Gerhart Center Previous Webinars

Eva Yazhari

General Partner of Beyond Capital Ventures, Founder of the Conscious Investor, and Author

It’s a new year, and the perfect time to invest in yourself. In this webinar, you will go on a wealth-building journey that reflects your preferences and values – inside and out.

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Simon Zadek

Chair of Finance for Biodiversity, Director of Migrant Nation, and Senior Advisor to the Task Force on Nature Related Financial Disclosure

Our global economy is 100% dependent on nature, yet nature has historically been largely uncounted and so increasingly at risk. Positively, this is now changing, as businesses and investors consider their assets dependency on nature’s bounty, investments flow into nature assets as ways to secure low-cost carbon offsets, and nature markets are emerging as tomorrow's geo-competitive opportunities. The challenge in this pivot is to ensure that the monetization of nature delivers nature positive, equitable outcomes.

Monday, March 28, 2022

Guillermo Jaime

Owner/President Management (OPM) Program at Harvard Business School, the Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness in Latin America Program at Columbia Business School.

When we talk about Scale Up, the first thought that comes to our mind is technology companies. More than 68% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) represents the income Base of the Pyramid.  As social entrepreneurs, we can create companies capable of democratizing goods and services and serving the base of the pyramid, making our companies a Social Scale Up.

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Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Biplab Ketan Paul
Director, Naireeta Services Private Limited
Global Mentor of CTCN (UN)'s Climate Innovation Lab of Asia and Africa 

How climate-vulnerable BOP is enabled to understand their problem in the context of climate shocks, socio-political challenges, and recurring crop failures? Once they understand the integrated issues then they are enabled to find the right solutions ( in the context of scientific, operational, financially viable, and most importantly culturally acceptable). Once the reaching to unreached takes place then how Mahatma Gandhi's principle of Antodaya (ie serving the last person in the queue in the best possible ways) can be inculcated by themselves towards a sustainable solution to the problem.

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Nasser Alkahtani

Executive Director of the Arab Gulf Programme for Development (AGFUND)

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Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Sacoby Wilson
Associate Professor with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Maryland-College Park

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Monday, March 7, 2022

Sanchita Saxena

Executive Director at the Institute for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley

This talk argues that the very nature of global supply chains, which has led to a fragmentation of work, is directly at odds with good labor and good human rights. Private interventions focused on monitoring and compliance have resulted in limited improvements for workers over the years. To understand these limitations, the lecture draws on lessons from one of the worst industrial disasters in history, the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in 2013. The lack of progress in many key areas created a situation that was ripe for suffering under an unanticipated and unprecedented global pandemic. The talk concludes by arguing that changes to the business model itself are necessary to make substantial gains in improving the conditions of workers in global supply chains.

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Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Biljana Dabo

Marketing and Distribution Specialist, 2scale

Milka Shitandi Omukuba

Program Manager, 2scale

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Monday, February 28, 2022

Siddharth Kara

Author, Researcher, Screenwriter, and Activist on Modern Slavery

The webinar explores the phenomena of slavery, forced labor, child labor, and other modes of servile labor exploitation at the bottom of global supply chains. Case studies explored include apparel manufacture in India, seafood in Thailand, agriculture in the United States, and cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The reasons for the persistence of slavery and the pervasiveness of child labor are explored, as well as efforts to address these issues and why they fall short. Finally, we explore what responsibilities businesses have to ensure that such abuses do not exist in their supply chains.

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Christine Diamente
Managing Director, Business Transformation, Paris

The turbulent changes remaking our world demand bold, urgent action. Integrating sustainability into a business’ core strategy is no longer sufficient.  It’s time to focus on resilient business strategies combined with purposeful leadership and a new social contract for the 21^st century. This will lead to nimbler, more innovative companies, achieve long-term value for all stakeholders, and deliver on the promise of a just and sustainable world.

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Monday, February 21, 2022

Thomas Hale

Associate Professor of Global Public Policy
Director of China Engagement Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

The speaker explores how we can manage transnational problems effectively and fairly. He seeks to explain how political institutions evolve or not to face the challenges raised by globalization and interdependence, with a particular emphasis on environmental, economic, and health issues.

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Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Alyssa Gilbert

Director of Policy and Translation at the Grantham Institute

In this talk Alyssa Gilbert explains how she helped build this network from its just an idea to a group of over 80 UK universities delivering a wide range of activities before and during COP26 in the UK, and with plans for continued impact across policy, education, public engagement, research and more.

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Monday, February 14, 2022

Cynthia Rayner
Researcher, Writer, and Lecturer affiliated with the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business

The issues of poverty, inequality, racial justice, and climate change have never been more pressing or paralyzing. Current approaches to social change, which rely on industrial models of production and power, are not helping. In fact, they are designed to entrench the status quo. The Systems Work of Social Change draws on two hundred years of history and a treasure trove of stories of committed social change-makers to uncover principles and practices for social change that radically depart from industrial approaches. 

