Crossing Borders: Rethinking International Development

Crossing Borders: Rethinking International Development

Mon, Feb 24th @ 9:00 am - 5:00 pm - Law School

Given our rapidly developing world, it is important to bring together students, academics, and practitioners to discuss the implications of international development efforts on effective governance, human rights, and business interests. The symposium will feature four panels: Anti-Corruption and Democratic Governance; Measuring Success: Human Rights, Development Projects, and Stakeholders; International Finance in Emerging Markets; and Investor-State Arbitration. Panelists include professors from across the nation as well as attorneys from the United States Agency for International Development and some of the nation's top international law firms.

Sustainable Investing: Perspectives from UBS Americas and Calvert Investments

The NEW Paradigm in Asset Management:

CR 130 - Wed, Feb 19th @ 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm

Sustainable investing is one of the fastest growing fields today, with $3 trillion in assets already under management. As mainstream investors increasingly seek to invest in such funds, the demand for seasoned practitioners is going to grow. 

Join us for lunch and hear from Bruno Bertocci and Bennett Freeman about how investors are reacting to this potentially radical market change

BRUNO BERTOCCI

Bruno Bertocci is a Managing Director and the lead portfolio manager at UBS Global Asset Management (Americas) Inc. of the top‐performing Global Sustainable Equity strategy, an all‐cap positive screening global equity portfolio. Prior to joining UBS, Bertocci worked at Stein Roe & Farnham, Rockefeller & Co. and T. Rowe Price Associates. He has earned a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

BENNETT FREEMAN

Bennett Freeman is the Senior Vice President for Sustainability Research and Policy at Calvert Investments where he leads the environmental, social and governance analysis, shareholder advocacy and public policy work of the largest family of sustainable and responsible (SRI) mutual funds in the U.S with over $12 billion assets under management. Freeman has served as a presidential appointee in three positions at the U.S. Department of State in the Clinton Administration. He earned an M.A. in Modern History from the University of Oxford and an A.B. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Hosted in partnership with Net Impact and Darden Capital Management

BBSF Conference: Disruption by Design

Disruption by Design

Leading Change through Disruptive Thinking

We have an awesome program planned, including a design-thinking workshop facilitated by Jeanne Liedtka and co-sponsored by the Darden Business Innovation & Design Club! After learning skills that can be used to increase our disruptive presence, Kimberly Campbell (D’ 04), Manager of Innovation & Business Development at Weight Watchers, will lead us through a real-time case on disruption and provide an opportunity to flex our newly minted disruptive muscles. Our conference keynote is Daryn Dodson – Venture Consultant for Calvert Group’s Special Equities Program. Daryn also serves on the board of directors for Ben & Jerry’s and is part of the leadership team of Impact Hub DC, a business incubator and idea lab for change agents seeking to impact the world. 

Attendance is limited to 120 participants and we are expecting to fill up quickly, so make sure you sign up now! Please register here.

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Daryn Dodson

Venture Consultant, Calvert Group; Board of Directors, Ben & Jerry's

Daryn Dodson advises companies, foundations and universities on impact investments. He currently co-leads the Special Equities Program at Calvert Funds. Through this program, Calvert has invested more than $69 million in impact investing funds and companies. Post Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Dodson served as Director of University and Corporate Partnership for the Idea Village, where he created a platform engaging leading private equity firms, business schools, and Fortune 500 companies to invest more than 50,000 hours and $2 million into New Orleans entrepreneurs. Prior to New Orleans, he built a coalition of national banks and faith-based institutions to educate Congress on reforms needed to stabilize the subprime lending market with Self-Help Credit Union. Mr. Dodson currently serves as a Board Director for Ben and Jerry’s, Stanford Business Alumni and Impact Hub DC. He earned a MBA from Stanford and an AB in Public Policy from Duke University.

Jeanne Liedtka

Faculty ; Author, Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers

Jeanne M. Liedtka is a faculty member at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business and former chief learning officer at United Technologies Corporation, where she was responsible for overseeing all activities associated with corporate learning and development for the Fortune 50 corporation, including executive education, career development processes, employer-sponsored education and learning portal and web-based activities. 

At Darden, where she formerly served as associate dean of the MBA program and as executive director of the Batten Institute, Jeanne works with both MBAs and executives in the areas of design thinking, innovation and leading growth. Her passion is exploring how organizations can engage employees at every level in thinking creatively about the design of powerful futures. 

Her most recent books are: The Catalyst; How You Can Lead Extraordinary Growth (winner of the Business Week best innovation books of 2009); Designing for Growth: A design thinking tool kit for managers (winner of the 1800 CEO READ best management book of 2011); and The Physics of Business Growth. She has a new book in 2013, Solving Business Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works as well as a field guide to accompany Designing for Growth, forthcoming in January, 2014.

Kimberly Campbell

Manager of Innovation & Business Development, Weight Watchers

Kimberly Campbell is an innovation strategy leader at Weight Watchers International. Kim joins WW with more than 14 years of experience including venture capital, entrepreneurship, and strategy consulting. At WW, Kim is responsible for growing the core business through new program offerings and business development opportunities. 

