Recap of the Net Impact Conference Part II

Here is the 2nd part of the weekend- recapped. There were a few keynote panels that got progressively interesting and entertaining as the weekend went on. The first one was a “fireside chat” with Cornell President David Skorton and Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE. (Because I watch too much TV I could not stop picturing Alec Baldwin up on stage as Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming) He used a lot of business jargon that I am not familiar with. The most interesting part was when he admitted that he was a lifelong Republican. I am pretty sure at our school that you would not admit to such things but I admire his frankness. Even though he is a Republican, President Obama employs his clean energy expertise. Now that’s what I call reaching across the aisle.

The final keynote panel was the most interesting. Joe Sibilia, CEO of Meadowbrook Lane Capital and CSRwire.com moderated it. The panelists were Jeff Furman, Board Member of Ben and Jerry’s, Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO (hardy har) of Honest Tea and Lisa Lorimer, Founder of Vermont Bread Company. The title of the talk was Selling Up or Selling Out: Maintaining a Social Mission While Growing to Scale. The main focus was the social initiatives that each company dedicates themselves to. Did you know that Greyston Bakery in Yonkers made the brownies in all Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? This bakery employs disadvantaged people who have had trouble finding employment in the past. Honest Tea’s distribution division was recently bought by Coca Cola. An audience member posed an excellent question to Mr. Goldman, who provided an excellent answer. She asked him how could he, knowing what he knows about companies like Coca Cola and their involvement in privatization of water, do business with them? He responded by saying that he does not represent Coca Cola and that since they started doing business together nothing about his dedication and efforts to social action has changed. He is still running his business exactly how he wants; Coca Cola is just delivering his product. I have mixed feelings about these small companies doing business with these huge corporate monsters, but I think his answer was honest and fair.

I used to think when it came to environmentalism that peoples’ intentions needed to be pure. Now, I don’t care what your motivations are as long as you are doing the right thing and putting up the money. And don’t forget to hire us scientists!

I will leave you with a few terms that were more than bandied about the entire weekend- base of the pyramid, metrics, leverage, binary, CSR, corporate citizenship. If you want to work in the business world, you might want to learn these terms.