In this presentation, Cynthia Rayner dives into the principles and practices of 'systems work', approaches that harness connection, context, and power, while ensuring broader agency for people and communities to create social systems that are responsive and representative in a rapidly changing world. 

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Wednesday, February 9, 2022

David Peter Stroh

Author of Systems Thinking for Social Change: A Practical Guide to Solving Complex Problems, Avoiding Unintended Consequences, and Achieving Lasting Results

This presentation explains:

• Why our good intentions to achieve social change often fall short

• Critical differences between conventional and systems thinking

• Basic tools for thinking systemically

• A four-stage process for leading sustainable system-wide change

Examples are drawn from projects related to ending homelessness, reducing starvation, increasing equitable access to quality education and health care, and mitigating climate change.

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Monday, February 7, 2022

Nick Robins

Professor in Practice - Sustainable Finance

To be successful, climate action needs to deliver positive social impacts for workers and communities, particularly in developing countries. This is the agenda of the just transition which was recognised as a critical strategy at the Glasgow COP26. Governments as well as business and trade unions along with civil society have a critical role to play in making the transition fair for all. The financial sector can also play a key role, as investors, commercial banks and development banks. In this session, Professor Nick Robins will focus on why finance is focusing on the just transition, what financial institutions are doing, and what needs to happen on the road to COP27 in late 2022.

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Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Richard Wilkinson

Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London, and Visiting Professor at the University of York.

Richard Wilkinson shows that societies with bigger income differences between rich and poor suffer from higher rates of a wide range of health and social problems, including poorer life expectancy, worse mental health, more violence, higher rates of imprisonment, drug abuse, and lower levels of trust. Societies that tend to do well on one of these measures tend to do well on all of them, and the ones which do badly, tend to do badly on all of them.

 Richard goes to on outline the social and psychological processes which lie behind these patterns. He shows that inequality makes social status and class differentiation more powerful with damaging consequences for social relations, mental health, and the prospects of achieving sustainable economic systems.

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Monday, January 31, 2022

Bill Drayton

Founder and CEO of Ashoka

Monday, December 13, 2021

Lev Plaves

Director of Investments at Kiva (the world’s largest crowdfunding platform for social good)

Lev Plaves speaks about Kiva's work in the Middle East, specifically on how the unique nature of their crowdfunding platform has helped catalyze innovation in partnership with microfinance institutions in the region. He covers Kiva's efforts to provide loans to vulnerable populations across the Middle East, with a focus on Kiva's innovative approach to reaching refugee communities, and highlights how Kiva is now working to scale their efforts through the launch of Kiva Capital.

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Monday, December 6, 2021

Aunnie Patton Power
Founder of Intelligent Impact

Aunnie Patton Power is the founder of Intelligent Impact, an innovative finance advisory firm and a university lecturer on Innovative Finance, Impact Investing, and Technology for Impact. At the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, she holds the title Associate Fellow as well as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship.

Monday, November 29, 2021

Daphne Ngunjiri, CEO, Access Afya

B. P. Agrawal, President, Sustainable Innovations, Inc. 

Hal Glasser, Founder, and President of Health Impact Partnership, Inc. 

Moderator: Dina Omar Ismail, CEO - Phoenix Consulting Group

This webinar explores through the perspectives of the leaders of three organizations the important role social enterprises can play and the challenges they face in improving access to basic healthcare at the base of the income pyramid.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Olivier Kayser

Founding Partner, Hystra Hybrid Strategies Consulting 

The speaker shares his thoughts on how corporations can achieve the best balance between:

1. exploring opportunities yet focusing on the sweet spot where they can best achieve impact in the most distinctive way

2. leading decisively yet learning to collaborate

3. learning and testing yet scaling up 

4. protecting yet mainstreaming their inclusive businesses

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Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Robert G. Eccles
Professor of Management Practice at the Said Business School, University of Oxford

Talking points:

• A Brief History of Sustainability Reporting

• Investors Start Taking Sustainability Seriously

• The Need for Standards and Reporting Requirements

• First Steps Towards Convergence and Harmonization by NGOs

• The Current State of Play by Governments

• Some Musings on the Next Few Years

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

Basil Moftah, General Partner, Global Ventures
Hossam Abou Moussa, Partner, Apis Partners

Moderator:
Margot Brandenburg, Senior Program Officer, Mission Investments, Ford Foundation

The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in impact investing, including in Egypt and across the global south. The Ford Foundation and others are making investments into market-rate funds that do not anticipate giving up financial return in pursuit of positive social impact. What does market-rate impact investing look like? Join us to hear the perspectives of leading impact investors - XYZ - and to learn more about their experiences raising as well as deploying capital in MENA and around the world.  