After completing her MBA from the Darden Business School, Kim joined the venture capital subsidiary at Johnson & Johnson where she advised internal biotech experts in creating the business case for their new venture ideas. Kim helped J&J scientists secure $14 million in funding to start new J&J ventures. Kim has also worked as a strategy consultant with Accenture, Booz Allen and Peer Insight, leading client engagements for some of the most respected companies in the world including P&G, Group Health Cooperative, Sanofi-Aventis, The Veterans Affairs Hospital, and The Hartford Insurance Company. 

“I have had exciting professional experiences; however, I am most proud of the wellness program that I developed for a local faith-based organization a couple years ago. I created two 3-month long healthy lifestyle challenges for a church community that significantly impacted the lives of approximately 250 members. The impact of the challenges included reports of participants being taken off medication from their doctors, renewed self-image, lifestyle change, 956lbs of weight lost, and transformed mindsets. The programs I implemented not only empowered hundreds of people to embrace a healthier life, they inspired me to pursue a career more in-line with my passion to enable health transformation.” 

Kim is passionate about improving the health and wellness of our nation. She is a certified holistic health coach and a sought after speaker in the areas of Holistic Health, Personal Leadership, and Spirituality in Health & Fitness. Kim completed her undergraduate studies in Management at The American University in Washington, DC where she was a Division I College Basketball Player and scholar athlete. Kim is a member of the 2004 Darden MBA Class.

BiS Conference: Scaling Small Business Impact

Scaling Small Business Impact

CR 50 - This Friday @ 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm

50% of people in the US work for a small business. Like large businesses, small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) need to consider a variety of stakeholders. These players work with customers, financiers, nonprofits and elected officials. The scale of impact of small business can be captured in the two charts below that show that 77% of private sector jobs today are in small businesses, and that 70% of jobs created this decade came from small businesses.

During this session, our panelists will draw upon their mix of experiences and backgrounds to discuss how small businesses engage with their communities as stakeholders, and their role in creating economic development and communal vitality. How do businesses scale their impact and what drives that?

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Ridge Schuyler

Following 10 years on Capitol Hill serving as Chief of Staff to US Congressman Rick Boucher and Policy Advisor to Senator Chuck Robb of Virginia, Ridge Schuyler became the Director of the Nature Conservancy’s Piedmont Program from 2000-2008. In 2008 Congressman Tom Perriello (VA-5) asked Ridge to serve as his “boots on the ground” District Director, a position he held for 2 years. On his own initiative, Ridge published the Orange Dot Report in 2011 which analyzed the economic struggles facing a considerable portion of Charlottesville families and proposed innovative approaches to job creation. In 2012 Ridge, an U.Va. law graduate, ran President Obama’s voter protection efforts in Virginia. 

Following the campaign, Ridge founded the Charlottesville Works Initiative, a non-profit affiliate of the local Chamber of Commerce, which is implementing the ideas from the Orange Dot Report. He currently serves as the Charlottesville Works Initiative’s Director. That effort is working to create jobs by connecting small local businesses through hubs to the anchor institutions that drive our local economy, and by working to connect individuals to those newly created jobs through a peer network.

Casey Gerald

Casey currently serves as the CEO of MBAxAmerica, an organization he co-founded. He has worked as a strategist with startup social ventures like Reboot & The Future Project, and established companies like the Neiman Marcus Group. He began his career in economic policy & innovation at the Center for American Progress. Casey is a second-year MBA at Harvard Business School, and graduated from Yale College.

Dave Fafara

David Fafara is the owner of Shenandoah Joe Coffee Roasters and Espresso Bar as well as Sun Sports, a pool management company, in Charlottesville, Virginia. A former University of Virginia men’s and women’s diving coach, he coached four Atlantic Coast Conference Divers of the Year. Prior to coaching at Virginia, Fafara spent three years as diving coach at West Virginia University. He also taught and coached in the Santa Cruz, California city schools for five years and coached at Cabrillo Junior College from 1982-85. Fafara earned a B.S. in physical education and health from North Park College and a master’s degree in counseling from West Virginia University.

Bidhan "Bobby" Parmar - Moderator
Assistant Professor Bidhan ("Bobby") Parmar teaches First Year Ethics and a Second Year elective on collaboration at the Darden School of Business. Parmar's research interests focus on how managers make decisions and collaborate in uncertain and changing environments to create value for stakeholders. His work helps executive better handle ambiguity in their decision making. His recent research examines the impact of authority on moral decision making in organizations. Parmar’s work has been published in Organization Science and the Journal of Business Ethics.

Parmar is a fellow at the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics and the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics. Prior to teaching at Darden, Parmar taught at the U.Va. McIntire School of Commerce.

Parmar lives in Charlottesville with his wife and two daughters.

How Economic Inequality Harms Societies

Last week, in order to set the tone, we looked at some astounding facts about global inequality. If you've been following the news, you know the firestorm that the latest Oxfam report has caused and how politicians, business leaders and media are each considering responses to it. Notably, the World Economic Forum in Davos has made this topic its main agenda item, so perhaps its time we became better informed. What are the consequences of inequality? Is it always bad? Don't you need inequality to create incentives? To start with, let's look at the case against inequality. 

In 2011, Richard Wilkinson spoke at TEDGlobal 2011 and outlined compelling evidence showing how economic inequality is correlated with almost every meaningful quality of life indicator. Wilkinson uses this to build a case about the incredible and broad-ranging harm that inequality causes in society. Do you agree with him?