Monthly Archives: August 2008

Oct. 10: Leadership and CSR Call with Rand Waddoups

Date: Friday, October 10th
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Led By: Rand Waddoups, Senior Director, Strategy and Sustainability
Register: http://netimpact.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=2147

About Rand:

Rand Waddoups is the senior director of business strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart. In this role, he joins a small team dedicated to building sustainability into every part of Wal-Mart’s global business strategy and culture. They are doing this by focusing on three aspirational goals: 1) to have zero waste, 2) to use 100% renewable energy, and 3) to bring sustainable products to our customers.

Rand was drawn to the subject of sustainability because he is a father of two and a believer in the business opportunity found through the lens of sustainability. He has a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Arkansas and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Brigham Young University. Additionally, he has a background in public service, including two years in the Philippines.

Before working in sustainability, he spent several years as a buyer/category manager where he worked on a broad spectrum of food products; from frozen Brussels sprouts to flaming-hot cheese puffs. As a buyer, Wal-Mart recognized him as a Buyer of the Year and the food manufacturing community voted him one of the nation’s Top 5 Buyers of Frozen and Refrigerated Food.

Oct. 3: More Than Money: Questions Every MBA Needs to Answer

Date: Friday, October 3rd
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Led by: Mark Albion, author of True to Yourself and Making a Life, Making a Living
For Details and to Register: http://tinyurl.com/yze7q2

What are you going to do with your lucky lottery ticket? Each MBA is a privileged member of this planet. What are you going to do with that privilege? What contribution will you make? You want to make a difference, but are held back by debts, expectations about your future, and peer pressure that makes you want to be that 104-year old woman I asked, What’s the best thing about being 104? And responded: “No peer pressure.”

You feel stuck—pushed into career decisions that you might not otherwise make. Pushed to where what you think are your safest career decisions may actually be your riskiest.

We’ll go through four questions and twelve principles I have developed by listening to you at over 25 schools each year the past 20 years. These principles will help you create your personal “destiny” plan, your career map to money and meaning, to profit and purpose.

About Mark:

A six-time social entrepreneur and author, Mark Albion received his 15 minutes of fame as an HBS professor in the 1980s profiled on 60 Minutes as a top young business-school professor in the country, which earned him a hug from Ronald Reagan. He left Harvard in 1988 to develop with SVN colleagues a community for service-minded MBAs, which became Net Impact in 1993. He travelled to over 125 business schools on 5 continents, for which Business Week called him, facetiously he trusts, “the savior of business school souls,” which earned him a hug from Mother Teresa.

The past decade Mark has authored three books and a 3-CD series, Finding Work That Matters. In 2000 he wrote the New York Times Best Seller, Making a Life, Making a Living (www.makingalife.com). In 2006, he wrote SVN’s leadership book, True to Yourself: Leading a Values Based Business. Released October 1, foreword by Net Impact Executive Director Liz Cutler Maw, is More than Money: Questions Every MBA Needs to Answer. With Free Range Studios, he co-created a 3-minute animated movie, “The Good Life,” about a chance meeting between an MBA and a fisherman. As the MBA tries to teach the fisherman about business, the fisherman teaches him about life (www.more-than-money.org). Check out Ruben’s watercolor frames!

Oct. 1: Solving Poverty through Small and Growing Businesses

Date: Wednesday, October 1st
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Led by: Veronica Chau, Dalberg Global Development
For Details and to Register: http://tinyurl.com/yze7q2

Imagine if Steve Jobs or Bill Gates had been born in Ghana instead of the United States. Apple Computer and Microsoft would likely never have existed. Most entrepreneurs in the developing world can’t pursue their ideas because they can’t raise the capital they need, they can’t find qualified people or they lack a reliable way to get products to customers. They run into red tape, corruption, labor disputes, infrastructure in disrepair or lack of reliable energy services. Right now there are millions of individuals getting $50 and $100 microcredit loans each year, but there is an absence of political will, capital and talented people focused on supporting entrepreneurs one level up—those who have business ideas that could employ or serve 500 or 5000 people someday.

The conference call will provide listeners with an overview of the potential that Small and Growing Businesses can play in development and how to get involved in this growing and innovative sector within the international development field. This call will introduce listeners to the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), an emerging network of entrepreneurial leaders who invest in and provide management assistance to ‘Small and Growing Businesses’ (SGBs), as well as the foundations and investors who fund and support these efforts. This group believes that ending poverty starts with the entrepreneur who builds a business that serves customers, creates jobs, and raises incomes, often addressing critical social problems to complement the efforts of government and aid organizations.

About Veronica:

Veronica Chau is a Project Manager with Dalberg Global Development’s Washington DC office. She has been a consultant in both the public and private sectors in areas that include organizational development, and change management and in policy areas that include social enterprise and international trade. She is part of the Dalberg team that has been working to launch the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Dalberg, Veronica worked with the Boston Consulting Group, International Trade Canada and the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development. She has a Masters of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as well as a Bachelors of Arts in Economics from the University of Waterloo (Canada).