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Arnold Smit

Associate Professor of Business in Society, and the Program Head of the Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership Development at the University of Stellenbosch Business School

Values are integral to how individuals act and relate, how leaders lead and teams collaborate, how decisions are made and implemented, and how ethical challenges and dilemmas are dealt with. This, however, is easier said than done and we often stumble in our boldest aspirations of integrating values into all aspects of our personal, relational and organizational lives. In this webinar, Smit explores how a “giving voice to values” approach can assist us in living with personal integrity, developing positive relationships, and building ethical organizational cultures. Anyone with an interest in playing a values-driven leadership role in their various circles of influence will benefit from attending the conversation.

Monday, October 25, 2021

Denise Hearn

Author

• How do we create the conditions for human and ecological flourishing?
• What are the structural drivers of inequality?

• What would a world look like, economically, that was designed around the needs and realities of our bodies, embedded in natural systems?

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Monday, October 18, 2021

Tsitsi Masiyiwa, African Philanthropist and Social Entrepreneur

Mosun Layode, Executive Director of Africa Philanthropy Forum (APF)

Jan Schwier, Partner at the Bridgespan Group

Maddie Holland, Manager, The Bridgespan Group

Siya Hayi-Charters, Consultant, The Bridgespan

A discussion with Tsitsi Masiyiwa, regarding the important role and continued future potential of African philanthropy in supporting African NGOs. We share findings from a recent report published by The African Philanthropy Forum and The Bridgespan Group, Disparities in Funding for African NGOs. The article demonstrates that only a modest share of large-gift philanthropy committed to the continent reaches African organizations, and explores the ways in which philanthropists based within and outside of Africa can provide more support to proximate African NGOs.

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Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Richard Dictus

Amfori President

Monday, October 4, 2021

John B. Fullerton

Founder and President of Capital Institute

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Monday, September 27, 2021

Speakers:
Annabel Short, Senior Advisor, Built Environment, Institute for Human Rights and Business
Yahia Shawkat, Co-founder of 10 Tooba, a housing and spatial justice research studio

Moderator: 
Professor May El Ibrashy, founder and chair of Megawra-Built Environment Collective

The webinar elevates the human rights dimensions throughout the built environment lifecycle. From land acquisition, planning, policy, and finance, through design, construction and use to re-development, outcomes are determined by the balance of power and responsibilities for decision-making. The webinar will hone in on participation and non-discrimination, the social roles of architects and urban planners, workers’ rights, and the right to housing, among other aspects.

The first part brings a global overview, while the second part takes a deeper dive into the context in Egypt: highlighting challenges and recommendations for the path forward.

Monday, September 20, 2021

Robert Pollin

Distinguished university professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

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Wednesday, September 15, 2021

William Burckart

President, The Investment Integration Project (TIIP)

It is time for a new way to think about investing, one that can contend with the complex challenges we face in the 21st century. In the new paradigm-shifting book 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change, co-authors William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg show how system-level investors support and enhance the health and stability of the social, financial, and environmental systems on which they depend for long-term returns. They preserve and strengthen these fundamental systems while still generating competitive or otherwise acceptable performance. During this session, Burckart will build off of the book to show investors and their advisors the what, why, and how of system-level investment: what it means to manage system-level risks and rewards, why it is imperative to do so now, and how to integrate this new way of thinking into their current practice.

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Lene Wendland

Chief, Business and Human Rights, Development and Social and Economic Issues Branch, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

The session provides an overview of the background and key concepts of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights and discusses why they matter for business.

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Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Guillaume Lafortune

Director of Sustainable Development Solution Network (SDSN), Paris.

The webinar discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all UN member states in 2015 and how the SDGs can be used to support a sustainable, inclusive, and resilient recovery from the pandemic. The webinar underlines the role of political leadership and public investments to achieve key SDG transformations. It also emphasizes the role of international financing mechanisms and why a strong multilateral system is needed to support the Decade of Action for the SDGs launched by the UN Secretary-General in 2019. The webinar builds on the findings of the 2021 Sustainable Development Report and insights from the Lancet Commission on COVID-19.

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Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Professor James R. Otteson

John T. Ryan Jr. Professor of Business Ethics, Rex and Alice A. Martin Faculty Director, Notre Dame/Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership

Many people believe that business is a morally suspicious activity, a suspicion reflected in the common belief that business people need to “give back” to society. Is the business an activity for which one must atone? Is it the case that if one is successful in business, one must have violated morality somewhere along the way? In other words, are people right to be suspicious of business? This talk presents a conception of business—"honorable business"— that does not require atonement and calls on businesspeople to incorporate this conception of business into their professional identities.  

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Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Dean Hand

Research Director for the Global Impact Investing Network

Addressing the questions that investors need to be effective impact investors, measurement tools and approaches investors are using to understand their impact performance, what systems and approaches are most effective, and what is at the next frontier of impact performance so that investors can make efficient decisions based on their impact results.

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Monday, June 28, 2021

Professor Raymond Saner

University of Basel

Successful operations abroad depend on a company’s commercial prowess, financial resources, and competitive products but also on its ability to interact with non-business counterparts such as Non-Governmental Oragnizations (NGO), academics, tribal leaders, or international organizations. It also depends on its ability to look for commonality of interests, prevention of conflict, and identification of mutually beneficial activities which generate positive reputational capital for the company and positive social capital for non-business stakeholders. Business Diplomacy (BD) draws competencies from traditional diplomacy and international management and first appeared in Management Journals in early 2000.

