Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Speakers This year’s conference will feature an inspiring group of thought-leaders sharing their knowledge and expertise. We are continuously adding speakers and are expecting over 75 speakers at this event. Excited about a someone included in our list of speakers? Simply click their photo for more information including his/her bio, and which sessions they are participated in. Cynthia Figge COO and Co-founder CSRHub and EKOS International Cynthia Figge CSRHub and EKOS International COO and Co-founder @CSRHUB
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Bob Willard Author, Speaker, and Founder Sustainability Advantage Bob Willard Sustainability Advantage Author, Speaker, and Founder @bob_willard Bob is a leading expert on quantifying and selling the business value of corporate sustainability strategies. He has given over a thousand presentations to corporate, government, university, and NGO audiences. His six books, two DVDs, business case worksheets, and extensive Master Slide Set provide capacity-building resources for sustainability champions. He previously worked 34 years with IBM Canada, “retiring” in 2000. He serves on the boards of Forum for the Future U.S. and the Future-Fit Foundation, and serves on the B Lab Standards Advisory Council. He was inducted into the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) Hall of Fame in 2011, received a Clean50 award in 2015, and is a three-time winner of a “Best for the World Overall” award for B Corps. He is an ISSP Certified Sustainability Professional and has a PhD in sustainability from the University of Toronto. His mission is to ensure his three children and three grandchildren’s quality of life is at least as good as he has enjoyed. Sessions
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Kate Dillon Levin Vice President, Marketing and Strategy for North America Ecosphere+ Kate Dillon Levin Ecosphere+ Vice President, Marketing and Strategy for North America @ecosphereplus
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Mark McElroy Founder Center for Sustainable Organizations Mark McElroy Center for Sustainable Organizations Founder @mwmce Mark W. McElroy, Ph.D. is an accomplished innovator, consultant, author and educator in the theory and practice of corporate sustainability management. He currently manages a non-profit he founded in 2004 (Center for Sustainable Organizations), and teaches sustainability theory and practice in the MBA in Managing for Sustainability program at Marlboro College. Dr. McElroy is particularly well known for his research in and development of tools, methods and metrics for measuring, managing and reporting the sustainability performance of organizations. In that regard, he is arguably the world’s leading developer, practitioner and advocate of Context-Based Sustainability and Multiple Capital Accounting, a new approach to management in which performance is seen as a function of what an organization’s impacts on vital capitals are. It is unique in the field. Dr. McElroy is also a co-founding principal of Thomas & McElroy LLC, a small consultancy in the U.S and Europe. Along with his partner, Martin Thomas, an ex-Unilever finance executive, he co-developed the MultiCapital Scorecard, the world’s first quantitative implementation of Triple Bottom Line accounting. The MultiCapital Scorecard has since been piloted at several organizations and is an open-source offering. Dr. McElroy is also a veteran of management consulting, having spent much of his career at Price Waterhouse, KPMG Peat Marwick – where as a partner he led a national practice – and IBM Consulting. More recently, Dr. McElroy led Deloitte Consulting’s Center for Sustainability Performance in Boston, MA, a think-tank dedicated to the study of sustainability measurement and reporting that he created. Sessions
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Daniel Aronson Founder Valutus Daniel Aronson Valutus Founder @danielaronson Daniel Aronson is the founder of Valutus (Latin: value, values), which specializes in creating value through sustainability and responsibility. Daniel has been researching, writing, and consulting on the environment, social responsibility, and innovation for over 20 years. During his consulting career, he has led sustainability strategy consulting for Deloitte and IBM and has worked with global leaders in the field—from Nike to Johnson & Johnson (ranked #3 by CR Magazine), Autodesk (named #1 by Climate Counts), Interface (#3 globally according to GlobeScan) and Philips (#1 in the DJSI’s ranking of Industrial Conglomerates). Daniel focuses on innovative solutions to the most strategic, most difficult issues surrounding sustainability/responsibility, such as:  How to truly integrate it into the core of a business  How to measure and value its benefits  How firms and individuals can go beyond raising their own performance and catalyze improvement in others Over his career, Daniel has:  Conducted the first research that examined which sustainable value chain practices actually work  Created tools that, for example, make it possible for cities to set science-based carbon targets in hours instead of months  Quantified for the first time the effect of sustainability leadership on innovation  Created sophisticated, in-depth frameworks for types of sustainability-related customer-product fit (two dozen) and risk (1,000 distinct ones)  Cataloged dozens of different sustainability techniques (and their pros and cons), from common ones (e.g., substitution) to rare (e.g., transport-to-trade). Daniel has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School’s class on strategic corporate citizenship and MIT’s Sustainability Lab, and has also authored and been interviewed for numerous publications (examples include how sustainability drives innovation, what sustainable value chain practices lead to success, and ‘hard wiring’ sustainability into organizations). He serves as Chair of the Ratings & Rankings Thought Leadership Council and the Responsible Supply Chain Thought Leadership Council of the Corporate Responsibility Association and as a member of the Social Responsibility Advisory Board of the American Society for Quality, the US home for ISO 26000. Daniel holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a BA with High Honors from UC Berkeley. He lives in the New York City area.
