Erb Annual Report FY 2010

The Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise Annual Report 2010

One hundred students Two hundred alumni Infinite possibilities

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hen Frederick A. Erb (BBA ’47) and his wife Barbara founded the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan in 1996, they launched an ambitious venture fueled by their passion for the world and nature.

The Institute has grown in size and international stature in 15 years.

Cutting-edge research by faculty members and graduate students generates new knowledge and helps businesses, policymakers and consumers make wise choices. Today, more than 100 U-M students call the Erb Institute their academic home. Upon graduation, they will

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join more than 200 alumni working on sustainability issues in industry, nonprofits and government.

This 2010 annual report celebrates the power of connections made

by Erb faculty, students, alumni and Institute partners through research, internships, courses, competitions, conferences and case studies. The report highlights how the Erb Institute is addressing an array of challenges, including climate and energy, sustainable mobility, the built environment, sustainability in education, social enterprise, green markets and management innovation.

Welcome Thank you for reading the Erb Institute’s

Resources and Environment, our MBA/

2010 annual report!

MS students comprise about 40 percent

“In this report, we unpack the stories behind those numbers by detailing the Erb Institute’s widespread impact on thought and action in the dynamic world of sustainable enterprise.”

We marked a double milestone in

of all master’s degree students. In the Ross

our 15th year, surpassing 100 enrolled

School, about one in eight MBA students

students for the first time and graduat-

is an Erber. Furthermore, MBA/MS stu-

ing our 200th alumnus in the spring.

dents lead most of the student organiza-

redesigned website at erb.umich.edu. The

organizations as Dow, GE, IBM, FedEx,

and, with the help of our advisers, build-

These impressive numbers symbolize

tions in both schools, excel at business

global map of student and alumni work

Coca Cola, The Nature Conservancy,

ing far-sighted research and education

the Institute’s growing reach at U-M and

plan and case-analysis competitions, and

and project histories neatly captures the

CERES and more. They will help us move

programs to address the rising sustainable

beyond. In this report, we unpack the

inspire many of the new sustainability

global impact of the Erb community.

our research agenda and outreach efforts

enterprise challenges of tomorrow.

stories behind those numbers by detailing

courses and programs being launched.

Our accomplishments and growing

forward and support our top-rated MBA/

We invite you to join us in the many

the Erb Institute’s widespread impact on

For a vivid depiction of the Erb com-

footprint provide the foundation for an

MS program, which continues to benefit

programs and resources the Erb Institute

thought and action in the dynamic world

munity’s footprint beyond U-M, please

ambitious agenda going forward. We are

from the dedication and experience of

offers!

of sustainable enterprise.

visit “About the Institute” on our newly

pleased to welcome members of our new

our External Advisory Board.

At 100 students—soon to increase to

Strategic Advisory Council—leading

Key objectives in 2011 and beyond in-

over 120—our visibility and impact at U-M

executives from such corporations and

clude expanding our global outreach;

have burgeoned. In the School of Natural

Kind regards,

continuing to innovate in our curriculum; building closer working relationships with leading companies and other practitioners; Tom Lyon Director

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any Erb faculty members, students and alumni are working on issues related to climate and energy, including the impact of solar energy collection in the desert, the potential of sustainable biofuels and dynamic pricing tariffs for electricity.

In a widely discussed article “Climate Change as a Cultural and Behavioral Issue” published in Organizational Dynamics in 2010, Erb Institute Associate Director Andrew Hoffman noted that environmental problems and solutions are organizationally and culturally rooted.

The social dimensions of environmental issues are important, he wrote, despite the tendency for society to focus on technological and economic aspects. Hoffman outlined individual and organizational barriers to cultural and behavioral change, and offered strategies to overcome these barriers based on best practices.

Hoffman also contributed to “Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change,” part of a three-part study on climate change released by the National Research Council in May. Substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require prompt and sustained efforts to promote technological and behavioral changes, according to Hoffman. He recommended the U.S. establish a greenhouse gas emissions “budget” that sets a limit on total domestic emissions over a period of time and provides a clear and measurable goal. However, the

report warned, the longer the nation waits to begin reducing emissions, the harder and more expensive it will be to reach a prudent and scientifically sound emissions target. These reports are among more than 90 articles and eight books Hoffman has published on a range of topics, including institutional change, organizational culture and corporate strategies as they relate to environmental and social issues.

In November, Hoffman was a guest on a National Public Radio Talk of the Nation program that focused on the polarization of opinions regarding climate change. Talking about deniers who doubt the Earth’s climate is changing and people who are convinced that climate change is a real and serious problem, Hoffman said, “We’re studying the differences. We’re trying to understand what frames and logic are used on one side, what frames and logic are used on the other side. Are they talking a similar language and similar frames or are they talking different frames?”

Students’ academic experiences also are enriched by the connections they make with practitioners who supervise internships, mentor and teach at the Erb Institute. Emily Reyna, Erb ’09, for example, is now a project manager for the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Climate Corps. She was one of the Climate Corps’ first fellows when it was launched in 2008 to help large, market-leading companies realize energy, carbon and cost-saving strategies by enlisting the talents of the nation’s top

MBA students. That first year, two of seven Climate Corps fellows were from the Erb Institute. The number of fellows from the Institute grew to six of 26 in 2009 and six of 51 in 2010, Reyna reported. The 2010 Erb fellows and the companies where they worked were Graham Brown, Erb ’12, The JBG Companies; Daniel Cantor, Erb ’12, Franklin Templeton Investment; Yih-Wei Chien, Erb ’12, JC Penney Company; Nick Fassler, Erb ’12, HCA Healthcare; Brian Hartmann, Erb ’12, Bloomberg L.P.; and Jamie Mikkelsen, Erb ’11, Target.

Master’s projects are another way students hone their research skills, gain valuable experience and share their expertise. Recent master’s projects focusing on climate and energy included: Renewable Energy in the California Desert: Mechanisms for Evaluating Solar Development on Public Lands for The Wilderness Society. Taka Isshiki, Sean Killian and Laura Palombi, all Erb ’11, were members of a team that provided analyses and tools to The Wilderness Society to use when evaluating project sites for utility-scale solar energy facilities in

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the Mojave and Colorado deserts of California. The students examined the ecological impacts of solar development on species, natural communities and ecological processes. They also evaluated the solarpermitting process and policy for solar development on public lands.

Steven Yaffee, Erb Institute Faculty Affiliate and the Theodore Roosevelt Professor of Ecosystems Management in SNRE, advised the students.

Area Based Development and Climate Change for The World Bank.

Nemanja Babic, Erb ’10, was part of a team that studied the role of institutions in shaping how households respond to climate impacts.

The team concluded that as countries and development organizations cope with limited resources and environmental and demographic pressures, they should focus on building resilience in rural communities.

Arun Agrawal, Erb Institute Faculty Adviser and Associate Professor of Natural Resources and Environment, advised the students.

Climate and Energy Profile

Emily Reyna Emily Reyna, Erb ’09, was among the Environmental Defense Fund’s first fellows when the EDF launched its Climate Corps Program in 2008. That summer, she helped develop plans for a new energy-saving device to be used in R&D labs at Cisco Systems and, in the process, gained hands-on practice in making a business case for the device and for sustainability.

“I had to talk to people in facilities, information technology, finance and sustainability in language that made sense to each group. The Erb Institute helped me figure out how to do that,” said Reyna. As a Climate Corps fellow, she helped develop a solution that would save the information technology giant an estimated $8 million per year and reduce Cisco System’s greenhouse gas emissions by 3 percent.

Today, Reyna is one of three project managers at EDF’s successful and growing Climate Corps Program, which embeds trained MBA students as Climate Corps fellows in companies.

The fellows identify energy efficiency improvements that can help host companies cut costs and reduce emissions.

In 2010, six of EDF’s 51 Climate Corps fellows were from the Erb Institute. They understand how to achieve environmental improvements that support business objectives and fit with the culture of the organization, Reyna said.

In addition to developing scopes of work for projects and supporting the fellows throughout the summer, Reyna is in charge of engagement management and tracking the program’s results, metrics and technical content.

“EDF’s results-driven, scientific approach is a good fit for what I studied” “EDF seeks to find market-driven solutions to environmental problems. EDF’s resultsdriven, scientific approach is a good fit for what I studied,” explained Reyna, who said she

Her awareness of the opportunities presented by mission-driven organizations grew at the Erb Institute while working on her master’s project. “Our team analyzed what

Although at one time Reyna planned “to work in a big company and apply sustainability strategies to internal operations or product development,” the Erb Institute helped reshape

frequently relies on lessons learned in Professor Gautam Kaul’s sustainable finance class.

Prior to enrolling at U-M, Reyna was an analyst at Ford Motor Company in its emerging technologies group and participated in a college rotational program for information technology.

A three-month rotation in Ford’s sustainability group working with Erb External Advisory Board member Dave Berdish, Ford’s manager of social responsibility, influenced her decision to study sustainability. She also started the GreenIT group focused on sustainability within Ford’s IT department.

we called hybrid organizations—for-profit organizations that are environmentally mission driven. We looked at companies that operate in the border space between the nonprofit and for-profit worlds to see how they differ in finance and organizational structures and published our findings in a book,” Reyna explained. Among those featured in Hybrid Organizations: New Business Models for Environmental Leadership (Greenleaf Publishing, 2009) are Sun Ovens International, Eden Foods, Maggie’s Organics and the beverage company Guayaki.

her ambitions, she said.

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Dynamic Pricing Tariffs for DTE Residential Electricity Customers for DTE Energy. Arie Jongejan, Brian Katzman, Thomas Leahy and Mark Michelin, all Erb ’10, explored ways DTE Energy can use new technologies to address costly peak energy demands. Gregory Keoleian, Erb Institute Faculty Adviser and Professor of Sustainable Systems and of Civil and Environmental Engineering, advised the students.

Ancillary Benefits to Solar PV Development for Axio Power. Solar development is becoming increasingly important in the U.S. energy mix, noted Greg Buzzell, Erb ’11, and Quang Do, Meredith Irwin, Sara Mills and Mike Ott, all Erb ’12, in their master’s project report. The students examined ancillary benefits of solar photovoltaics, including water quality, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide emissions, and health benefits and jobs development. Their findings will enable the solar and electricity industry to evaluate electricity generation from a holistic perspective. Scott Noesen, President and CEO of WorldView Consulting LLC, former Director of Sustainable Development at Dow Chemical and former Erb External Advisory Board member, advised the students.