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Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Surya Deva

Associate Professor at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong

New technologies will have a significant positive as well as negative impact on individuals and their human rights in the coming years.  For example, it is increasingly becoming clear that many new technologies – from artificial intelligence to automation, algorithms, facial recognition, and cryptocurrency – are already having a differentiated and disproportionate impact on women and their human rights.  Many new technologies are being developed in a ‘gender-neutral’ way or are reinforcing and perpetuating existing gender bias against women. However, this need not be the case, as technologies could become part of the solution too. Against this backdrop, this seminar will explore the human rights responsibility of businesses linked to new technologies.  It will highlight steps that all relevant businesses should take, in line with the Gender Framework of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, not only to remove gender bias from new technologies but also harness their potential to achieving substantive gender equality in society.

Monday, June 21, 2021

Wojciech Piotrowicz

Director of HUMLOG Institute and Associate Professor at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

Monday, June 14, 2021

Jacqueline Novogratz

Founder and CEO of Acumen

Monday, June 7, 2021

Margot Brandenburg

Senior Program Officer, Mission Investments, Ford Foundation

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

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Sampriti Ganguli

Chief Executive Officer, Arabella Advisors

Today, over 3,800 companies are certified B Corporations, that meet the highest standard of purpose.  These companies are required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment and develop policies accordingly.  But, it’s not always easy to manage profit and purpose and as with most organizations, navigating trade-offs are challenging.  Learn more about the B Corps movement, where it’s heading, and what it takes to manage a purpose-driven business with Sampriti Ganguli, the Chief Executive Officer of Arabella Advisors, a philanthropy managed services firm.

Monday, May 31, 2021

Kate Raworth

Author of the Internationally Best-selling Book Doughnut Economics
Co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab

The Doughnut is a compass for 21st-century development that meets the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. What would that mean in practice for the diverse situation of the world’s nations? Kate Raworth, author of the internationally best-selling book Doughnut Economics, and co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab will present examples from cities and places worldwide that are putting the Doughnut at the heart of their future vision and turning it into action.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Christopher Marquis

SC Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University

A compelling look at the B Corp movement and why socially and environmentally responsible companies are vital for everyone’s future.

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

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Raj Kumar

President and Editor-in-Chief at Devex

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Peter Knorringa

Professor of Private Sector and Development, The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam

The webinar explains frugal innovations as simple, affordable, robust innovations developed for/under conditions of scarcity, in many cases also with more careful resource use or making use of renewables. While conventional innovations are often over-engineered and thus initially too sophisticated and expensive for middle-class and poorer consumers, frugal innovations are developed specifically for less affluent users. The next step is to discuss three main types of frugal innovators (firms, NGOs, citizens), provide some examples, and then go into how such frugal innovations have become a focus in academic studies trying to make sense of the importance of innovation, outside of the R&D departments of large companies, in the ongoing digital revolution. The final part of the presentation puts forward some ideas on how frugal innovation thinking can dynamize policy agenda’s on for example (agro-)industrialization and local economic development in Africa.

Monday, March 22, 2021

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Samuel Jude Acquaah, Manager for Outreach and Experiential Learning Programs, Ashesi University, Ghana

Karla Diaz, PhD, Service-Learning Coordinator and Faculty at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador

Sonwabo Ngcelwane, Research Coordinator for Engaged Scholarship, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Moderator:

Simon Gray, Program Officer for the Global Liberal Arts Alliance, Great Lakes Colleges Association, United States

Civic engagement has become a priority in higher education as colleges and universities acknowledge their responsibility to prepare students to be actively engaged in the civic life of their communities and to respond to challenges with local impact and global reach – gender, racial, and economic inequality; unequal access to education and health care; sustainability and climate change.

Civic engagement encompasses research as well as course-based and co-curricular experiences in which students work beside and learn from members of local communities. This work results in an equitable exchange of interests, knowledge, and practices that benefits the community and builds a foundation for ongoing engagement in civic processes and social change. 

The panelists discuss the place of civic engagement in the missions of their institutions and how that is realized through their work with the local community.

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Professor Sir Michael G. Marmot

Director of the Institute of Health Equity (UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health)

Taking action to reduce health inequalities is a matter of social justice. In developing strategies for tackling health inequalities we need to confront the social gradient in health, not just the difference between the worst off and everybody else.  There is clear evidence when we look across countries that national policies make a difference and that much can be done in cities, towns, and local areas. But policies and interventions must not be confined to the health care system; they need to address the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.  The evidence shows that economic circumstances are important but are not the only drivers of health inequalities. Tackling the health gap will take action, based on sound evidence, across the whole of society.

