to vote for it):
To vote, go to Free Range’s site for instructions.
McKibben meets with GreenMBA students after speaking. Photo: Stuart Lirette
McKibben acknowledged that the global day of action was not enough to affect the outcome of last winter’s climate talks in Copenhagen. Emphasizing that there was no guarantee that activism will work, nevertheless McKibben encouraged all the audience members to become involved with 350.org’s next global event on October 10 (10/10/2010). Rather than a demonstration, October 10 will be a Global Work Day for the environment, with people starting community gardens, installing solar panels, clearing bike paths, and anything else we can come up with between now and October. 350.org hopes that the Global Work Party will send the message to leaders: “We’re working—what about you?” Bill McKibben ended his latest book, as he ended last night’s talk, with words of optimism, “But we still must live in the world we’ve created–lightly, carefully, gracefully.”
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GreenMBA Alumna Phoebe Higgins
In yet another signal that the San Francisco Bay Area is the nexus of triple-bottom-line business education, the GreenMBA was recognized on the front page of the business section of the San Francisco Chronicle today. Reporter Carolyn Said noted:
The Bay Area is home to two pioneering programs that grant green MBAs – the Presidio Graduate School with a campus in San Francisco’s Presidio, and the Green MBA program (www.greenmba.com) at Dominican University in San Rafael.
Alumni Mike Yohay and Phoebe Higgins were featured, along with two Presidio alumni.
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Two evenings of exciting and varied business plans will be presented by GreenMBA’s graduating cohorts on Friday and Saturday, April 23 and April 24, 6:15-9:00pm in Guzman Lecture Hall on the Dominican campus. The GreenMBA Business Plan Presentations capture two years of student learning about sustainability in organizations, about various business disciplines, and about effective presentations. This spring, several of the presentations focus on leisure, with projects on sustainable food, travel, energy, and more. Students, faculty, alumni and friends are invited to attend as graduating GreenMBA students present eight-minute business plans in a variety models and industries. This spring’s presentations are divided into two evenings to accommodate the increased number of graduates.
Refreshments will be served at 6:15pm; presentations begin promptly at 7pm. The general public is invited to RSVP to: owen@greenmba.com.
Also this week: renowned environmental activist and writer Bill McKibben speaks on Thursday, April 22 at 6pm in Angelico Hall on the Dominican campus. See more details here.
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Roberto Piccioni teaching International MBA students in Bangkok. Photo by Angsumalin Burud.
Professors Roberto Piccioni and Ed Quevedo travelled to Thailand this spring as part of an ongoing exchange with Thammasat University. Ed taught Thriving Regenerative Enterprise in March. Roberto just returned from two weeks at Thammasat, where he held seven three-hour lectures with 50 students in Thammasat’s International MBA program; this is the second year of his teaching there.
Roberto reports:
The class –Macroenvironmental Issues in the Global Economy–focused on introducing an approach to characterize and understand issues from a broad‐based review of the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental (PESTLE) perspective.The students studied issues such as shrimp farming, electronic waste collection, rock salt production from aquifer sources, municipal power plant siting, and Thai wastewater management capabilities.
Before teaching the MBA class, my first assignment upon arriving in Bangkok was to participate as a judge in the Southeast Asia Finals of the Global Social Ventures Competition. Ten very strong business plans were presented – each of them fundable and viable business opportunities. Each of the business plans –like the plans presented by graduating Dominican GreenMBAs each semester*–besides being rooted in effective economic performance, provided a key and important contribution to society. The finalists from this competition (including one team from Thammasat) go on the global championships to be held in Berkeley later this month.
All was not ‘calm and collected’ during this time of economic growth in Bangkok. On my first Saturday there, there was a public uprising in the streets, to call for the resignation of the Prime Minister, dissolution of Parliament and General Elections. 65,000 ‘Redshirts’ took to the streets and choked the capital all day. As I was walking around the city that day, the atmosphere was festive – but the armed police and military provided a truer glimpse of the seriousness of the situation. The government had declared a National State of Emergency and was tracking the issue closely in the hopes that the demonstrations would dissolve quietly. But the demonstrations continued and the newspapers and media were focused upon this issue the entire time I was there. There were some explosions in the city center and some injuries. During the last week I was there, there were some signs that the current government and the Redshirt organizers were speaking and negotiating. But the talks broke down when the sides were far apart. And of course, the shopkeepers and tour guides and local business leaders are the ones most impacted as the uncertainty creates a downtick in all their activities. The monarchy has also had a role in current political discussions – so it will be fascinating to watch these issues unfold as the Thai people continue to evaluate their governance structure.
In mid April, Green MBA will host a symposium to address the resource of Water with students from the International MBA program at Thammasat. Water is a key issue in California as in Asia and Water is tremendously important to support life and is central to the success of any community, organization or corporation. From April 11-16, 32 IMBA students will visit Dominican to study the future of water in business and entrepreneurship. Students will hear lectures and take part in experiential field trips with thought leaders and organizations involved in breakthrough work on sustainable water use, supply, planning, and policy.
You can get a full account of Roberto’s two weeks in Thailand by reviewing his trip report.
*GreenMBA business plan presentations take place April 24-25. Go to our Facebook page for details.
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Jared, Becca and Soo presenting at ORC
Three GreenMBA students presented at the March 3-4 conference of the Organization of Resource Councilors (ORC) Western Occupational Health and Safety Group in Sonoma. The 100 attendees were predominantly Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) professionals from large organizations including Chevron, AT&T, Amgen, Intel, Levi Strauss, HP, Safeway, PG&E, and more.
Students Soo Haylett, Becca Guthrie, and Jared Alaqua gave a presentation focused on the connections between EHS and sustainability. They presented examples from their own experiences in their MBA coursework, including projects on:
• streamlining operations and identifying additional opportunities for a poultry farm in Petaluma;
• how a waste audit saved thousands of dollars for a medium-sized business in Novato; and
• a lean and green operations analysis for a recreational business in southern California.
Potential GreenMBA projects and internships were discussed following the presentation. The students noted a recurring theme of problems stemming from sub-grouping, or silos, within an organization, which prevents EHS managers from performing their roles more successfully.
Experiential learning is a key value in the GreenMBA; students conduct projects in businesses across the Bay Area and beyond on such topics as marketing, waste, operations, and finance, all grounded in triple bottom line sustainability and systemic approaches. If your organization has a project that might be appropriate for a team of Green MBAs, please let us know. Email:
• Your name, business/organization and contact info
• Brief description of the project
• Desired scope and date of project completion
to GreenMBA staffperson Owen Lawrence.
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