ECO-LUXURY, Urban Ecology and Sustainability - Part III of our Eco-Luxury Series

Date:
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Time:
6:30-8.30p.m.

Location:
Harvard Club
35 W 44th St
(between 5th and 6th Avenues)
3rd Floor, Biddle Room

“’It has been said that a pretty face is a passport,’ the British columnist Julie Burchill once wrote.  ‘But it’s not.  It’s a visa and it runs out fast.’” This applies to all industries that are “currently being seduced by the trendiest of buzzwords: sustainability.”  (“Cloaked in Green: Luxury fashion companies tout the eco-friendly look - but their business model is still unsustainable,” Dana Thomas, p. 29, Condé Nast Portfolio, 8 sep 08).

Join us on Wednesday September 24th for the third event in our Eco-Luxury series.  Our panelists Pamela Peeters, Judy Drucker, Gregory Unruh, and Carla Sastre will discuss a wide array of green issues that relate to your business including ways to enhance your green marketing, sustainable business development, eco-branding, socially responsible entrepreneurship, and "eco-seduction" with co-moderators Greg Furman and Paul Michelman.

The panelists will focus on Harvard Business Review’s Green Report, “HBR Green: Six Critical Conversations about Business and the Environment.” Gregory Unruh summed up the twelve-week forum and was also a featured contributor.  The report consists of conversations with distinguished business representatives on environmental issues in the corporate arena. 

These topics include:

Marketing: Don’t Bother with the “Green” Consumer
Companies need to meet their customers' needs first and foremost. Green is not simply a marketing ploy and it does not trump aesthetics, function, or price.

Supply Chain: You Are Only As Green As Your Supply Chain
Convincing suppliers to innovate, find new solutions, and go with your strategy requires engagement, incentives, and market power…No company is an island and you can’t go green alone.

Operations: Winners and Losers in a Carbon-Constrained World
In a carbon-constrained world, innovation, stakeholder engagement, and political influence become ascendant skills. Companies should use political influence in a responsible way. After all, it’s the future of the planet we’re talking about.

Leadership: Staying Green in a Tough Economic Climate
Consumers’ already marginal willingness to pay for green will wilt with their shrinking wallets. It's feared that businesses that ditch the green when times get tough will likely regret it in the future.

Corporate Governance: Green Stakeholders: Pesky Activists or Productive Allies?
NGOs increasingly want partners that are willing to work for green transformations of entire industries. Achieving these ambitious goals appears to lie in a ménage-à-trois world of business-NGO-government collaboration…Ignoring outside constituents is dangerous and working with them is a new and essential core competence.

Ethics: Should Managers Have a Green Hippocratic Oath?
Should managers take an oath similar to the ones doctors take, to do no harm to the environment? The environment has taken on new importance in the realm of business thinking…the era of the unquestioned dominance of shareholder value as the driver of management thought and action is over.

This is the third in our exciting Eco-Luxury series, definitely not to be missed!

About Our Co-Moderator:

Paul Michelman

As director of content for Harvard Business Digital, Paul Michelman serves as lead editor of the Harvard Business Blog Network, one of the premier online destinations for new management ideas worldwide. The HB Blog network includes the popular Leading Green feature, which since its launch in Spring 2008, has quickly become a recognized hub of breakthrough ideas about managing for sustainability. Michelman is also the creator, executive producer, and host of the HarvardBusiness IdeaCast, one of the world’s leading business podcasts with some 500,000 monthly downloads. A widely read columnist and blogger himself, Michelman is a recognized thought leader in how technology is affecting the future of content consumption. He was formerly director of programming and production for Captivate Network.

About our Panelists:

Gregory Unruh

 
Greg Unruh, Director, The Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management, is interested in the business climate. Literally. From a meteorological perspective. He is guiding Thunderbird students as they develop and administer a global climate survey among worldwide corporations, assessing their impact on global warming.

The goal of the exercise, Unruh explains, is to create a comprehensive strategy that Thunderbird can use to tackle its own climate impacts. The project allows students to consult with companies, helping them understand the climate impacts of their organizations and develop strategies for reducing those impacts.

After earning an undergraduate degree in earth and environmental science, Unruh completed environmental consulting projects with companies ranging from Shell, Chevron and Texaco to Apple, Intel and Sun Microsystems, helping them manage hazardous wastes generated by their operations.

Unruh was soon frustrated working with companies at the back-end, cleaning things up. “I realized the biggest impact would be on the front-end, helping companies develop innovations that would eliminate toxic wastes in the first place,” he explains. “I wanted to bolster government policies and smart, strategic business decisions,” he explains of his own decision to continue his education, ultimately earning a Ph.D. in international technology and environmental management.

Unruh’s success is evident through his professional accomplishments. Not only did he help establish a master’s program for Columbia University at the Biosphere 2 Center - an Arizona-based, closed ecological system - but he also founded The Centre for Eco-Intelligent Management in Europe with world-renowned designer William McDonough. The Centre researched a variety of companies on the cutting edge of sustainability innovation, including Herman Miller, Shaw Industries, S.C. Johnson and Camper.