Monday, March 15, 2021

Sarita GuptaDirector

Future of Work(ers) Program, Ford Foundation

The speaker highlights the following:

• Introduction of the Future of Workers Program of the Ford Foundation

  • Challenges workers face in the global economy

  • Drivers of the transformation of work and inequality 

  • Impacts of COVID-19

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

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Jonathan Rothwell

Principle Economist, Gallup

By some definitions, the United States is the world’s oldest democracy, and yet it exhibits levels of income inequality that is more often found in dictatorships. In his recent book, A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society, the American scholar Jonathan Rothwell argues that the fundamental cause is the absence of political equality. His talk will begin with an overview of how the U.S. income distribution compares to other countries and explain why the leading explanations behind this are mistaken. He will then discuss the foundations for a fair distribution of income and then show how the United States is failing to live up to those standards in two crucial ways: its unequal provision of public services and unequal access to markets. He will conclude with some policy suggestions that are globally applicable and argue that open markets are compatible with egalitarian societies.

Monday, March 8, 2021

Anne Firth Murray

Consulting Professor at Standford University, and Founding President, The Global Fund for Women

• Why focus on women?
• What is the general situation of international women's health and human rights? (Differences between women in resource-poor countries and women in wealthier countries/regions.)
• Four critical issues:  the demeaning and disempowerment of girls and women; the persistence of poverty; unequal access to education, food, health care, and money; and pervasive violence.
• What is being done?  (A little overview of the increasing concern about women over the years.)
• Hopeful developments/changes

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

James K. Galbraith

Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, The LBJ School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

A presentation of the work of The University of Texas Inequality Project (http://utip.lbj.utexas.edu), with original measures of the movement of pay and income inequality across more than 150 countries over 50 years, and with a demonstration of the role of global finance and associated neoliberal policies in the evolution of economic inequalities.

Monday, March 1, 2021

Isablel Rimancozy, Ed.D

The convener of the PRME Working Group on the Sustainability Mindset 

On December 2, 2020, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addressed the Global Leadership Forum at Columbia University, NY, with the following words: We are fighting Nature, and this is suicide. Human actions are the cause – but are also the solution. This is our time’s moral test.

What is the Sustainability Mindset? Is it about our morality? Our values? Our paradigm? Is it about compassion, or perhaps spirituality? Is it about thinking of ourselves as part of an ecosystem perhaps? Or about action, skills, and technology?

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Coralie Martin

Policy Advisor and Country Lead (Asia) - Responsible Business Conduct chez OECD-OCDE

The experience of Covid-19 has shown that observing Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) standards is not only the right thing to do, it can also help build resilience and enhance commercial value. In the post Covid-19 world, knowing and understanding international expectations when it comes to RBC is likely to become increasingly imperative for businesses, beyond the direct commercial benefits that may derive from following international good practice. This webinar will discuss recent trends that have affected the way businesses and financial institutions integrate Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) considerations in their investment decisions, and present practical tools available to support businesses in the implementation of international RBC standards, including the main OECD instruments on RBC and due diligence.

Monday, February 22, 2021

Madhu Viswanathan

Professor, Department of Marketing, College of Bus. Admin., Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles 

Much of humanity lives at or near subsistence across resource and literacy barriers.  The stream of work on subsistence marketplaces begins at the micro-level of customers, entrepreneurs, and marketplaces, studying these contexts in their own right, and inside-out.   It takes a unique bottom-up approach to the intersection of poverty and marketplaces, creating synergies between research, teaching, and social initiatives (i.e., marketplace literacy education) through symbiotic academic-social enterprise. The Covid world accentuates the importance of this stream, given its focus on those who are unequal but essential. Moreover, this work focuses on contexts with inherent uncertainty, another facet brought out by Covid-19. Using lesson learned, the talk will highlight the importance of a bottom-up approach in a post-Covid world, using the social enterprise of marketplace literacy as an exemplar.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Saroj Kumar Mohanta

Director at ECOCIATE Consultants

Monday, February 15, 2021

Vanina Farber

elea Professor of Social Innovation and Director of elea Center for Social Innovation

We are at an important inflection point in the evolution of the private sector’s role to stimulate social innovation. While the field of social innovation has shown tremendous growth over the past decade, many actors within the spectrum of capital are still sitting on the sidelines – interested in impact, but not yet allocating enough resources or investments. Social innovation creates new solutions (products, services, markets, models, processes) to the benefit of a global society by addressing social and environmental needs more efficiently and effectively than current policies and businesses. It is a process through which methods and tools are improved, developed, and applied based on collaboration between people, organizations, and technology to optimize impact. One of the most interesting aspects of social innovation is the range of options available to actors in the private sector. Innovative financial tools are emerging across the entire capital spectrum. Between traditional investing and traditional philanthropy, there is a myriad of alternative options to mobilize private capital for impact. In this webinar, we discuss different innovative cases of bringing private capital to speed and scale social innovation.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Micheal O’Leary

Managing Director at Engine No. 1

Warren Valdmanis

Partner, Two Sigma Impact at Two Sigma

The speakers focus on impact investing, its promise (and pitfalls), the broader movements towards sustainable and socially responsible business, and the need for investors to lead the charge.