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Master’s projects are another way students hone their research skills, gain valuable experience and share their expertise.

Southern Company renewable energy masters project team Southern Company Renewable Energy for Southern Company. Nick Abstoss and Alanya Schofield, both Erb ’11, and Chris Hicks, Michelle Quibell, and Jennifer Ritchey, all Erb ’12, developed renewable energy investment timelines and strategies for Southern Company 20 years into the future under various federal energy and climate legislation scenarios. The students benchmarked renewable energy investments from other comparable regulated utilities to identify key drivers and barriers to such investments and the types of technologies being deployed. They also developed a model to identify the quantity, type and timing of renewable energy deployment under various policy scenarios, focusing primarily on a federal Renewable Energy Standard and a price on carbon. John DeCicco, Senior Lecturer in the School of Natural Resources and Environment, advised the students.

The Potential for Algae and other ‘Micro-Crops’ to Produce Sustainable Biofuels: A Review of the Emerging Industry, Environmental Sustainability and Policy Recommendations for The National Wildlife Federation. Antony Lei, Erb ’11, was part of a team that analyzed the potential environmental impacts of using algae and other “micro-crops” as sources of sustainable biofuels. John DeCicco advised the students.

In another student project, “The Green Potential for Private Equity,” Anne Barton and Elizabeth Uhlhorn, both Erb ’10, focused on a partnership between the Environmental Defense Fund and the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts. They examined how private equity firms can derive value, increase investment and enhance their public images by measuring and improving their environmental performance

in five key areas: greenhouse gas emissions, water use, waste, forest resource use and toxic chemical use. Andrew Hoffman and Gautam Kaul, the John C. and Sally S. Morley Professor of Finance, advised the students.

Erb students always excel in case and business plan competitions and this past year was no exception, especially in the climate and energy area.

Brian Katzman, Russell Baruffi, both Erb ’10, and Matt Schaar, MBA/ MPP ’10, won the $20,000 first prize at the 2010 Walmart Better Living Business Plan Challenge held in April in Bentonville, Arkansas. Their plan, “Silutions,” is a revolutionary and less environmentally harmful method to produce silane gas for the electronics industry. Silane is critical for the manufacture of electronics such as flat-panel displays, semiconductors and solar panels. Working together as the Green Silane team, Baruffi, Katzman and Schaar also won the Erb Award for Sustainability at the Michigan Business Challenge in February 2010.

Climate and Energy Profile

Taka Isshiki When talking with skeptics who doubt the Earth’s climate is changing, Taka Isshiki, Erb ’11, said, “My knee-jerk reaction used to be how can you not believe? It seems so obvious.”

His response has become more sophisticated recently. Now Isshiki recommends they look more deeply into the data. “It is the best way to form an opinion,” he said.

In the meantime, Isshiki added, “If we implement best practices to combat climate change— developing more fuel-efficient cars and cleaning up our resources—it can’t hurt.”

Growing up in California, Isshiki’s family regularly visited Yosemite and Sequoia national parks. “My parents made a strong effort to teach me about nature and the important interaction between what we do and the environment. Early on, I started to think about how we affect our surroundings.”

Isshiki’s interest in engineering and math and appreciation for the environment came together in a career path focused on renewable energy. “As an engineer working to develop more efficient solar energy, I was bridging business and the environment,” said Isshiki.

“The more efficient the technology, the less material you need. Using less material drives down costs.”

“We in the U.S. take energy for granted. We expect to come home, turn on lights and power up our laptops. If we didn’t have energy, the U.S. would come to a screeching halt. Our reliance on energy is so ingrained that we are not going to give it up. Other nations will be large consumers of energy as well. We need to find a way to do it better.”

Isshiki looks forward to doing just that as he focuses on career opportunities on the business side of renewable energy, clean tech or energy efficiency. As an intern, he developed a market entry strategy for Pratt & Whitney Power Systems’ Pure Cycle geothermal power generation unit, completed a global demand outlook forecast for large-format lithium-ion batteries for Dow Kokam, and worked on business development for SunPower Corp.

“It was a big confidence boost when we talked to key players in this field and realized that we were becoming experts because of all the research we had done.”

Isshiki, along with Sean Killian and Laura Palombi, both Erb ’11, were part of a 10-member master’s project team that worked with The Wilderness Society. The students provided the nonprofit with analyses and tools to use when deciding where to site proposed utility-scale solar energy facilities in California’s Mojave and Colorado deserts.

“The opportunity to speak with the leading influencers was incredible,” said Isshiki. “It was a big confidence boost when we talked to key players in this field and realized that we were becoming experts because of all the research we had done.”

As president of Net Impact’s local chapter, Isshiki leads one of the Ross School’s most active student organizations. Net Impact, with more than 360 members, helped host the 18th Annual Net Impact Conference at the Ross School in October. More than 2,500 attended.

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Erb alums reconnect Another U-M team called Enertia, including Adam Carver, Erb ’12, won the $50,000 top prize at DTE Energy’s statewide 2009-2010 Clean Energy Prize Competition. DTE Energy and the U-M established the Clean Energy Prize competition to encourage entrepreneurship in Michigan and development of clean-energy technologies. The Masco Corporation Foundation and The Kresge Foundation were Clean Energy Prize founding sponsors and continue to support the competition. Additional sponsors include UBS Investment Bank, Google and Nth Power, a clean-tech venture capital company. Carver and his teammates, two Ph.D. Fellows at the U-M’s Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems, won with a business plan for an invention that aims to displace toxic electrochemical batteries in the market. The technology developed at U-M includes a patented device that can harvest the energy in tiny kinetic vibrations from industrial machines, bridges or human movement to power small electronics such as remote sensors and surgically implanted medical equipment.

In January, the Ross School hosted the nation’s first Renewable Energy Case Competition. David Cieminis and Brian Katzman, both Erb ’10, and members of the Ross School Energy Club organized the competition, which was presented by Acciona Energy and the Karl Friedman Family Foundation. The event attracted 12 MBA teams from leading business schools.

Erb Student Advisory Board Co-presidents Nate Springer and Katie Erb alumni and members of the greater Erb Community—95 people in all—gathered in Ann Arbor for a two-day reunion in October scheduled in conjunction with the Net Impact conference.

In addition to sharing their stories and experiences, participants learned about research being done at the Ross School’s Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship, which focuses on what makes organizations successful.

Neesha Modi, Erb ’12, talked about the Erb Resource Groups, a website that shares Erb’s collective knowledge about sustainability. It can be accessed from the Alumni and Community section of the Erb website.

O’Hare, both Erb ’11, and Rick Bunch updated alumni on the Institute.

Reunion highlights included seven-minute stories from alumni about sustainability, life and work.

Speakers included: Tony Baptista, Erb ’05, on birding in Cape Cod and the importance of keeping sustainability metrics simple in an organization.

Meghan Chapple-Brown, Erb ’02, on best practices in bringing novel media and innovation exercises to green government initiatives.

Laura Flanigan, Erb ’06, on how navigating a career in sustainability is like being an astronaut.

Michael Hokenson, Erb ’05, on the value of persistence when raising

Discussion session topics included: “Change Theory into Practice” led

by James Lloyd, ’Erb 03; “Corporate Sustainability” led by Rob Frederick, Erb ’00; “Climate Change and Carbon Markets: Copenhagen and Beyond” led by Doug Glancy, Erb ’07; “Renewable Energy” led by Ian Black, Erb ’08; “Green Building and Development” led by Rich Bole, Erb ’06; and “Clean-tech Start-ups” led by Jeff LeBrun, Erb ’09.

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money on Wall Street.

Tim Reed, Erb ’00, on what has and hasn’t changed for Erb alumni over the past decade.

Ruth Scotti, Erb ’05, on working at BP during the oil spill crisis and opportunities for biofuels.

Climate and Energy Profile

Nuyi Tao Nuyi Tao, Erb ’03, formerly a financial specialist at a commercial bank in her native China, now works on the world stage as a senior carbon finance specialist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. There she uses her financial expertise and lessons learned at the Erb Institute to build a business case for sustainable development, particularly as it relates to energy and climate change.

Working under the framework of the Kyoto Protocol to help developed countries meet their carbon reduction targets, Tao is in charge of originating and executing carbon offset projects.

She works in partnership with policy-makers and project investors in China, India and Indonesia. Certified Emission Reductions (CER), the measurable and verifiable product that her projects generate, is becoming an environmental commodity and can be traded in the international carbon market. Carbon offsets could provide an additional revenue stream (i.e. carbon finance) to a low-carbon project and transform it from being financially marginal to attractive for investors, Tao explained.

“China is still developing rapidly economically and as a society.

The people are very dynamic and want to make things happen. I am proud to be part of that momentum.”

Among the challenges of implementing carbon credit projects, Tao said, are relatively weak policy framework in some countries, the long lead time to develop such projects and the political nature of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, which creates uncertainty for carbon asset buyers and project investors. “Doing carbon reduction is not a risk-free exercise,” she noted.

“China is still developing rapidly economically and as a society,” Tao said. “The people are very dynamic and want to make things happen.

I am proud to be part of that momentum. ” “Chinese people are very concerned about climate change. While creating more extreme weather and threatening China’s prosperous society, climate change also provides an opportunity to move the country’s economy and

society in a sustainable direction. China is determined and well positioned to provide green technology at a cheaper cost and help itself and the rest of the world move away from fossil fuels, Tao said.

Tao applied to the Erb Institute after noting that the University of Michigan received high marks in the World Resources Institute (WRI) ranking of business schools. “I did my due diligence,” she said.

By 2001, she was interning for the WRI and the U-M’s William Davidson Institute; she worked in Beijing on a feasibility study for a new environmental program in China. Tao also helped create a business development plan for local eco-tourism enterprises in Yunnan Province for The Nature Conservancy. She gained additional experience at Erb as an intern in the DTE Energy finance department.

However, it was her team master’s project that piqued her interest in international carbon markets. Her team evaluated the feasibility of a Washington D.C.-based policy-consulting firm providing services to large multinational corporations to help them navigate the uncertainty surrounding carbon regulation in the United States.

“The Erb Institute provided lots of hands-on experiences working on real-life projects and the opportunity to network with faculty, classmates and alumni. The resources and moral support from the Erb network are invaluable,” Tao said.

