Jeff Allar Discusses How to Sustain Our Values In Business

Friday February 10, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

There will be a networking reception from 5:00 to 5:30, with the talk beginning at 5:30.

This event is hosted by the Marlboro Net Impact chapter.

A $5 donation is suggested to help support future Net Impact events but is not required for attendance.

Jeff Allar, Vice President of Human Resources at Stonyfield Farm, will offer insight on Stonyfield’s experience, including the role of a CEO, retaining long-term independence, and the moral obligation to disclose.

In addition to its natural and organic dairy products, Stonyfield Farm is known for doing well by doing good.  Jeff Allar, Vice President of Human Resources, leads the team with a track record of being good to its workforce by providing a healthful, productive work place offering opportunities to grow.  This commitment coupled with the company’s mission has has led to Stonyfield being recognized as one of the Best Companies to Work for in New Hampshire for the last two years in a row. Jeff and his team have introduced enhanced wellness programs and a smoke-free workplace. Jeff also serves as the executive champion for Stonyfield’s Walking Our Talk (SWOT) Team.

Jeff joined Stonyfield Farm in 2008 after 13 years in many roles, most recently as the head of Supply Chain Human Resources for Good Humor – Breyers / Unilever Ice Cream in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Jeff’s specialties are workforce learning and development, and organizational performance. He has served as a Senior Examiner and Judge for Wisconsin’s Forward Award and as an examiner for the nationally recognized Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.  Jeff is currently the Vice President of the Board of Directors for Bridges, the domestic violence and sexual assault organization serving the Nashua community, and he serves on the Board of Directors for New Hampshire Businesses for Social Responsibility.

 

 

Program Development and Business Planning for Educational Camp

Eunju Halvorsen, MBA candidate, summarizes her capstone project: Dharmalife English Camp Program.

 My capstone project is to develop “The Dharma Life Camp (DLC)” program as a business. DLC is an educational camp program for children in the age of 13 to 15 designed to support the growth and personal development of teens by nurturing their individual personalities, strengths and interests. DLC integrates individual development coaching with the English skills building curriculum of a current English education camp that has been marketed in South Korea for last ten years. This 4-week-camp program would consist of English language class, cultural exposure, wilderness experience, mindfulness practices such as yoga and meditation, and individual coaching.

This capstone project will be focused on the feasibility research for the DLC as a business model. The feasibility research would include the research on the potential market, which is English camp market in South Korea, and on the customers’ needs & behavior. A business plan will be the final product of this project.

Stress and Change Management: a Feasibility Study

Following is the summary for the capstone project by Toivo Halvorsen, MBA candidate. 

 My Capstone project is mainly a feasibility study of a new venture called Life Design. This is a company merging out of the existing company Pepp, a Norwegian consultancy working with stress & change management that has been operational for 15 years. Pepp wants to separate the corporate assignments from the private market clients. Therefore Life Design is currently building a new type of sales organization based on direct sales of self help products that Life Design itself has produced. Will anyone buy the products? Will the new venture be profitable? These are the main questions I will attempt to answer.

   If demand for the self-help products pick up, Life Design might need to further develop their business model in order to really succeed and satisfy their customers. Because only if they manage to really help people, can this new venture become a sustainable business concept!

Jeremy Grantham Discusses Investing, Resource Limitations & Global Warming

Friday December 2, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.

Jeremy Grantham, founder of GMO, a global investment management firm responsible for over Jeremy Grantham, GMO founder$93 billion in client assets, will speak at Marlboro College Graduate School on  “Irrational Avoidance of the Unpleasant: Perspectives on Investing, Resource Limitations & Global Warming”.

A recent New York Times profile of Grantham says his quarterly letters “command a cult following of readers within and beyond the financial industry, (because they) inspire even the most short-term profit-minded investors to do a little fate-of-the-world-scale thinking.”

Grantham is an impassioned environmentalist who channels his wealth to The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, which tries to raise public awareness of environmental issues and to promote collaboration within the environmental movement. He also supports the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting, which awards the $75,000 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Environmental Journalism.

Grantham has been featured in Forbes, Barron’s and Business Week and is routinely quoted by the financial press. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Sheffield (U.K.) and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Reading Grantham’s latest quarterly letter, you get a glimpse of his ability to intertwine compelling storytelling with well documented research. He includes a tale of “The Devil and the Farmer” which highlights his interest in soil erosion and sustainable agriculture. Jeremy Grantham’s son, Rupert, who is a MBA candidate in the Marlboro MBA in Managing for Sustainability, is completing his Capstone on “Promoting Sustainable Agriculture“, a project sponsored by the Grantham Foundation.

 

OccupyMBA

Hi Marlboro MBA Community and Friends

Just embarked on a painful, risky, but – I hope – ultimately useful reflection on the state of the conventional MBA paradigm, and how it works. This is naturally undertaken with our own MBA and its ilk juxtaposed. Please help me stay objective! It’s easy to throw stones and to imagine that one throws them from safe ground… How safe is our ground? It feels different, but?

Here’s how today’s OccupyMBA post starts:

“Narcissism, fragmentation, loneliness, and death”
Posted on November 26, 2011
The culture of the Master of Business Administration is the culture of narcissism, fragmentation, loneliness, and death… unless it’s tethered by an active, caring commitment to community, to stakeholders, and to a reverence for the great natural and human systems in which we all live. To say anything less harsh is to succumb to moral passivity, to write yourself a ticket to stand by and not do enough, whatever good you’re doing….”