Monday, February 8, 2021

Ted London

Ross School of Business, University of Michingan

Enterprise-based approaches to poverty alleviation offer an exciting avenue for addressing one of society’s most intractable problems. The promise is alluring; creating new business models that reduce the impoverishment faced by the base of the pyramid (BoP) while also generating profits. Yet these new business models have often failed to achieve sustainability at scale. The objective of this session is to present and discuss a new framework for assessing and enhancing business models in BoP markets. This framework results from in-depth research and analysis of a carefully selected set of enterprises with mixed success in attaining scale.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Mauro F. Guillen

Zandman Professor of International Management, The Wharton School

Mauro F. Guillén is the Zandman professor of international management at the Wharton School, with secondary appointments as Professor of Sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. His research deals with globalization, the future of consumer and financial markets, and the diffusion of innovations in the global economy. His research and teaching have earned him awards from the American Sociological Association, the Social Science History Association, the Academy of Management, the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, and the Aspen Institute.

Monday, February 1, 2021

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Katherine Valvoda Smith

Executive Director of the Center for Corporate Citizenship - Carroll School of Management at Boston College

What is corporate citizenship? You may have heard it called a variety of names–corporate social responsibility or CSR, corporate sustainability, corporate responsibility–but all of the terms boil down to the same thing: building a more ethical, resilient and sustainable way of doing business.  In the 1970s and 80s, Corporate Citizenship, CSR, CR, etc. were a kind of shorthand for talking about corporate philanthropy.  As the practice has evolved in the 21st Century, so has the purview of the practice.  Today when we talk about corporate citizenship, we are talking about how companies exercise their rights, responsibilities, obligations, and privileges to express values and create value.

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Louise Haagh

Professor, Department of Politics, University of York

Chair - Basic Income Earth Network

Prof Louise Haagh explores why Universal Basic Income has become so topical in recent years and what - if anything - Covid -19 means for this proposal reform. Universal Basic Income proposes to insure all individuals in a territory on a permanent basis through a small regular income grant, sufficient for subsistence. Prof. Haagh argues it can be seen as an essential part of both a modern infrastructure of liberty and development, a motivation for strategic behavior and entrepreneurialism in a wide sense, as well as an insurance of the essential function of care in society, and a basis of political equality. Before we look at whether and through what steps UBI might become a reality, it is important to assess the idea itself in relation to the structures and institutions we have today, and their function. Could a UBI improve on the existing approaches to poverty and inclusion? Are concerns about dependence and passivity justified? Prof. Haagh argues that it is important to understand the basis of need in society for security as a constant that currently anti-poverty and economic policies fail to address. Ineffectiveness for health and motivation of existing approaches is often an outcome of the fragmented and unstable nature of funding and mechanisms.

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Frank Aswani

CEO, African Venture Philanthropy Alliance (AVPA)

We are entering the last decade of the SDGs and Africa faces a real challenge of meeting the set targets by 2030 - Africa needs between $500b-$1.2 trillion dollars annually in order to meet its SDG financing gaps. Many African countries are already struggling and things have been made worse by the Covid crisis. The webinar will aim to unpack this challenge, understand the root causes, and look at high-level potential solutions and the role that AVPA is trying to play in closing the Social investment Financing challenge on the continent.  

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Bruno Roche

Founder and Leader of the Economics of Mutuality

The Economics of Mutuality is a groundbreaking management innovation based on fifteen years of in-depth academic research and business practice. It empowers companies to adopt a responsible and more complete form of capitalism that is fairer and performs better than the purely financial version operating today.

Three key ideas lie behind the Economics of Mutuality:

1. The primacy of purpose in driving strategy
2. The power of orchestrating ecosystems at business unit level around purpose to mobilize and enhance hitherto untapped resources and value
3. The importance of enhancing management accounting across multiple forms of capital — social, human, natural and shared financial — to drive holistic value creation

Monday, November 9, 2020

Erin Keown Ganju

Managing Director at Echidna Giving Fund

Erin Ganju, shares practical business lessons for scaling a social enterprise. Room to Read has impacted the education of over 15 million children globally and Erin will highlight key lessons from the story of its growth and her book "Scaling Global Change" which is a “how to” guide for social entrepreneurs who have a vision to change the world and are looking for advice on how to build a strong organizational foundation to do it. Erin shares insights on what it took for this internationally renowned education nonprofit to cross the chasm between enthusiastic start-up to mature, worldwide brand recognition, influence, and global impact. She highlights areas around program effectiveness, how to strengthen your operational excellence, and grow your organization’s strategic influence. 