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rowing numbers of Erb Institute faculty members and students are building productive relationships with businesses and organizations in China. Erb Director Thomas Lyon worked last spring with the China Entrepreneur Club, which includes representatives of the largest companies in China.

Lyon was a judge for the group’s annual China Green Company Award.

Lyon shared insights from his China trip in his July 16 blog in Fast Company.com. He noted that Chinese enthusiasm for sustainability at times doesn’t appear to be driven by green values. “In evaluating the companies that were up for Green Company Awards, I found most of them really are doing exciting new things but, nevertheless, there is an ever-present concern with image—especially maintaining an image that will guarantee a good relationship with governments, at both the local and national levels,” he wrote.

Other valuable insights into China’s commitment to a green future are available in a published teaching case that focuses on China Mobile’s environmental business strategy. Cynthia Koenig, Erb ’11, and Aparna Sundaram, Erb ’09, worked with Erb Institute Managing Director Rick Bunch and colleague Jacob Park of Green Mountain College on the case study, which examined China Mobile’s Green Action Plan, an environmental strategy to reduce the firm’s energy consumption.

Tina Tam, Erb ’11, was one of several Erb students who interned or did research in China this past year. She worked as an intern in Beijing on the Microcarbon Foundation Renewal Energy Project to reduce carbon emissions at the household level. One of the project’s goals was to determine how to generate enough carbon credits to make it financially possible to replace coal-burning stoves and furnaces with biogas generators in thousands of homes.

Last spring, Yih-Wei Chien and Emily Dwinnells, both Erb ’12, spent several weeks in Shanghai studying China’s green building sector for their MBA Multidisciplinary Action Project. The students met with green product manufacturers and a member of Shanghai’s architecture and design community as part of their market research for the nonprofit research organization Green Ideas, Green Actions (GIGA), which seeks to create market incentives for greener building materials.

GIGA’s Ryan Dick returned the visit in December. He talked about Chinese urbanization trends at the Erb-sponsored conference “Michigan-China Clean Tech: Collaboration and Competition in Energy, Smart Grid, Green Cities and Transportation.” The conference focused on the potential benefits of expanding partnerships between the University and China in the field of alternative energy. A report of the conference proceedings will be published in spring 2011.

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Former postdoctoral research fellow teaching in China Economist and Erb faculty affiliate Haitao Yin made valuable contributions to the Erb community in 2008-2010 as a postdoctoral research fellow. He collaborated on research with Thomas Lyon and also belonged to a large U-M research group working on renewable energy. Yin is now an Assistant Professor of Business Economics at the Antai College of Economics and Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong

University (SJTU). His primary research interest is at the intersection of business strategy and public policy, particularly the field of environmental policy and corporate environment management. He is now leading the SJTU team in a research collaboration with the Erb Institute examining barriers to the uptake of renewable energy technologies in China and the United States.

Focus on China Profile

Tina Tam Born and raised in Hong Kong, Tina Tam, Erb ’11, first glimpsed poverty’s toll while visiting relatives in China. Now, Tam, who moved to the United States as a teen-ager, is using her dual-cultural perspective and knowledge gained at the Erb Institute to promote social justice globally.

Tam became interested in environmental justice while working as a content publishing manager at Microsoft. In 2007, she co-founded Microsoft Green, an internal group to promote environmental awareness and influence company policies. “The experience convinced me that I needed the business skill set to build a case for sustainability,” Tam said.

“When I visited the Ross School and spoke to Ross and Erb students, they were down-toearth and social-minded. It seemed like a good fit.” She also sat in on Professor Andrew Hoffman’s mini-class for prospective students. “He presented cutting-edge information on corporate social responsibility. I knew I had to be here,” Tam recalled.

As an Erb student, Tam has focused on new models that improve rural access to renewable energy. She spent summer 2010 in China as a Doris Duke Conservation Fellow and intern at the Microcarbon Foundation. The United Kingdom start-up based in Beijing is committed to alleviating poverty and mitigating climate change by unlocking the barriers that limit the commercial viability of carbon finance for rural communities, explained Tam, who performed market and financial analyses for the organization’s first business plan.

“The Microcarbon Foundation is trying to get different industries and sectors to work together to create a solution for channeling carbon finance to the base of the pyramid through

“Providing households access to clean and safe energy is an opportunity with enormous social, environmental and economic benefits.” microfinance loans,” Tam said. She noted that an estimated 1.6 billion people in the world lack access to modern sources of energy. “Providing households access to clean and safe energy is an opportunity with enormous social, environmental and economic benefits,” Tam wrote in the business plan.

In summer 2009, Tam did internships with Ashoka, a social entrepreneurial organization with a new initiative working to bring affordable solar energy to the world’s rural communities, and with the Institute at the Golden Gate, an incubator for social innovation. Tam and David Weinglass, Erb ’11, conducted market analysis, financial modeling and strategic planning in preparation for publication of the institute’s first business plan.

For her master’s project, Tam worked on a comprehensive corporate social responsibility strategy for Banorte in Mexico with a team of Erb students. She also co-authored the case study “Honest Tea: Sell Up or Sell Out?“ published by the William Davidson Institute and The Erb Institute.

During the Winter term of 2011, Tam will add to her international experiences as a student at IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, a Ross School student exchange partner.

After graduation, the marathon runner, snowboarder and yoga teacher looks forward to working with international social enterprises similar to the Microcarbon Foundation on business planning and development or starting her own business or nonprofit.

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rb faculty members and students are enhancing knowledge of sustainable mobility through research and case studies.

For their master’s project “Carbon Mapping in the Automotive Supply Chain,” Lisa Ingmarsson, Tina Bosch, Jamie Mikkelsen and Arthur Peterson, all Erb ’11, worked with The Ford Motor Company on supply chain sustainability. The students assessed the development of carbon-related policies in the United States, China, Brazil and Europe. They also mapped the carbon intensity in the automotive supply chain and researched opportunities for supplier engagement. Advising the students were John Sullivan, Research Scientist at the U-M Transportation Research Institute and Head of the Office of Sustainability Systems; Ravi Anupindi, Professor of Operations Management; and Gregory Keoleian, Professor of Sustainable Systems and of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-director of the Center for Sustainable Systems.

In another Ford Motor Company partnership, Jennifer McLaughlin and Emily Plews, both Erb ’10, and their master’s project team identified “new mobility systems” as potential solutions to social and environmental problems within urban slum regions of the world.

New mobility systems are highly integrated, environmentally sound, and socially equitable systems of moving people and goods. Erb Institute Associate Director Thomas Gladwin advised the students on their project titled “New Mobility: Providing Solutions to Social and Environmental Problems in Urban Slums of Developing Regions.”

Ford internships are highly prized by students interested in sustainable mobility. Ford has hosted a number of Erb interns and frequently hires Erb graduates. Here are a few examples: Tina Bosch, Erb ’11, researched and helped develop a raw materials strategy, including issues related to conflict minerals and water, as an intern in Ford’s supply chain sustainability group in summer 2010.

Arthur Peterson, Erb ’11, interned this past summer in Ford’s Sustainable Business Strategies office, where he worked on a corporate strategy for water and sustainable raw materials. As part of another project, he worked on ways to measure the carbon intensity of Ford’s supply chain.

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Ford internships are highly prized by students interested in sustainable mobility. Ford has hosted a number of Erb interns and frequently hires Erb graduates.

Erb Ford interns

Jon Newton, Erb ’03, a supply chain sustainability strategy analyst in Ford Motor Company’s Global Purchasing Supply Chain Sustainability Strategy group, is leading the development and implementation of a program to promote sustainability throughout Ford’s global supply chain.

Eric Wingfield, Erb ’05, an internal consultant in Ford’s Information Technology Strategy and Organizational Development group, focuses on organizational learning with an emphasis on developing collaboration and improving decision making. Wingfield also is reviewing the future impact of transportation infrastructure, information technology, and mobility on social and environmental sustainability.

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Sustainable Mobility Profile

Monique Oxender Monique Oxender, Erb ’04, global manager of supply chain sustainability at Ford Motor Company, once taught high school Spanish and biology. The jobs are similar, she said, only now she works on a bigger scale.

“My current job takes education to a different level and different audience. It is an opportunity to work on immediate, global issues with companies around the world,” she said.

“When I started, sustainability was not such a hot topic,“ noted Oxender, who helped Ford design the first supply chain sustainability program in the auto industry. It has become one of the leading supply chain sustainability programs in the world. Ford’s global training curriculum for suppliers, which focuses on working conditions and human rights, is used by seven automakers and will be adopted by more this year.

One of Ford’s biggest challenges, Oxender said, is the size, depth and complexity of its supply chain. Ford purchases $65 billion in goods and services from suppliers each year.

She works with suppliers in 60 countries and

the broader automotive industry to coordinate new initiatives and programs that span the full range of sustainability.

With a product like potato chips, the supply chain is fairly linear, she explained, while auto industry supply chains are 10 to 12 tiers deep.

How do you manage sustainability from top to bottom and all levels in between? It is a big challenge at Ford, with a small team of eight working globally. Oxender said this is why it is critical that Ford leverage its resources through collaboration. As part of her responsibilities, Oxender is on loan to the Automotive Industry Action Group, where she chairs working groups addressing sustainability issues in the global

“My current job takes education to a different level and different audience. It is an opportunity to work on immediate, global issues with companies around the world.”

automotive supply chain. “This work is a longterm commitment, not an overnight solution,” Oxender said.

Oxender and her colleagues pay close attention to greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of automobile manufacturing on water, restricted and banned substances, and transparency in the sourcing of raw materials “so we can better identify transactions that might involve issues such as environmental degradation, labor abuses or financing for conflict,” she said.

Oxender spends about 30 percent of her time traveling, building partnerships with governments, nongovernmental organizations and other industry groups. “Working with others and learning from their experiences keeps me stimulated. So many other industries—apparel, footwear and toys—have had huge public crises, problems with child labor, lead paint in toys. We can learn from them,” said Oxender, who is a member of the United Nations Global

While an Erb student, Oxender researched shade coffee agro-ecosystems in Latin America for her master’s thesis. “That experience turned me on to supply chains,” Oxender recalled.

A Ross School Multidisciplinary Action Project focused on corporate volunteerism at General Motors introduced her to the corporate environment and opened the door to the automobile industry.

Compact Advisory Group on Supply Chain Sustainability. Oxender also mentors interns.