Visit http://OccupyMBA.com and http://www.occupymba.wordpress.com

Local Biochar Production Model Business Plan

Kathleen Draper, MBA candidate, summarizes her capstone project: Local Biochar Production Model Business Plan.

Biochar is a carbon negative technology that is on the cusp of emerging from research labs to the marketplace.  Currently there are very few business models in the US or elsewhere for biochar production.  My capstone is focused on creating a small scale replicable business model which keeps production and markets local to maximize the carbon negative aspects of the technology.  This will be piloted this in the Finger Lakes region in Western New York upon completion of my capstone.  Initially biochar and biochar blends will be sold to organic gardeners, greenhouses, farmers, turf management and environmental remediation consultants.  In future services to manage organic waste on site will be offered to farmers to minimize transportation, minimize costs and provide on-site education opportunities for farmers in terms of why and how to use biochar while managing waste.

Water Scarcity Framework

Robert Hart, MBA candidate, is developing a Water Scarcity Framework for his capstone project.

The water scarcity framework is for the capstone sponsor, UTC subsidiary Hamilton Sundstrand.  Rob is analyzing the company’s 2015 water strategy, and examining its impact on two facilities in water scarce regions (Sunderland, United Kingdom, and Chennai, India); he will build that analysis into a framework with specific recommendations for water strategy, post 2015.

Promoting Sustainable Agriculture

Rupert Grantham, MBA candidate, summarizes his Capstone project:

Is organic, no-till agriculture economically competitive with conventional agriculture? If so, why isn’t it being adopted at a faster pace? What can the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment do to promote a transition to sustainable agricultural practices?

Environmental Economist Calls for Urgent Action on Climate Change

Guest blog by Marlboro MBA student Kathy Hipple.

Noted environmental economist Robert Repetto spoke about the increasing risks of climate change at the Marlboro Grad School last Friday. Global emissions of greenhouse gasses increased 6% in 2010, the fastest level in decades. Such an increase indicates that atmospheric concentrations are accelerating, and many believe they are contributing to extreme weather conditions, such as Hurricane Katrina and the recent Tropical Storm Irene.

The only course of action, Repetto argued, is to reduce dependence on fossil fuels by 80-90% over the next 50 years.

Some critics argue that since America’s industrial structure depends on fossil fuels, a move away from this energy system would seriously undermine the economy. Repetto, a Harvard-educated economist, disagrees. He cited several historic examples of significant energy transitions that have taken place in the U.S. Whale oil was replaced by kerosene and gas lanterns in the mid-19th century.  New England’s industrial development was led by mills, built on waterpower. By late 19th century, however, industries had converted to steam power. In 1882, Thomas Edison kicked off the electric age, and by the 1930’s rural electrification had extended electricity throughout the nation. Before the automobile, New York City had over a million horses. Huge new industries were formed by each of these energy transitions.

Repetto, author of America’s Climate Problem: The Way Forward and an advisor to the Marlboro MBA, urged citizens to lobby their political representatives because he believes that individual efforts are insufficient to avert an impending crisis.

According to Repetto, the free market, through a system of cap and trade on carbon, holds the greatest promise of solving the climate change problem. Cap and trade is not new. It has been used successfully in the past, notably under the first President Bush, for the reduction of acid rain-producing emissions. Based on economic analysis, a cap and trade on carbon emissions would allow businesses to solve the problems more effectively than either a carbon tax or regulations.

A carbon tax would also reduce carbon emissions. Such a carbon tax, however, would be difficult to calculate based on a meta-analysis that Repetto conducted. This analysis suggested a five-fold variance in the amount that would be necessary to reduce emissions.  Once a tax is set, raising the amount is difficult.

Regulating carbon emissions will be less effective than either cap and trade or a carbon tax in reducing carbon emissions, argued Repetto. Regulation would take years before it went into effect, including challenges through the court system. The cost of enforcing such regulation is not trivial.

Despite the urgency of climate change, Repetto predicts that U.S. policy on greenhouse gas emissions will not change before the elections. He noted that the U.S. is responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions already in the atmosphere, and suggested that other countries are currently doing far more than the United States to combat climate change.

The Chinese, for example, have shut down hundreds of inefficient power plants, and have added national feed-in tariffs for renewable energy. Their automotive fuel efficiency standards are stricter than America’s. Australia has passed a carbon tax. Europe said they will commit to an additional 20% reduction in carbon emissions beyond an earlier target, and will increase to 30% if the U.S. agrees to a similar reduction.

Repetto suggested that reduction of dependence on fossil fuels by 80-90% over the next fifty years is not only possible, based on human history, but will open up huge business and investment opportunities. A new energy transition is already underway, and must be supported and accelerated. The first steps are easy, and include raising energy efficiency.

“We’ve done it before, and we are doing it again,” notes Repetto.  Last year, for example, solar power generation increased 44%. Wind power generation increased 35%. Over the past decade, revenues in solar and wind energy increased from $6.5 billion to $30 billion.

Increasing the Effectiveness of Sustainability Professionals

Larry Cornick, MBA candidate, works to help increase the effectiveness of sustainability professionals through his capstone project for River Story Leadership Institute For Personal and Global Transformation. Following is his brief summary of the project. 

I am working with  author and sustainability professional Sara Schley. For my Capstone, I am creating a business plan, assisting with marketing plan and aiding in the program design of her new venture, the “River Story Leadership Institute.” River Story is a 13 month-long program based in Wendell, Ma., created by Sara and author Linda Booth Sweeney, which will launch in August 2012 . The program is designed to increase the effectiveness of sustainability professionals committed to developing their leadership skills in order to create transformational changes, both on a personal and global level.