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

John Elkington

Founder & Chief Pollinator Volans Ventures

At a time when "Black Swan" events seem to crowd the horizons, from coronavirus to the climate emergency, taking us exponentially where we don't want to go, John Elkington considers the prospects for "Green Swans". These are solutions and market trajectories that can take us exponentially where we do want to go. The co-founder of four social businesses, author of 20 books and advisor to dozens of the world's best known businesses, John coined such terms as "Triple Bottom Line" and has been called a "godfather of sustainability".

John Elkington, Co-Founder & Chief Pollinator at Volans, is one of the founders of the global sustainability movement, an experienced advisor to business, and a highly regarded keynote speaker and contributor, from conferences to advisory boards. John has addressed over 1,000 conferences around the world. He was a faculty member of the World Economic Forum from 2002-2008. He has served on over 70 boards and advisory boards. John has won numerous awards and is the author or co-author of 19 books. The 20th book was published in April: Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism (Fast Company Press).

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Jason Beckett

Associate Professor, Department of Law, AUC

Join our coming webinar if you are interested to learn more about how the current global governance order precludes development, and traps under-developed states in their colonial roles: deposits of raw natural resources and cheap labour, to be plundered by their old colonial masters and their corporations. In this webinar, Jason Backett will lead a discussion around the way colonialism has been repackaged for the contemporary era through Public International Law (PIL) and the complementary systems through which it operates, especially what he terms as the "Global Legal Order (GLO)'' system. Dr. Backett will further discuss how the interlocking policies and decisions by international organizations like IMF, World Bank, WTO, and the structures of international investment arbitration ensure a steady process of (re)colonization through debt, facilitating national governance by remote control.

Monday, October 26, 2020

Andrew Cassels-Brown

Medical Director, The Fred Hollows Foundation (URL)

Yeneneh Deneke

Medical Adviser – Africa, Middle East & UK, The Fred Hollows Foundation

The pandemic is shaping the future of healthcare sector: The speakers will highlight the lessons learned and how to ensure a sustainability response & enabled actions to eliminate avoidable blindness and visual impairment.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Amit Kapoor

Honorary Chairman at Institute for Competitiveness, India; President of India Council on Competitiveness

In the backdrop of the rising shift towards authoritarian and populist leaders across global democracies, the speaker will discuss the underlying causes behind this trend – from economic discontentment of the voters to rising anti-immigrant sentiments. The talk will discuss on these developments across leading democracies and its impact on capitalism.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Alnoor Ebrahim

Professor of Management, Tufts University

A core strategic challenge facing leaders in the social sector is performance measurement. How can they track and improve performance towards worthy goals such as reducing poverty, improving public health, or advancing human rights? What results can they reasonably measure and legitimately take credit for?  Professor Ebrahim will discuss four different types of strategies of social change from his new book—niche, integrated, emergent, and ecosystem—and the types of performance measurement and accountability systems best suited to each.

Monday, October 12, 2020

Michel Gelobter

Managing Director of Reflective Earth and the President of Cooler, inc.

This webinar introduces the core ideas and methodology of the Lean Startup as it applies to the social sector.  A truly new thing in the world is the speed with which we can now measure the impact of changes we make.  The Lean Startup uses this new reality to accelerate the development of new products and services and has powered the unprecedented growth in the tech industry. The speaker discusses the unique opportunities and challenges involved in using the Lean Startup for social sector innovation.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Andrew Crane

Professor of Business and Society Director, Centre for Business, Organizations and Society School of Management, University of Bath

In the last few years, thousands of companies or their CEOs have taken a public stand on a political issue such as immigration, same sex marriage, or gun control, even where it was unrelated to their core business. Such stands offer possible risks and rewards for companies, depending on how their stakeholders respond. They also raise new questions about the nature of democracy and the political role of companies and their executives. Should companies come out publicly on one side of a political issue, and if so, what should guide their behavior?

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Paul Gorski

Founder, Equity Literacy Institute

The webinar discusses three common approaches for making sense of why people experience poverty: (1) individualistic/deficit approaches, (2) grit approaches, and (3) structural approaches. After discussing why individualistic approaches can’t work, and how the fact that they can’t work is what makes them so popular, the speaker demonstrates how structural approaches can work, using the example of education systems in the United States and elsewhere.

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Andrew Fischer

Associate Professor of Social Policy and Development Studies at the ISS and the Scientific Director of CERES, The Dutch Research School for International Development.

The webinar gives a synopsis of the central arguments of the author’s latest book, Poverty as Ideology, focusing on three themes. The first is that the very conception of poverty is inherently political, involving choices about norms and standards that cannot be determined empirically, even though they must be empirically informed. The second is that the emphasis of absolute measures, whether money-metric or multidimensional, as currently endorsed in the SDGs, carries a policy bias towards targeting and segregationist social provisioning, versus more universalistic or cross-class solidaristic forms of provisioning. Third, these absolute measures also impart a tendency to underestimate the reproduction of poverty over time, given their abstraction of the relativity associated with modern poverty, particularly in relation to modern processes of structural transformation.

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Professor Henry Mintzberg
Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies, Desatels Faculty of Management at McGill University

In this webinar, the speaker highlights the role of schools of business and the healthcare systems during the COVID 19 and beyond.