“This past summer we had Tina Bosch (Erb ’11) from the Erb Institute. She was awesome,” Oxender said.

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rofessor Andrew Hoffman and Erb Institute colleagues are reshaping how architects, builders, consumers and universities think about green construction and design through articles and blogs, books, conferences and courses.

In May, the Erb Institute hosted a national conference, “Constructing Green: Sustainability and the Places We Inhabit,” which was organized by Hoffman and Rebecca Henn, an Erb affiliated doctoral student. Participants focused on strategies, relationships and opportunities inherent in green building. A summary of the conference proceedings is being prepared under Henn’s leadership.

Jill Lerner, Architect and Principal at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates PC, the architectural firm that designed the new Ross School building, was one of the conference speakers. Earlier this year the Ross School earned a LEED silver designation from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Washington D.C.based, nonprofit coalition of building industry leaders.

Brian Swett, Erb ’08, now a Project Manager for Boston Properties, and other Erb students and faculty were among those who persuasively argued that the Ross School should be built to LEED standards.

Erb community members also lobbied the U-M administration to adopt LEED silver certification as the standard for all major new construction.

As a result, the University’s construction standards are among the most rigorous in higher education in the nation. LEED certification has gained significant brand recognition and helps attract top students, Hoffman said.

The Erb Institute supports the University’s sustainability efforts as an active partner in Planet Blue and the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute—a partnership of schools, colleges and units across campus that fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration to create and disseminate knowledge and solutions related to sustainability issues.

Erb students helped promote green buildings and communities as part of several master’s team projects in 2010, including the following: Holy Cross Abbey: Reinhabiting Place for Holy Cross Abbey. Like many religious communities, Holy Cross Abbey (HCA) in Berryville, Virginia, faces challenges, including an aging community, a declining number of individuals pursuing a religious vocation and economic concerns. For their master’s team project, Kathryn Buckner, Charlotte Coultrap-Bagg

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Greening Brownfield Properties for Exxon Mobil Biomedical Sciences Inc. Jennifer Casler, Erb ’11, was part of a student team that produced a framework for Exxon Mobil to evaluate the ecological, financial and social benefits of adopting greening strategies when redeveloping brownfield properties. Michael Moore, Erb Institute Faculty Adviser and Professor of Environmental Economics, advised the students. and Alex Linkow, all Erb ’11, recommended a range of strategies for HCA’s buildings, land use, energy use, businesses, pollution, solid waste and recycling, and water supply to guide the community toward physical, ecological and financial sustainability. Andrew Hoffman advised the students.

Sustainable Urban Redevelopment in Detroit for Jefferson East Business Association. Zach Robin, Erb ’10, was part of a team that created a framework for sustainable revitalization and redevelopment of urban areas and then used the framework to design a set of sustainable recommendations to revitalize Detroit’s Jefferson East neighborhood.

Thomas Gladwin and Chester Hill, Lecturer in Natural Resources and Environment, advised the students.

Community Clean Energy Program for the Clean Energy Coalition.

Supported by a $50,000 grant from the Ford Motor Company Fund to the Erb Institute, Graham Brown, Michael Elchinger and Ryan Flynn, all Erb ’12, and Andrew Lubershane, MS/MAE ’12, designed a “revolving energy fund” for eight Michigan cities to retrofit municipal buildings for energy efficiency. The project was part of a larger Michigan Clean Energy Coalition project to turn a one-time $4.5 million grant from the Michigan Public Service Commission into an ongoing funding source for efficiency projects in Michigan cities. The master’s project led to internships for Elchinger and Flynn. The team evolved into The Smart Energy Loan Fund, which coordinates capital, training and technical assistance for the retrofitting efforts. The Smart Energy Loan Fund was one of 19 teams to advance to the second round of the Michigan Business Challenge in January 2011.

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Built Environment Profile

Michele Diener When Michele Diener, Erb ’08, decided to switch from an automotive career to the field of sustainable hospitality, she applied to only one program to obtain the education she needed: the Erb Institute. “The Erb community reached out, and people wanted to help me succeed. It was the right place,” Diener said.

Today, as director of sustainability strategies for MGM Resorts International, Diener works on operations at the firm’s 16 resorts worldwide, including 11 in Las Vegas, on “everything from the food, liquor and spirits we buy to cleaning practices and our limousine fleet,” she said. She helps each resort organize green teams to support the company’s five pillars of sustainability: water and energy conservation, green building, waste management (reducing, reusing and recycling), green supply chain, and outreach and education for employees, suppliers and guests.

Diener works most closely with the Bellagio Resort and City Center, Las Vegas, the world’s largest LEED-certified complex. City Center has three hotels, two residential towers and a shopping mall. The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program verifies that a building was built using strategies to save energy; improve water efficiency, indoor environmental quality and stewardship of resources; and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“We had 10,000 contractors, subcontractors, architects, and designers working on the project. They all now know why LEED is important. We also pushed demand for Forest Stewardship Council certified wood from managed forests. The ability to transform markets and people and increase demand for sustainable products—that’s what I get excited about.”

Diener said.

Although Nevada was hit hard by the recent recession, sustainable operations is seen as a benefit, Diener noted. “It improves employee morale and helps save jobs by reducing expenditures for energy and water.”

“The ability to transform markets and people and increase demand for sustainable products—that’s what I get excited about.”

She is especially proud that MGM Resorts International owns the world’s first fleet of limousines powered by compressed natural gas.

“We had the 26 limousines custom designed by a fabricator in California. It was a great project,” said Diener, who began her career in the automobile industry. As a strategic planning associate at Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., she led Toyota’s Process Green, an initiative to integrate environmentally sensitive building design in its U.S. real estate. She also worked on Toyota’s first LEED project, which achieved gold certification in 2003.

The gateway to Diener’s “dream job” at MGM Resorts International was an Erb master’s project she worked on with Amisha Parekh, Erb ’08, and Jaclyn Pitera, Erb ’09. With Professor Andrew Hoffman as their adviser, they wrote the book High Performance Hospitality: Sustainable Hotel Case Studies, published by the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Diener researched sustainable hospitality as an intern at the nonprofit Sustainable Conservation, which collaborates with the private sector to improve the quality of air, water and ecosystems. She, Parekh and Pitera donated residuals from their book sales to Sustainable Conservation and the Erb Institute.

Diener and her Erb classmates maintain ties through annual get-togethers, trips and e-mail.

“I am inspired by my classmates. Our strong bond is something you can’t replicate and you find in very few places,” Diener concluded.

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he Erb Institute offers one of the oldest sustainable enterprise programs in the nation. The combination of MBA and MS degrees trains business students to look further ahead, much the way scientists do. “Our students have the ability to understand environmental science and policy well enough that they can plan ahead and see the market opportunities and risks that are arising,” said Erb Institute Managing Director Rick Bunch. This forward thinking extends to markets, which are used to address environmental issues. “If you make a mistake in carbon markets, you could crash the environment,” Bunch said. “Carbon markets may help us efficiently tackle climate change, but if poor understanding of the underlying assets causes a mortgage market-type crash, we’ll be in deep trouble.”

Bunch noted in an article titled “The New MBA: Creating Effective Business Leaders,” published by Notre Dame University in Business Review USA magazine in August, that Erb graduates increasingly will be in demand as more consumers expect corporations to embrace sustainability. The Ross School also was among several business schools featured in the March 2010 Delta Sky in-flight magazine article “Sustainable Education.”

More University of Michigan students are choosing programs that focus on sustainability. Enrollment in master’s degree programs at the School of Natural Resources and Environment in the past five years has soared, largely fueled by interest in dual-degree programs. “We’ve seen growing interest in environmental sustainability from students with a wide variety of professional interests, and that’s manifested itself in the enormous growth in dual degrees,” said David Allan, SNRE’s outgoing Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

“It’s all about application to real-world problems and preparing students to embark on careers where they can contribute as urban planners, as lawyers, as environmental policy experts, as climate scientists, as wildlife biologists,” Allan said. The MS/MBA is by far the most popular program.

Singer-songwriter Cynthia Shih, Erb ’13, who goes by the stage name Vienna Teng, has put a successful music career on hold to pursue the degree. Shih started looking for a program like this 10 years ago. Erb’s, she said, “is still the strongest out there. It’s the most established and integrated dual degree.”

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Our students have the ability to understand environmental science and policy well enough that they can plan ahead and see the market opportunities and risks that are arising.

One of the strengths of the Erb Institute dual-degree program is that it helps prepare graduates for a morally complex future, wrote Thomas Gladwin and Erb External Advisory Board member David Berdish, in a Feb. 8, 2010 editorial in Financial Times.

“We face a perfect storm of global moral questions: What do we owe future generations, the deprived and the environment? Companies are being challenged to declare and act on their social and moral obligations.

But business schools are failing to prepare leaders for this challenging task,” Berdish and Gladwin wrote.

The two noted that according to The Aspen Institute’s latest “Beyond Grey Pinstripes” report on the world’s MBA programs on environmental and social stewardship, most MBA programs pay scant attention to the social dimensions of sustainability. As a result, the typical MBA student is not learning why poverty and human rights matter to business.

Gladwin and Berdish conclude: “Business schools need to think differently about preparing future leaders for a morally complex and sustainable future. In an interdependent world confronting growing environmental scarcity and human deprivation, we will need business leaders who can create social value without increasing energy and material throughput; who can cope with the complexity of interconnected social, ecological, economic systems; who can adapt in the face of uncertainty; who can bring about global change through collaborative and disruptive innovation and who can master multiple alternative futures.”

Sustainability in Education FA C U LT Y FO C U S

Thomas Gladwin For many students, Professor Thomas Gladwin’s popular first-year Erb Institute Seminar opens up new ways of thinking about business and the environment, and sometimes totally different career paths.

Gladwin, the McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise and director of the Erb Institute, guides new Erb students in reframing their thinking on how sustainable businesses should be formed, created and run. He focuses on systemic and ethical thinking and helps each student develop a personal plan to shape his or her approach to sustainability during the threeyear MBA/MS program.

“Through this seminar and other courses offered at Erb, our students have the opportunity to explore new ways of doing business, designing systems and integrating disciplines so that they emerge as leaders, advocates and change agents for sustainability, both in traditional fields and in emerging sectors of this dynamic market,” said Gladwin, who earned an MBA in international business and marketing (1971) and doctorate in international business and natural resource policy (1975), both from the U-M.

