Business, Environment and Social Responsibility Forum
Friday, 2 November 2007

Stuart Hart is the Samuel C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise and is the Professor of Management at the The Johnson School of Business at Cornell University. He is one of the world's top authorities on the implications of sustainable development and environmentalism for business strategy. Before coming to the Johnson School, he taught strategic management and founded both the Center for Sustainable Enterprise (CSE) at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, and the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP) at the University of Michigan. He has consulted or served as management educator for many corporations and organizations throughout the world. Hart has published more than 50 papers and authored or edited five books. He wrote the seminal article "Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World," which won the McKinsey Award for Best Article in Harvard Business Review in 1997 and helped launch the movement for corporate sustainability. With C.K. Prahalad, Hart also wrote the pathbreaking 2002 article "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," which provided the first articulation of how business could profitably serve the needs of the four billion poor in the developing world. Hart authored Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World's Most Difficult Problems (Wharton School Publishing, March 2005.) A second edition, Capitalism at the Crossroads: Aligning Business, Earth, and Humanity, with a foreword by Al Gore, was released in August 2007.

Joshua Farley is a professor at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics - home of the original $33 trillion estimate for ecosystem service value. Farley co-authored the recent textbook Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications, which reconceptualizes economics with a few key new axioms: ecosystem and resource limits, distribution issues, and broader definitions of human well-being. He is in the vanguard of a growing movement to get economics right - with sustainability and human well-being as core principles.

Bruce Kahn is an investment management consultant with an expertise in socially responsible investing. He currently advises clients ranging from non-profit organizations to individual investors. Kahn also advises senior Citigroup executives and analysts on socially responsible investing strategies. Prior to joining Smith Barney, Kahn served as an investment analyst with IC Value, Inc., an independent socially responsible investing research firm. He has also advised Fortune 500 companies in five major industries on strategies to improve their financial and environmental performance and reporting. Kahn holds a doctorate in Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received both a J. William Fulbright Fellowship for political ecology and a National Science Foundation Fellowship in ecological economics. He served as a US Peace Corps Volunteer and Provincial Representative for four years in the Republic of Cameroon, West Africa.

Stephen Viederman retired from the presidency of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation in 2000. His writing, speaking and advocacy cover a wide range of issues including: redefining the fiduciary duty of foundations and other institutional investors recognizing the obligations of being a shareowner in today’s world; economic and environmental justice including community-driven community development; describing the limits of corporate responsibility; the role of philanthropy in democracy; science, higher education and public policy; and issues surrounding the conceptualization and practice of “sustainability.” Viederman serves on the Advisory Committees of Innovest Strategic Value Advisors and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, the finance committees of the Christopher Reynolds Foundation and the Needmor Fund, and the Investor Network on Climate Risk. He was the lead filer of a shareowner resolution with ExxonMobil on renewable energy policy and co-founded the Foundation Partnership on Corporate Responsibility. Viederman’s current vocation is Grandparenting which involves his active commitment to insure that his grandchildren, and all children, have options to live a full and satisfying life in an equitable, just, peaceful and environmentally sound world.

Tom Eggert is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Business and the Eastern Wisconsin Environmental Assistance Coordinator at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Eggert's classes cross traditional boundaries and are consistently among the highest rated classes in the Business School. For the last nine years he has taught classes on sustainable development and corporate social responsibility. When he is not teaching at the University, he works with the Department of Natural Resources. He is one of the principal proponents of Green Tier within the state. Green Tier was the first program of its kind in the nation and serves to recognize companies that have demonstrated a commitment to leadership in the environmental area. Eggert has a Law Degree from George Washington University in Washington D.C., a Masters in Public Administration from the LaFollette Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Problems and Policies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to returning to Wisconsin (where he grew up) in 1991, he served as a Special Assistant Attorney General in Montana, and, before that, as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. Eggert has published numerous articles in the areas of environmental law, innovative approaches to protecting the environment, corporate social and environmental responsibility, and recently was the lead author on a chapter in the book titled Teaching Business Sustainability.