Carla Sastre

 
Carla Sastre was born and raised in Barcelona, Spain. She obtained her Undergraduate & MBA at ESADE in 2002. After four years of working as Product Manager in Myrurgia S.A. (Puig Beauty & Fashion Group) in the fragrances division, in 2006 she completed her dissertation with honors "The Impact of Fair Trade on marginalized communities." This was an empirical research study to asses the impact of Fair Trade practices on producers which was carried out by means of secondary and primary data collected in a two-month field work experience in Creative Handicrafts, a Fair Trade Organization committed to help women from the Bombay slums.

After this first direct contact with a developing country, she decided to come back to the lucrative industry but this time with a goal in mind: to be able to make an impact on developing countries at the same time.  For example, Carla believed that Fair Trade could not be the only way out for marginalized producers to earn a living. She thought it was time for lucrative industries to start thinking about the idea of involving developing countries in their activities, and she started focusing on Corporate Social Responsibility.

This is why she started working in Barcelona as Purchasing Manager in Nanimarquina S.L, where she was in charge of the industrialization and purchase of contemporary design carpets in India. Besides the new collection of carpets, she ended up successfully industrializing a fabric and latex container collection by the name Potten with Bhopal Rehabilitation, a Fair Trade Organization with the aim of assisting and rehabilitating the victims of the Bhopal chemical tragedy in 1984.

In January 2008, Carla moved to New York City to work in Ami Brands LLC as Volvic Marketing Manager, where since then she has been working very closely with UNICEF (U.S.). Last April 1st, they launched the “Drink 1 Give 10 campaign” resulting from the Volvic and UNICEF two-year partnership in which for every liter of Volvic sold, Volvic is giving a donation to UNICEF to help to provide clean drinking water to children in Ethiopia by constructing wells.

Judith Drucker

 
Judith L. Drucker is founder of PRessentials, a pubic relations and communication company based in New Jersey. In this capacity she services business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies with the goal of reaching their target audiences through the media, Internet, promotions, events and other mar/com tactics. Technology companies have dominated PRessentials client roster for many years. Her bottom up experience affords her clients a full range of professional expertise including in-depth strategic communication planning, market research as well as writing, media relations, and creative direction.

Currently, Ms. Drucker is engaged in advising companies on devising and implementing best practices guidelines for corporate sustainability programs and corporate social responsibility initiatives.  She is just back from an International Communications Conference where the latest research from around the world was presented with a great emphasis on these topics. Ms. Drucker will share these insights and discuss how they relate to businesses in a socio-political framework.

Ms. Drucker is also co-founder of Sailsman Graphics, currently doing business as highresolution, a Manhattan based printing and design company that is celebrating its 25th Anniversary. Ms. Drucker provided creative consultation and print production services to advertising agencies, design firms and corporate accounts. Highresolution specializes in the marketing needs of luxury brands offering a wide array of products and services including real estate and jewelry.

With a deep appreciation for the arts and a desire to share this passion with others, Ms. Drucker is actively involved in promoting the arts through community affairs projects and strategic programming in her hometown of Manalapan, New Jersey. She sits on the board of Manalapan Arts Council, a Mayoral appointed position.

Ms. Drucker has written and spoken about corporate crisis management issues and avoiding/managing negative publicity as featured by the New Jersey Communication Association.  This in-depth research offers her clients a theoretical framework within which she can guide them prior to and in the midst of an internal or external communication crisis.

Ms. Drucker holds a B.A. in journalism from the SUNY at Buffalo and is currently completing her Masters thesis in Corporate and Public Communication at Monmouth University.

Pamela Peeters

 
Pamela Peeters grew up in the countryside of Belgium. She launched her first environmental magazine – “grab the green” - at the age of 12. Pamela obtained a first Master’s degree in Economics in 1995 and for her thesis, she researched how nations can change consumption and production patterns towards sustainable levels. She obtained another Master’s in Environmental Management in 1997 and wrote a second thesis on the creation of indicators that could be used by urban policy makers in their development plans towards sustainable city transitions. She obtained a distinction for both of her contributions. Thanks to the successful completion of an additional course in Psychology, she became an Eco-Consultant from the French University in Brussels and continued researching sustainable business applications in international emerging markets during various assignments.

In 1997 she developed a reorganization program for a management federation of the Belgian government and created strategies that would open up their business opportunities in the sustainable development market. She prepared the state visit of the Prince of Belgium to India in 1998, while identifying bilateral trade opportunities in the environmental technology sector. Later that year, she joined a Brussels PR company where she managed various international accounts - such as the green SMART city car - for which she did their market introduction. Driven by the desire to solely dedicate her time to mainstream sustainable development, she moved to the USA in 1999 and completed a research fellowship at Columbia University where she drafted the design of the first TV show that promoted Sustainable lifestyles.

The "OUR PLANET" lifestyle television series got launched in 2001, and Pamela has since then produced and hosted more than 200 episodes. She launched a second TV format - "STYLING THE NEW WORLD" – in 2003, which introduced European companies to the American market. In 2005 she joined the marketing team of the US partnerships for the UNESCO decade for Sustainable Development and launched the Sustainable Planet film festival later on that year. Her first book URBAN ECOLOGY got published in 2007. Pamela consults companies and personalities – including the Prince of Belgium and the Belgian Secretary of State for Sustainable Development - towards sustainable business development and leadership enhancement and lectures internationally as a sustainability personality.

More information can be found at: www.pamelapeeters.com