“Our students have the opportunity to explore new ways of doing business, designing systems and integrating disciplines so that they emerge as leaders, advocates and change agents for sustainability…”

Since joining the U-M faculty in 1998, Gladwin has led the Institute’s sustainable education efforts. He has developed and taught many courses, including “Systems Thinking for Sustainable Development and Enterprise,” “Sustainable Development, Community and Business,” “Global Industry and Sustainable Development,” “Business and the Global Environment,” “Global Environmental Resource Management,” “Environmental Management

for Industry,” “Environmental Analysis for International Business,” “Environmental Assessment for Organizations,” “Leadership: Developing Leaders for the 21st Century,” “The Global Manager and Negotiator” and “Management of Organizational Conflict.”

In addition to his duties at the Erb Institute, Gladwin regularly teaches in the HRH The Prince of Wales’s Business & The Environment Senior Executive Programme held at the University of Cambridge and the Salzburg Seminar.

Gladwin’s main research focus has been the establishment and promulgation of the science of sustainable enterprise. This new transdisciplinary field addresses relationships among ecosystems and social, economic and organizational systems. His other ongoing research interests include transformational leadership for sustainable development, standards and metrics of sustainable business, socially and environmentally sustainable economic globalization, business impact on biodiversity, sustainable mobility, corporate responses to global climate change, and understanding human organizations as living systems.

In 1999, Gladwin received the World Resources Institute and Aspen Institute Award for Innovation and Commitment to Social and Environmental Stewardship and the Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Leadership and Dedication from The Academy of Management, Organizations and the Natural Environment Interest Group.

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“Above all, we need business leaders willing to accept moral duties and obligations to future generations, the deprived and the environment.

Leadership for sustainability needs to become the organizing principle of management education,” Gladwin and Berdish wrote.

Thomas Lyon was one of 35 sustainability experts who participated in the World Environment Center’s Roundtable “Preparing the Next Generation of Business Leaders to Implement Sustainable Development” in September. F. Hoffmann-LaRoche Ltd. and IBM Corporation hosted the roundtable. Questions addressed included: How is sustainable development being integrated into business school curricula? What skills does industry look for in new employees? How will sustainable development evolve, and how should global companies and business schools respond?

Participants agreed that action-based learning, including internships and consulting projects, is an important tool to help students understand how to implement sustainable development in business. Multidisciplinary Action Projects, master’s projects, summer internships, and writing cases for class discussion and competitions are some of the ways Erb students apply lessons learned in class to real situations.

All Erb students begin their first year with the Erb Institute Seminar.

The seminar gives students the tools to serve as agents for change in the area of sustainability, whether they join major corporations, advise government and NGOs, or start new companies. Building on the seminar, the students’ knowledge base expands as they take a wide range of courses taught by tenured faculty and visiting professors.

For example, Steven Percy, Visiting Professor of Corporate Strategy and International Business at the Ross School, recently taught “Strategies for Sustainable Development.” The course covers environmental issues from a strategic perspective and examines how long-term competitive positioning can be secured through environmental partnerships, technology, cooperation and collaborative planning. Percy earned an MBA from the Ross School and is a member of the Erb Institute’s External Advisory Board. He is the former Chairman and CEO of BP America, Inc. Ryan Waddington, Erb ’99, also inspires students in the classroom and by example. Waddington was one of five alumni who delivered a new course this year titled “Sustainable Finance: Impact Investing,” which focused on ways to deliver market rate returns and generate positive social and environmental impacts. Waddington’s venture capital firm Huron River Ventures, which focuses on alternative energy and other high-tech sectors, recently won the State of Michigan Accelerator Fund RFP—$6 million in state funding from the Michigan

Strategic Economic Investment and Commercialization Board. Other experts who taught the class included Mike Hokenson, Erb ’05, Managing Director, Minlam Asset Management LLC; Kipp Baratoff, Erb ’07, Principal and Co-founder, Equilibrium Capital Group LLC; Jonathan Koch, Erb ’96, Managing Director, US Renewables Group; and Gabriel Thoumi, Erb ’08, Project Developer, Forest Carbon Offsets LLC and lead instructor for the course.

“We often think of finance and sustainability as living in two separate worlds, but as this course demonstrates, there is increasing momentum behind innovative financial approaches that incorporate socially or environmentally sustainable elements,” said Rick Bunch. “We’re excited to raise the awareness of sustainably-minded businesspeople and future business leaders about the importance of sustainable finance.”

Students who take Erb External Advisory Board member David Berdish’s course “Badlands: The Social Dimensions of Sustainability” quickly learn the importance of promoting human rights for companies seeking to innovate, reduce risks and develop new sustainable markets.

“Companies increasingly rely on the emerging market to source both export and domestic production,” said Berdish, Manager of Social Sustainability for Ford Motor Company and U-M alumnus (BA ’79). “With every new link in the supply chain comes a complex set of environmental and social decisions. This course aims to help future leaders—Erb Institute graduates and others—understand those decisions so that they can become forces for positive change in the business world,” he added.

Berdish has spearheaded a number of sustainability initiatives at Ford, including the Ford Urban Mobility Network, which offers integrated urban transportation solutions for people in cities who can’t afford cars or where infrastructure and congestion inhibit travel by car.

Since he has been at Ford, the firm has developed a human rights code, developed the Escape Hybrid, and built a green manufacturing facility, the Ford Rouge Center, in Dearborn, Michigan.

Classes in systems thinking and life-cycle analysis taught Ryan Whisnant, Erb ’10, Director of Sustainability at SunGard, to analyze the impact of business decisions inside and outside the company, he said in an IT World article in November. He learned, as he put it, “to not only tease out where the trade-offs are, but to see situations where they’re going to be win-win for the company and the environment.”

Summer internships at business incubators, government agencies and nonprofits across Michigan give Erb students opportunities to put sustainability lessons into practice and help spark the state’s transformation toward a healthy, sustainable economy. The Erb Institutesponsored internship program is designed to create jobs and stimulate economic recovery through clean technology, renewable energy and sustainable business entrepreneurship initiatives.

“Sustainability is a powerful lens for seeing the kinds of opportunities that will revitalize Michigan’s economy,” Rick Bunch said.

Sustainability in Education FA C U LT Y FO C U S

Andrew Hoffman For Andrew Hoffman, the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise and associate director of the Erb Institute, 2010 was a banner year, starting with his promotion to full professor.

Hoffman is widely recognized for the sociological perspective he brings to research on the cultural and institutional aspects of environmental issues for organizations. Print and broadcast media frequently report on his research findings and views on a wide range of topics, including corporate responses to climate

change. He is an authoritative source on the interconnectedness among nongovernmental organizations and corporations, and how such networks influence change within cultural and institutional systems; the social and psychological barriers to these changes; and the underlying cultural values that are engaged when these barriers are overcome.

Hoffman regularly advises master’s project teams and works with students to help them craft insightful business cases focusing on environmental issues. He also organizes national conferences, including “Constructing Green: Sustainability and the Places We Inhabit,” hosted by the Erb Institute in May. Hoffman’s course “Green Construction & Design” won the University of South Carolina Moore School of Business 2009 D. Alfred N. and

Lynn Manos Page Prize for Sustainability Issues in Business Curricula. The course was recognized for the innovative way it examines sustainability from the perspectives of design, construction and environment. Judges noted that the course attracts students from a variety of disciplines, including business, engineering, environmental studies, architecture, policy and planning. He describes his career, including working as a builder and leading a construction company for five years, in his memoir Builder’s Apprentice, published in 2010 by Huron River Press, and in a popular blog series published by Harvard Business Review.

Hoffman, who is on sabbatical through May 2011, is using the break from his normal responsibilities at U-M to explore new research directions, including roles and motivations of

managers. This fall he worked at the National Park Service on ways to reduce Yellowstone’s carbon footprint. The sabbatical also included teaching stints at universities in Switzerland and at Concordia University of Montreal, Canada, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management Sustainability Lab, and a K-12 school in New Hampshire’s Green Mountains.

In 2003, the World Resources Institute and The Aspen Institute awarded Hoffman their Faculty Pioneer/Rising Star award. In all, he has published eight books and more than 90

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articles and book chapters. His book, From Heresy to Dogma, was awarded the 2001 Rachel Carson Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science.

Another book, Memo to the CEO: Climate Change, What’s Your Business Strategy? written with John Woody, recently was published in Chinese.

Hoffman serves on a number of advisory boards and on the Organization & Environment editorial board.

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For example, Paul Gruber, Bryan Hogle, Imogen Taylor and Nicolas Wetzler, all Erb ’10, worked at the marketing strategy and business incubation firm Turtlerock. One assignment landed a multimilliondollar U.S. Department of Energy grant to help develop advanced battery technology. The group also worked with the Turtlerock Greentech Foundation, which supports clean technology R&D in the region.

“The combined impact of the economic recession and the automotive industry downturn has been particularly challenging for Southeast Michigan, but in the wake of failure we see the opportunity for unprecedented green business growth in this region,” said Loch McCabe, an Erb Institute External Advisory Board member and Principal with the clean-tech management consulting firm Shepherd Advisors. “Several of the projects with which these students are engaged will directly help build Michigan’s clean energy infrastructure, helping communities and companies to better weather this economic transition and position themselves to be more competitive and successful in the future,” McCabe said.

The Institute also worked with the Small Business Association of Michigan (SBAM), which provides small businesses operational and strategic support. Through the SBAM, Sam Lines and Bharath Iyengar, both Erb ’11, conducted clean energy supply chain research, supported Michigan State University’s Michigan Future Bio-economy Scenario

Planning project, assisted with energy efficiency planning tools and services to Michigan communities, and supported U-M Energy Assessment Center efforts to educate and train Michigan businesses on energy efficiency.

Erb alumni also are actively promoting sustainability in higher education nationally. They include: Meghan Chapple-Brown, Erb ’02, Director of the Office of Sustainability at George Washington University.

Christina Gilyutin, Erb ’08, Assistant Director of the Center for Socially Responsible Business and a Career Adviser at the Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Drew Horning, Erb ’01, Deputy Director of the U-M Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute. Horning served in a similar capacity at the Erb Institute for six years.

Heather Lair, Erb ’99, project manager in the Office of Sustainability at the University of Maryland. The office provides leadership in coordinating, promoting and tracking sustainability initiatives across the College Park campus. Lair is helping the university develop a strategic plan for reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

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With every new link in the supply chain comes a complex set of environmental and social decisions.

