In this panel discussion, social entrepreneur veteran Laura Scher and more recent entrants, Kirsten Gagnaire and Jenny Shilling Stein, offer advice on what it takes to create a successful for-profit or nonprofit organization with a social purpose. The key components, they agreed, are a strong leader, a clear social mission, consistency, and focus.
A new generation of innovative philanthropists is helping to transform charitable giving. This panel discussion highlights the philosophy of three young, but outstanding, organizations in the strategic philanthropic field. Panelists emphasize the targeted use of wealth to address specific social challenges.
Rick Lowe has given new meaning to the phrase "artist-in-residence." This Heinz Award winner and former Loeb fellow at the Harvard School of Design is the founder of Project Row Houses, an organization that merges art and architecture with social activism. In an audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Lowe describes how this experiment in "social sculpture" is redefining the role of art and artists in society.
As the world awakens to the challenges of global warming and water shortages, corporations slowly recognize the reduction of their environmental footprint as a significant component of corporate social responsibility. This panel discussion explores some of the leading corporate initiatives toward environmental sustainability.
The industrialized world is on a collision course with nature, says environmental sustainability hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. In this audio lecture, he presents the realities of global warming with alarming clarity and conclusiveness and passionately urges a Stanford Business School audience to take action.
How did Patagonia make the transition to using 100% organic cotton in its product line? In this panel discussion from Bridging the Gap, the Stanford 2005 Net Impact Conference organized by the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Randy Harward discusses the challenges of garnering internal support, ensuring adequate supply of raw materials, and keeping prices affordable as Patagonia greens its supply chain.
Ticia Gerber sits at the center of one of the world's important current debates: How do we keep people healthy without having it cost an arm and a leg? At eHealth Initiative and LIGHT, Gerber is working across three continents to bridge the public, private, and social sectors. She talks with Globeshakers host Tim Zak in an audio interview about the role of technology in the future of healthcare and what it means to create a dialogue between the developed and developing world.
Changing the status quo in major organizations may seem overwhelming. Debra Meyerson offers the 2005 Stanford Net Impact conference audience strategies to effect change from within through tempered radicalism. In this audio lecture, she shares findings from her research about incremental and bottom-up change strategies to impact corporate values and advance social justice and social responsibility within organizations.
Dean Kamen has literally changed the world by turning breakthrough ideas into practical products. In this audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Kamen discusses the power of technology to change society. He also talks about what it takes to persevere in the face of public and professional resistance toward inventions and technology that can actually make people's lives better.
Recipient of the 9th Annual Heinz Award for the Human Condition, Paul Farmer is a medical doctor and a professor of anthropology at Harvard's medical school. He shuttles between Harvard and Haiti, where he maintains a practice at Clinique Bon Saveur, a charity hospital he founded. Farmer talks in this audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak about the challenges and rewards of providing healthcare to the poorest of the poor, and the evolving, innovative models for getting drugs to those who need them most.
Over 125 million people rely on coffee for their livelihood. What are Starbucks, the Fair Trade certification, and other nonprofit initiatives doing to help them out of the coffee crisis? This panel discussion describes the mechanics of the global coffee crisis and explores strategies to address sustainability issues on the economic, social, and environmental levels.
David Bornstein is a leading expert on the global rise of "social entrepreneurism." In this audio interview, Globeshakers host Tim Zak asks how we would know a social entrepreneur if we saw one on the street. More important, why should we care? Who invests in social enterprise and what is at stake for our world if we don't?
As a technologist, Ethan Zuckerman has spent much time working with the new generation of African entrepreneurs, programmers, organizers, and young people who are hooking up their continent to the Web. In an audio interview with Globeshakers host Tim Zak, Zuckerman explains how these new netizens are changing the way villagers and urban dwellers learn, organize, network, and face the challenges of poverty, AIDS, political strife, and making a living.
The nonprofit sector delivers social value and the for-profit sector delivers economic value, right? Wrong! Speaking at Bridging the Gap, the 2005 Stanford Net Impact conference, Jed Emerson argues that value is non-divisible, whole, and blended. In this audio lecture, he invites us to think beyond philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, social enterprise, and other limiting mindsets.
Community foundations have become an increasingly common outlet for charitable giving and activities in the United States. In this panel discussion, community foundation leaders discuss innovative models for turning dollars into social change, as well as challenges faced by this important sector of philanthropy.