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Professor Michael Lenox

Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business

Senior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia

Using the lens of the economics of industry evolution, Professor Lenox will examine the potential for the rise of disruptive sustainable technologies to replace current dominant technologies in the transportation, energy, industrials, and agricultural sectors.  Consistent with his 2018 book, “Can Business Save the Earth? Innovating our Way to Sustainability”, he will assume a broad system perspective and discuss potential levers, both public and private, that may accelerate the transition to sustainable technologies.

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Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Paul Maassen

Chief, Country Support (CCS) Open Government Partnership

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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Susana Puerto

Youth employment specialist, ILO

and Jonas Bausch

Youth Employment Officer, ILO

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Phil Buchanan

President of Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP)

Monday, July 13, 2020

Robert Kee

Chairman and founder of Operations Hope Foundation (OHF)

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Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Clare Woodcraft

Executive Director of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at Judge School of Business, Cambridge University

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Thursday, July 2, 2020

Nico Koopman

Vice-Rector, Social Impact, Transformation, and Personal, Stellenbosch  University

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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Jan Schwier and Maddie Holland

The Bridgespan Group

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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Daria Ofman

Global Consultant with Better Future

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Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Geoffrey Mazullo

Principal, Emerging Markets ESG

The webinar discussed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing – a fast-growing segment of the financial sector around the world.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Colin Mayer

Professor of Management Studies, Oxford University

The session touched on the impact of COVID-19 on business and how businesses will, and should, respond to the crisis in the short, medium, and long term.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Jeffrey Sachs

Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

The session highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the SDGs.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Ayman El Tarabishy

Deputy Chair and Teaching Professor, George Washington University

The session highlights the forward momentum and post COVID-19. Sustainability is trending. The Gulf region welcomes the world, the middle-class in Africa is on the rise, and countries are re-examining their social contracts with their citizens. But is it enough? MSMEs do have power and can, to some extent, take control of the destiny of their businesses. They have actions and options available that they can take to minimize the disruption to their businesses.

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Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Elie Abouaoun

Director – MENA Program, United States Institute of Peace

The session dived deep into the unfolding and anticipated trends in fragility in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is shaping and reshaping conflict in the MENA region.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Victor Van Vuuren

Director, Enterprises, ILO Geneva

The webinar highlighted the increased importance of the social and solidarity economy in the aftermath of COVID-19.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Hilary Pennigton

Executive Vice President of the Ford foundation

A webinar on new trends in private giving for the public good and the need to transition from charity to justice. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored long-standing systemic failures that deepened inequality around the world. Responses to the pandemic make clear that solutions to global problems will require partnerships between governments, civil societies, and private wealth. Increasingly, philanthropy institutions around the world are transforming their granting practices to address systemic problems and support systemic solutions to combat inequality. The event will feature Hilary Pennigton, Executive Vice President of the Ford Foundation.

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Stuart L. Hart

Founder of the BoP Network

The webinar, titled: 'A New Age of Sustainable Capitalism?' will be delivered by Stuart L. Hart, Grossman Distinguished Fellow, University of Vermont, and founder of the BoP Network. Hart will discuss the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the role of business in the world and whether this marks the end of market fundamentalism. In addition, he will address questions such as whether the gap between rich and poor continue to widen, and what the implications for the base of the pyramid and sustainable development are.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Prof. Anil K. Gupta

Founder of Honey Bee Network

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Jenny Hodgson

Executive Director, Global Fund for Community Foundations

In light of COVID-19, alternative models based on collective action are both possible and necessary, particularly in the face of global challenges such as climate change and inequality. Delivered by Jenny Hodgson, executive director of the Global Fund for Community Foundations, the webinar discussed how we can accelerate efforts to shift, share, and build collective power – both locally and as a global movement. 

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Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Dorothée Baumann-Pauly

Director, Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights, University of Geneva

The session is delivered by Dorothée Baumann-Pauly, director of Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights at Geneva School of Economics, and management and research director at NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, and discusses the implications of COVID-19 on CSR departments in many companies, along with how businesses can align their business models to integrate respect for human rights in the time of the pandemic, and more.

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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Abla Abdel Latif

Executive Director, The Egyptian Center for Economic Studies

Led by Abla Abdel Latif, executive director, the Egyptian Center of Economic Studies, the webinar discusses the reality of the informal sector, tackling questions such as whether it's a burden on the economy or a jewel in the rough, what COVID-19 has revealed about it, and losses and opportunities emerging out of the crisis in relation to informality.

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Alan Fowler

Honorary Chair of African Philanthropy, Wits Business School

Led by Alan Fowler, Honorary Professor Chair in African Philanthropy at Wits Business School, the session discusses why spending more time looking around than looking up is vital, and why community bonds and fairness matter for the creation of resilient societies.

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Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Hashem Dandarawy

President, Dandara Cultural Center

Tuesday, April 21, 2020