Cristina Turney (Luthy), Erb ’07, Sustainability Project Facilitator at the George Washington University Office of Sustainability. Turney previously worked at The Corporate Executive Board, a best-practice research consulting firm, where she was a Director for New Business Development and Corporate Strategy.

Mark Milstein, Erb ’97, Director of the Center for Global Sustainable Enterprise at Cornell University, where he formerly was a Lecturer of Strategy, Innovation and Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson School of Management.

Erb students are exposed to a diversity of ideas at U-M. This past fall, Ross School professors Aneel Karnani and Thomas Lyon publicly debated the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in business. Karnani, Associate Professor of Strategy, said the idea that companies have a responsibility to act in the public interest—and will profit from doing

so—is fundamentally flawed. Firms only can be expected to embrace CSR when the market naturally marries profits to social interests, or when government regulation forces such a union, according to Karnani.

Dividend magazine published excerpts from the debate.

Refuting the notion that markets and governments alone can shape responsible corporate behavior, Lyon said CSR is a voluntary action by a company to internalize externalities and go beyond what the law requires.

Companies can do well by doing good, said Lyon. He noted that many large multinationals establish a global common standard, which involves using top-quality, American technology and serves to elevate expectations for technology in other countries. “There are lots of examples of companies that have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions substantially and made money in the process,” Lyon said.

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Sustainability in Education Profile

Julian DautremontSmith As an undergraduate at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Julian Dautremont-Smith, Erb ’12, spearheaded the school’s efforts to become the first American college to comply with greenhouse gas emissions reductions called for by the Kyoto Protocol.

Today, as an Erb student, Dautremont-Smith continues to work tirelessly to advance sustainability in education, from researching and working on sustainability standards for K-12 schools and agriculture to co-authoring the report “Informing Green Markets” with Erb Institute Director Thomas Lyon. The report captures the major themes of a national conference on green markets sponsored by the Erb Institute at the Ross School in June.

For his master’s project, Dautremont-Smith is working on a sustainability rating system for K-12 education. It builds on his previous work as associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, where he played a leadership role creating the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) for colleges and universities. He continues to serve as the chair of the STARS Steering Committee.

“Existing sustainability assessment and recognition programs for schools almost all have fairly low-bar standards that are not really advancing sustainability,” concluded Dautremont-Smith, who presented his research findings at the first Green Schools National Conference in Minneapolis in October.

Dautremont-Smith also used his research skills this summer as an International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) intern. He worked with then ILRF Executive Director Bama Athreya to support development of sustainable agriculture standards, with a focus on standards for social sustainability.

Athreya earned a Ph.D. in 1997 in anthropology from the U-M. She is president of the Global Works Foundation, vice president of Fontheim International and an Erb External Advisory Board member. She is also a member of the Leonardo Academy’s National Sustainable Agriculture Standards Committee and co-chair of the group’s Social Subcommittee, which include representatives from farming, labor, agricultural associations and the retail food industry.

“Come clean, acknowledge the bad, don’t try to hide or downplay it. Explain to the public what the company learned and what it is going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Dautremont-Smith chose the Erb Institute because, he said, “Its dual degree program stood out as the largest and the most well developed.

It also had the best infrastructure. I like the action-learning approach at the Ross School and the strength of social science approaches to sustainability at the School of Natural Resources and Environment.”

Erb connections sometimes lead to unusual opportunities, Dautremont-Smith has discovered. In October, he was one of several stakeholder representatives invited to Washington, D.C., to give BP feedback on how to rebuild public trust following the Gulf oil spill.

Dautremont-Smith’s advice: “Come clean, acknowledge the bad, don’t try to hide or downplay it. Explain to the public what the company learned and what it is going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Dautremont-Smith also recommended that BP incorporate data on the sustainability performance of its competitors in its annual sustainability report, and that it fully disclose its efforts to influence public policy, including industry associations of which BP is a member.

Dautremont-Smith, a Doris Duke Conservation Fellow, Fulbright Scholar and Truman Scholar, plans to focus on sustainability after graduation. He would like to work as a sustainability officer for a college or university or for a nonprofit that administers sustainability rating systems.

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Ross Responds volunteers in New Orleans

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ocial enterprise opens doors to new experiences for Erb students and faculty members.

A desire to respond to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and help New Orleans residents prompted Adam Carver and Rosemary Lapka, both Erb ’12, to launch a student-run volunteer program called Ross Responds. Carver and Lapka organized approximately 30 MBA volunteers, who spent part of August in Louisiana addressing social problems. Students worked with youth at risk, on green construction and on renewable energy. “It exposed students to the operational realities facing both for-profit and nonprofit organizations that have adopted corporate social missions,” Lapka said in a fall 2010 Dividend magazine article. For many of the students, it was their first exposure to social enterprise, she noted.

Colm Fay, Erb ’12, spent his summer working as a William Davidson Institute fellow with the international nonprofit PATH. There, he helped create a market entry strategy and global demand model for a low-cost device to reduce maternal mortality in developing countries. PATH is helping develop the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment, which is similar to the bottom half of a wetsuit that limits blood flow to the

lower body. Up to 60 percent of maternal deaths in developing countries are caused by post-partum hemorrhaging. The internship included a two-week trip to India to observe clinical trials in Rajasthan and Chennai and meetings with members of the public health community.

Lauren Start, Erb ’12, and Tina Tam, David Weinglass and Ryan Whisnant, all Erb ’10, were part of a team of students that wrote the case study “Honest Tea—Sell Up or Sell Out?” about the tough decisions entrepreneurs must make when presented the opportunity to sell a business to a large multinational. The students worked under the supervision of Andrew Hoffman and Arie Jongejan, Erb ’10. Honest Tea and the Erb Institute have collaborated in the past. In 2009, Liz Abbett, Erb ’10, was an intern at Honest Tea, where she spearheaded initiatives to improve operational efficiency and standardize procedures. Abbett is now Program Manager for Advanced Compliance and Social Responsibility at Cisco Systems.

Thomas Lyon writes extensively on social enterprise and sustainability. His newest book, Good Cop, Bad Cop: Environmental NGOs and Their Strategies, focuses on the role of NGOs in addressing complex environmental issues such as climate change, persistent bio-accumu-

[Ross Responds] exposed students to the operational realities facing both for-profit and nonprofit organizations that have adopted corporate social missions

Social Enterprise Profile

Cynthia Koenig “Water is an issue everywhere,” notes social entrepreneur Cynthia Koenig, Erb ’11, who is working to bring a low-cost solution to families who struggle to collect and transport enough water to meet their basic needs.

Koenig, founder and CEO of Wello, first learned about “rolling water”—a plastic drum outfitted with long handles that is pushed to transport water—when she visited South Africa. The trip was part of a Ross School emerging market economies course. Today, the full-time graduate student works at least 25 hours a week on the business that will market its version of rolling water, the WaterWheel, in fall 2011.

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After earning an MS degree in environmental studies from the School of Natural Resources and Environment in 2006, Koenig travelled to South Africa where she observed the effect of water shortages on lives: Families were spending up to eight hours a day collecting and transporting water. Yet they still were falling short of the United Nations’ recommended five gallons per person per day needed to stay healthy.

Initially Koenig didn’t think she was cut out for business school. “However, when I moved back to Michigan after spending six months in South Africa, I knew I needed accounting, finance, marketing and other business courses in order to launch Wello.”

“Starting Wello has made what I am learning in school come alive. I definitely would not be at this stage without the Erb Institute,” said Koenig, who cites the help she has received from courses, faculty members, the Erb External Advisory Board and other Erb students.

“It’s wonderful to be in an environment where I can bump into someone and have a deep conversation on topics as diverse as sustainable design or hybrid business models. The built-in support network is phenomenal and pushes me to think in new directions.”

By manufacturing and selling WaterWheels, Koenig hopes to make the sturdy drums affordable for people living on less than $2 a day.

Using a WaterWheel, a person can roll five times the amount of water that could be carried and do it more quickly. She projects purchasers recouping their investment in four to six weeks and earning money by delivering clean water.

In May, President Bill Clinton recognized Koenig at a Clinton Global Initiative University meeting in Miami, Florida, where she spoke about water issues and Wello.

Koenig, who grew up in New York City, loves nature and hiking. Her interest in social entrepreneurship and conservation was piqued as an undergraduate while studying eco-tourism in Costa Rica. Later, while working at RARE Conservation, Koenig trained Mayan fishermen and farmers in Mexico and Guatemala to earn a sustainable living teaching tourists about the local ecosystem.

“I learned then the importance of involving local people in resource security and management,” Koenig said. “The WaterWheel enables people to take care of their basic needs. People can’t work their way out of poverty if they are dehydrated or sick most of the time.”

To learn more about the WaterWheel, read Professor Michael Gordon’s award-winning case study on Wello’s Web site at http://www.wellowater.org/

Cynthia Koenig with the water wheel.

Photo by Josh Dick.

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lative pollutants and the conservation of biodiversity. The book, which may be the first academic inquiry into the increasing role of NGOs in

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hen the Federal Trade Commission proposed cracking down on “greenwashing,” the practice of making false or exaggerated claims of sustainability or environmental friendliness to gain market share, Thomas Lyon was in Washington, D.C., contributing to the national dialogue.

Under a new set of environmental marketing guidelines proposed by the FTC, businesses would no longer be allowed to make “unqualified general environmental benefit claims,” such as calling their products “green.”

The FTC also addressed the proliferation of ecolabels, seals of environmental approval. There are now hundreds of such labels, according to Big Room Inc., a Vancouver, British Columbia-based firm that maintains a database of ecolabels.

business, examines the drivers behind NGO engagement with business and the ways in which NGOs influence the corporate sector.

He brings together perspectives on environmental NGOs from leading social scientists, as well as leaders from within the NGO and corporate worlds, to assess the state of knowledge on the tactics and the effectiveness of environmental groups.

Neil C. Hawkins, Vice President of Sustainability and Environment, Health and Safety at The Dow Chemical Company, described the book as a “unique and essential resource. This book is a must read for businesses and NGOs as we work to develop new collaborations to solve the world’s major challenges.”

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“There are getting to be so many ecolabels that a lot of people are concerned that consumers may just become too confused and not bother to pay any attention to labels at all,” said Lyon, whose 2008 academic working paper about competing environmental labels was among the sources the FTC consulted.