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Bridget Croke External Affairs Closed Loop Fund Bridget Croke Closed Loop Fund External Affairs @bridgetcroke @loopfund Bridget Croke leads investor partnerships and communications at the Closed Loop Fund. Bridget has spent 15 years designing and building campaigns, often in partnership with brands and companies, to motivate consumers to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. Prior to Closed Loop Fund she held leadership roles with myActions behavior change platform, social movement consultancy and incubator Purpose.com; recycling rewards program Recyclebank.com and the Fair Food Project. When not taking on environmental behavior and systems change, Bridget spends as much time as possible rock and ice climbing, skiing and playing Star Wars with her 5 year old son.
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John Schulz Director, Sustainability Operations AT&T John Schulz AT&T Director, Sustainability Operations @johnfschulz
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Suhas Apte Co-Author The Sustainability Edge: How to Drive Top-Line Growth with Triple-Bottom-Line Thinking Suhas Apte The Sustainability Edge: How to Drive Top-Line Growth with Triple-Bottom-Line Thinking Co-Author @suhas_apte
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Paul Herman CEO & Founder HIP Investor Ratings + Portfolios Paul Herman HIP Investor Ratings + Portfolios CEO & Founder @hipinvestor Paul Herman* invented the HIP (Human Impact + Profit) investment ratings methodology in 2004 . Today, HIP Investor measures the sustainability, future risk and investment potential of 6,000 companies globally, and 26,000 governments and non-profits. HIP’s 32,700 ratings guide investors, foundations, endowments, advisors, fund managers and 401(k) and 403(b) retirement plans towards portfolio choices that are more net positive impact on society — while also linking to lower future risk and higher return potential. HIP has advised companies on how to be more sustainable, including Walmart, NIKE, Schwab and ThermoFisher. Herman’s 2010 book ( The HIP Investor; Make Bigger Profits by Building a Better World; published by John Wiley & Sons) is included in 26 university, MBA and MPA curricula worldwide. Herman’s financial acumen was honed at the Wharton School and McKinsey & Co., and he accelerated social entrepreneurs at Ashoka.org and Omidyar Network. Herman’s insights have been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, CNN, Reuters, Morningstar.com and CNBC. * R. Paul Herman is CEO and a registered representative of HIP Investor Inc., an investment adviser registered in California, Washington, and Illinois. Sessions
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Katie Schmitz Eulitt Strategic Advisor, Stakeholder Outreach SASB Katie Schmitz Eulitt SASB Strategic Advisor, Stakeholder Outreach @kseulitt
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Kevin Moss Global Director of Business Center World Resources Institute Kevin Moss World Resources Institute Global Director of Business Center @KevinIMoss
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Stephanie Bertels Founder and Lead Researcher Embedding Project Stephanie Bertels Embedding Project Founder and Lead Researcher @sbertels Stephanie is the Lead Researcher for the Embedding Project, a public-benefit research project hosted at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. She founded the Embedding Project in 2010 when she developed the embedding framework in a systematic review on Embedding Sustainability into Organizational Culture for the Network for Business Sustainability. Since then, she has worked with global firms to refine the framework into a comparable diagnostics assessment tool and build a set of resources and tools to support its implementation. Stephanie is also an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. She has worked in industry as an environmental engineering consultant. She has a BSc in Geological Environmental Engineering, a MSc in Petroleum (Environmental) Engineering and a PhD in Strategy and Global Management and Sustainable Development. Sessions
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Libby Bernick Global Head of Corporate Business Trucost, part of S&P Dow Jones Indices Libby Bernick Trucost, part of S&P Dow Jones Indices Global Head of Corporate Business @LBernick Libby Bernick is Global Head of Corporate Business for Trucost, a London-based research firm that measures and values the way businesses depend on natural capital to grow revenue. Since 2000, Trucost data and models have been used worldwide by investors and corporations to quantify environmental performance and risk in business terms and direct the flow of capital toward more sustainable business models. Libby has worked in executive positions developing products and programs that enable companies to measure resource and commodity risks in portfolios and supply chains. An author of numerous articles and a frequent speaker at international industry forums on valuing natural capital, Bernick is expert in business strategies that incorporate sustainability-based market opportunities and environmental metrics. Ms. Bernick has degrees in engineering, chemistry and biology and over 25 years of experience working with businesses to integrate environmental performance into operations and decision-making. Sessions
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Geoff Kendall CEO & Co-Founder Future-Fit Foundation Geoff Kendall Future-Fit Foundation CEO & Co-Founder @geoffkendall Geoff is an entrepreneur whose experience spans sustainability consulting, high-tech startups, and academic research. He holds a PhD in artificial intelligence, and has co-founded two software businesses, the second of which was acquired by a global technology company. Geoff switched careers in 2010, joining London-based think-tank SustainAbility. For four years he led the communications team and helped some of the world’s biggest corporations develop more sustainable business models. In so doing he realized that there was no reliable way to measure the gap between where a company is now and where it needs to be to become truly sustainable, and he wanted to fix that. So in early 2014 Geoff co-founded the Future-Fit Foundation: a non-profit whose mission is to equip companies and investors with the means to understand how – and how much – they must change the way they do business in pursuit of a flourishing future. Sessions