Although new FTC guidelines could discourage companies from making misleading claims, consumers could become even more confused when faced with multiple environmental claims about a product, Lyon said. “They’re trying to be very clear about what’s ‘greenwash’ and what’s not. What we need is to build trust at the consumer level with well-documented labels,” he said, citing the success of the Energy Star label on appliances.

More than 85 representatives from business, government, nongovernmental organizations, and a dozen universities in the U.S. and Canada attended the conference “Informing Green Markets: The Roles of

Greening Markets Profile

Facu lty F o cus

Claudia Harner-Jay

“We envision a world where health is within reach for everyone.”

As a senior commercialization officer for the Seattle-based nonprofit global health organization PATH, Claudia Harner-Jay, Erb ’98, spends her days brokering the creation and introduction of health products that otherwise might not be produced because they are intended for low-resource countries, and thus suffer from a perceived lack of market.

“We envision a world where health is within reach for everyone,” Harner-Jay said. “Our goal is to help improve health by advancing technologies, strengthening health systems and encouraging healthy behaviors.” PATH acts as a bridging agent between the public and private sectors, providing incentives and mitigating risk for companies working on products that can improve health. “We might help cover product development or clinical trial costs, or create a market by aggregating public sector demand.”

Thomas Lyon Currently, she leads a commercialization team working on a five-year safe water initiative to explore market-based solutions to increase access to water treatment and storage products at the household level, primarily in India.

Harner-Jay was attracted to the U-M by the opportunity to earn an MBA and a master’s degree in environmental studies. “Michigan’s program was the most comprehensive, plus the business school had a reputation for being collaborative,” she recalled.

Today, Harner-Jay regularly uses her business skills and understanding of public policy to negotiate on behalf of the public good. “The systems thinking from business and from the public sector side really help me. You have to understand and address the needs and concerns of different stakeholders, and always focus beyond the financial bottom line,” she said.

When policymakers and industry want the latest research on green marketing, in the United States and internationally, Thomas Lyon is the go-to person. Lyon is director of the Erb Institute and the Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce at the Ross School and the School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Lyon testified at Federal Trade Commission hearings last fall when the FTC was considering new guidelines to curtail “greenwashing.” He also was quoted in more than 100 media outlets, including The New York Times, ABC News, Forbes and American University Radio, about the proposed changes. “What we need is a system that will allow companies to credibly make these types of broad claims. That’s really hard, and I think it’s still a number of years off,” Lyon said.

Last spring, Lyon spent several weeks in China, where he met with representatives of the green industry as well as academic and other business leaders. Lyon spoke about green

marketing at the North China Electric Power University, one of the key universities affiliated with the Ministry of Education, and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of China’s oldest and most prestigious universities.

Recognized in 2008 with the Ross School’s Contribution to the Research Environment Award, Lyon is a leader in using economic analysis to understand corporate environmental strategy and how it is shaped by government regulations, nongovernmental organizations and consumer demand. His book Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy provides the first rigorous economic analysis of this important topic.

Other research topics Lyon currently is focusing on include corporate environmental information disclosure, the causes and consequences of renewable energy policy, and voluntary programs for environmental improvement. His research has attracted support from industry and government, including a National Science Foundation Grant for “Environmental Governance, Logging and Forests” and an Alcoa Foundation Grant for “Creating a Sustainable Energy Future through Interdisciplinary Research.”

Lyon’s research has been published in the RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, and the Journal of Law, Economics and Organizations.

He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy and the Journal of Regulatory Economics.

He also edited the book The Political Economy of Regulation.

One of the benefits of studying at a large research university like the U-M is the op-

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Supply chain management­—making sure products are responsibly sourced—is a challenge for all retailers. For instance, this report is printed on paper made from 100% post-consumer waste at a plant powered by biogas.

Industry, NGOs and Government” held at the Ross School in June. Lyon organized the conference, sponsored by the Erb Institute in cooperation with the Corporate Sustainability Initiative at Duke University and The Sustainability Consortium.

Discussions focused on the proliferation of products identified as “green,” what the green label means, the future of green markets and how green marketing might be shaped by government regulations, corporate claims of environmental responsibility, and evaluations by NGOs or other impartial organizations.

Green marketing also is a good topic for case studies, Erb students have learned. For example, Sherwin-Williams is featured in a new green marketing case study created by the Erb Institute. Andrew Hoffman, Arie Jongejan, Erb ’10, and Michael Buday, Erb ’11, wrote the SherwinWilliams case study with the help of SNRE students.

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What we need is to build trust at the consumer level with well-documented labels.

Greening Markets portunity to learn from Lyon and other scholars who are doing cutting-edge research. Among the course topics Lyon teaches are energy economics and policy, environmental governance, non-market strategy, managerial economics, business and economic strategy in the public arena, game theory, business strategy and the management of innovation.

Profile

Jake Swenson As sustainability manager for environmental affairs at Staples, Jake Swenson, Erb ’03, is helping lead the office supply giant’s efforts to reduce its environmental impact.

“The size of the company—more than 2,000 retail stores and 91,000 associates globally—and the fact that we offer consumers and Fortune 500 companies everything from office supplies and furniture to printing and technology services give us an opportunity to influence a lot of people globally,” Swenson said.

He works with merchandising, Staples Brands Group and other departments to expand eco-preferable product and service offerings and with business partners to launch ecoservices like technology recycling.

“My Erb experience provided me with the business and environmental knowledge I bring to Staples. I still sometimes consult books and

case studies from my days at Erb to help me make the right decisions. It’s also great to reconnect with my peers in the Erb community and learn from what others are doing.”

While a student, Swenson learned about fuel cell vehicles through an internship with General Motors Corp. fuel cell program in Warren, Michigan, and helped prepare a corporate responsibility report for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. “That internship helped me understand how to put a corporate social responsibility report together and the challenges of collecting information from a variety of people across an organization,” said Swenson, who today tracks and reports key corporate responsibility indicators at Staples.

One of the biggest internal challenges of being a sustainability manager, Swenson said, “is building a common understanding across the organization about what we’re trying to accomplish and how it links to the overall business strategy.”

Swenson learned about the intricacies of implementing sustainable initiatives and culture in organizations while working on a master’s team project at DTE Energy. The Erbstudent team worked with Ryan Waddington, Erb ’99, then at DTE Energy, to develop a roadmap to gauge where employees were with respect to sustainability and benchmarked the utility with similar companies.

At Staples, Swenson said, “We’ve seen an increase in consumer demand for green products over the past few years as the environment has become a hot topic and people have become more educated. Large business customers have come along the farthest as they find that ‘going green’ helps the planet and doesn’t have to cost more.”

“Supply chain management­—making sure products are responsibly sourced—is a challenge for all retailers,” he noted. At Staples’ annual

supplier summit this fall, the firm’s CEO and senior vice president of merchandising challenged suppliers to significantly reduce packaging waste and collaborate to make their products more sustainable. Staples is focusing on products and packaging because 93 percent of the firm’s impact on the environment is from the products it sells, Swenson said.

“If we can make changes in these areas, we’ll be doing a lot more for the planet. I feel good about the direction we’re headed and the opportunities we have at Staples to improve our environmental performance in the years to come.”

“[One of the biggest challenges] is building a common understanding across the organization about what we’re trying to accomplish and how it links to the overall business strategy.”

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2,500 attend Net Impact Conference

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ulture counts when it comes to corporate sustainability, Liz Abbett, Anna Coldham and Ryan Whisnant, all Erb ’10, wrote in their master’s project titled “Organizational culture and the success of corporate sustainability initiatives: An empirical analysis using the Competing Values Framework.”

The students gathered data from 23 companies in multiple industries using the Organization Culture Assessment Instrument, a diagnostic tool developed by Ross School Professor Kim Cameron. Cameron and Andrew Hoffman advised the students, who sought to understand the relationship between a company’s culture and the success of its sustainability initiatives, and the role collaboration plays. Companies are learning that environmental sustainability offers competitive opportunities, improves efficiency and opens up new markets, the students concluded.

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Net Impact local chapter President Taka Isshiki, Erb ’11, Jamie Shea, Erb ’12, and other Erb Institute students played a leadership role in organizing the 18th annual Net Impact Conference “20/20 Vision for a Sustainable Decade” held in October at the Ross School.

Shea chaired the conference planning team. More than 2,500 professionals and students explored the latest ideas, tools and careers in areas of corporate responsibility, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

“For nearly 20 years the Net Impact Conference has been the leading event that brings together current and future leaders to unlock the power of business to improve the world,” said Net Impact Executive Director Liz Maw. “The perspectives that converge at the conference and the resulting energy provide attendees the inspiration, tools and ideas to lead sustainable change.”

Speakers included: Kim Jeffery from Nestlé Waters North America and William McDonough, author of Cradle to Cradle, who discussed “From Source to Blue Bin: Extending U.S. Beverage Producer Responsibility.”

Susan M. Cischke of The Ford Motor Company, Aron Cramer of Business for Social Responsibility and Rose Kirk of Verizon Communications, who talked about “Corporate Responsibility 2020: The Future of Sustainable Business.”

Srikant M. Datar of Harvard University, James P. Walsh of the Ross School of Business and Judith Samuelson of The Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, who discussed “The Future of Management Education.”

For nearly 20 years the Net Impact Conference has been the leading event that brings together current and future leaders to unlock the power of business to improve the world. The perspectives that converge at the conference and the resulting energy provide attendees the inspiration, tools and ideas to lead sustainable change.

Management Innovation Profile

Banorte Bank Was it great chemistry, excellent mentoring or luck that made Banorte Bank’s first partnership with the Erb Institute a huge success?

Mayra Hernandez, Managing Director of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for Banorte, isn’t sure, but she and Fausto Hernandez, Managing Director of Group Strategic Planning at Mexico’s third-largest bank, look forward to working with future Erb Institute teams to experience more of the high-quality, collaborative teamwork the Erb-student team displayed.

The Banorte-Erb partnership developed after U-M alumnus Michael Hokenson, Erb ’05, managing director of Minlam Asset Management, introduced Mayra Hernandez to another friend, Jeremy Taub, Erb ’11.

“Corporate social responsibility quickly bound us as friends,” said Mayra Hernandez.

Taub worked with Mayra Hernandez and Fausto Hernandez, who are not related, and faculty advisers to design the master’s project.

It was modeled after the Ross School’s actionbased Multidisciplinary Action Projects.

Prior to enrolling at U-M, Taub worked with several philanthropic organizations and more than 100 non profits in New York, distributing capital, providing strategic consulting services to nonprofit leaders and bringing sustainable practices to grantees.

Other members of the multicultural and multidisciplinary team included: »» Laura Frey, Erb ’11, who previously worked as a consultant in Costa Rica’s eco-tourism industry, as a board member of conservation and development organizations, and as a founder of a microcredit revolving community fund.

»» Marcos Mancini, Erb ’12, who co-founded a nonprofit Catholic youth organization in his native Argentina and worked as an associate for Ecotecnica America Latina S.A. in Argentina, where he helped develop an environmental impact assessment study for a 1,350 megawatt wind farm. »» Tina Tam, Erb ’11, a native of Hong Kong, who was a content publishing manager at Microsoft, where she co-founded an internal group to promote environmental awareness and influence company policies.

After performing a series of analyses, including an industry analysis of best practices on both a global and regional scale, the Erb-student team provided Banorte a CSR strategy. The strategy included immediate and long-term initiatives and a tool to evaluate and prioritize initiatives.

“We now have a tangible product with a roadmap on how to achieve our goals in the area of corporate social responsibility.”

In addition to their business expertise, team members brought great enthusiasm to the project, Mayra Hernandez said. “They are not jaded. They still believe they can change the world.”

Frey, Mancini, Tam and Taub agree the master’s project was one of the best team experiences they’ve had. Team members met often and rotated the project manager role; each member also understood all aspects of the project.

The students traveled several times to Mexico, where they presented their findings and recommendations to the bank’s top leadership team. “Mayra and Fausto also made themselves available to us throughout the process,” Tam said.

Expressing the bank’s appreciation for the team’s results, Fausto Hernandez said, “We now have a tangible product with a roadmap on how to achieve our goals in the area of corporate social responsibility. We also have built a mentoring relationship with the students that we would like to continue. This is something that doesn’t happen with traditional consultants.”

Banorte Team with Mayra Hernandez and Fausto Hernandez (center)

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About The Erb Institute

External Advisory Board

The Erb Institute’s mission is to produce leaders, knowledge and transformative tools that work to create socially and environmentally sustainable economies. To this end, the Institute fosters professional education, public outreach and scientific scholarship that support leaders and change agents in moving societies toward more sustainable futures.

The Erb Institute administrative offices are located in the Ross School of Business and in the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Detailed maps and directions may be found on our website at: http://www.erb. umich.edu/About/Contact-Us.htm .

You may also contact us at erbinstitute@ umich.edu.

Additional copies of this report may be downloaded from our website at: http://www. erb.umich.edu/About/Erb2010AnnualReport.pdf

The External Advisory Board’s Thomas P. Lyon Director, Dow Chemical Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce, Ross School of Business Andrew J. Hoffman Associate Director, Holcim (U.S.) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise Thomas N. Gladwin Associate Director, Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise Richard J. Bunch Managing Director rbunch@umich.edu / 734.764.2521 H. Dominique Abed Marketing Communications Specialist hdabed@umich.edu / 734.763.8155 Cynthia A. Cleveland MBA / MS Program Coordinator cyndyc@umich.edu / 734.647.9709

Dawn Evans Administration and Financial Affairs Manager msdawne@umich.edu/ 734.647.6621

objective is to keep the Erb

Julie Kwon Administrative Assistant julikwon@umich.edu / 734.647.9799

and tomorrow’s leaders to create a

Henry Ladd Events Coordinator hladd@umich.edu / 734.647.9799

content, program structure and

Sara Soderstrom Post-Doctoral Research Fellow capasb@umich.edu

mentoring and advising, network-

Institute’s educational programs in the forefront of preparing today’s more sustainable future. The EAB advises on curriculum, including delivery. EAB members also support students directly through ing, and by providing projects, internships and job opportunities.

Markus Kitzmueller Post-Doctoral Research Fellow mkitzmue@umich.edu Marlene Janzen Le Ber Visiting Post-Doctoral Research Fellow leberm@umich.edu

Bama Athreya President, Global Works Foundation Nancy Bacon Senior Advisor, United Solar Ovonic/ Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. David Berdish Manager, Social Sustainability, Ford Motor Company Lauren Bigelow CEO, Growth Capital Network Katharine Richter Brass Ecomagination Leader, GE Energy Meghan Chapple-Brown Director, Office of Sustainability George Washington University

2010 Erb internship Employers Dairy Management Inc Dell Deloitte Dow Chemical Dow Kokam DTE Energy - Renewable Energy Business Development Duke Energy E&Co Eaton Corp Truck Innovation Group EDF EDF Climate Corps: Bloomberg EDF Climate Corps: Franklin Templeton Investments EDF Climate Corps: HCA Healthcare EDF Climate Corps: JBG Companies EDF Climate Corps: JCPenney EDF Climate Corps: Target EDF Innovation Exchange EDF/Walmart Partnership

Fair Food Network Ford GE RELP Google Grupo Financiero Banorte Harley-Davidson Motor Co Hazrah Entertainment IDEO Inovo Institute at the Golden Gate International Labor Rights Forum Johnson Controls Johnson Controls- Institute for Building Efficiency Masco Corporation McKinsey Mechanical Energy Systems National Grid NextEnergy PATH

Piper Jaffray Primus Power S4 Energy SAP Shepherd Advisors Siemens AG Sitawi SRG Global Sunrun Inc. TerraCycle The Card - Start up The Microcarbon Foundation Triterra Wal*Mart Waste Management Wello

Charles Griffith Clean Vehicles and Fuels Director, Ecology Center

Eric Olson Senior Vice President, Business for Social Responsibility

Erika Guerra Corporate Industrial Ecology, Holcim (US) Inc.

Steven Percy Chairman & CEO (retired), BP America

Gilbert Hedstrom Founder and Principal, Hedstrom Associates

Richard Plewa Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Sustainability, Comerica Bank

Reynold Hendrickson Manager, StarPak Group, ForestCove LLC Mel Jones President and CEO, Sterling Planet, Inc.

Mark Ritz Principle, Barton Consulting Services, LLC Gwen Ruta Director, Corporate Partnerships Environmental Defense Fund

David Clark Director, Sustainability, AmcorPET

Jonathan Koch Managing Director/Partner, US Renewables Group

Haig Sakoian Director, EHS Audit, Alcoa

Jarod Davis Sustainability External Engagement Leader, Sustainability & EH&S, Dow Chemical Company

Christopher Kolb President & CEO, Michigan Environmental Council

Helen Taylor State Director, Michigan Chapter, The Nature Conservancy

George Kuper President, Council of Great Lakes Industries

William Thomas Counsel; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Jim Frey Principal, CEO and Co-Founder, Resource Recycling Systems, Inc.

Mark LaCroix Executive Vice President, Global Business Development, The CarbonNeutral Company

Robert Tierney Manager, Business Development/ Strategic Planning; United Technologies Corp. Power

Peter Fusaro Chairman and Founder, Global Change Associates

Loch McCabe President, Shepherd Advisors

Joseph Vaillancourt Managing Director-Organic Growth, S4 Energy Solutions; Waste Management

John Ehrmann President and Senior Partner, Meridian Institute

1BOG (1 Block Off the Grid) Accenture Management Consulting AMEC Atwell Group Aurora Organic Dairy Axio Power Banorte, E&Co Barclays Capital Bimbo Bakeries USA Booz & Co. Boston Consulting Group CARE CEI Capital Management Chicago Workforce Investment Council Cisco Civic Consulting Alliance Clean Energy Coalition Council on Environmental Quality Credit Suisse Investment Banking Division

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Lee Gorman Principal, Barton Consulting Services, LLC Catherine Greener Principal Cleargreen Advisors

Peter Mertz CEO, Global Forest Partners LP Paul Murray Director, Environmental Health and Safety, Herman Miller, Inc.

Ryan Waddington Managing Director, Huron River Ventures

Strategic Advisory Council The Erb Institute’s Strategic Advisory Council advises the Institute about long-range sustainability trends that are likely to impact global markets and the broader society, and the Institute’s organizational development, programs and priorities. The Council works to assure that the Institute remains in the vanguard when it comes to research and educating the next generation, thereby increasing the Institute’s impact among organizations and leaders pursuing a sustainable future.

Neil Hawkins, Sc.D., Chair Vice President, Sustainability and Environment, Health and Safety, The Dow Chemical Company Matt Arnold Principal, Sustainability and Climate Change, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Wayne Balta Vice President, Corporate Environmental Affairs and Product Safety, IBM Corporation John Denniston Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

John Erb President, Erb Family Foundation Alan Hecht Director of Sustainable Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency D. Mitchell Jackson Director, Environmental Affairs and Sustainability, FedEx Ann Klee Vice President, Environment, Health & Safety; General Electric Company Mindy Lubber President, Ceres

George Pilko Founder & Chairman, Pilko & Associates Glenn Prickett Chief External Affairs Officer, The Nature Conservancy Jeff Seabright Vice President for Environment and Water Resources, The Coca Cola Company

donors The Erb Institute for Global Sustainable

Founders

Enterprise is funded entirely through the

Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb

generosity of private donors, led and inspired by the founding vision of Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb. Our endowments and operating funds support student scholarships, internships and master’s projects; events, speakers, conferences and outreach through the media and publications; and groundbreaking teaching and research of our faculty. As enrollment in the Erb MBA/MS program has surged over the years, demand for our programs and services has also grown, making the support and engagement of our donors more important

Gold Alcoa Foundation Peter & Carolyn Mertz Pharmacia Corporation

Sponsors Diamond Dow Chemical Company Holcim (U.S.) Corporation McGraw Foundation

Silver Ford Motor Company Lee Gorman & Mark Ritz Steven & Barbara Percy Weyerhaeuser Corporation

Platinum Stuart & Jo Ann Nathan Burton and Molly Vincent Foundation

Bronze CMS Energy Gray Boyce & Tom Bliska Jr.

than ever. The faculty, students and staff of The Institute wish to express our heartfelt thanks to the donors listed here, as well as

Donor Honor Roll Includes contributions received during the 2010 calendar year

numerous other advisors and program contributors.

$1 Million+ Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb $125,000–$250,000 Scott M. Elrod Peter and Carolyn Mertz McGraw Foundation $10,000–$15,000 Gray Boyce and Thomas Bliska Jr Steven and Barbara Percy Polly Percy Ford Motor Company Alcoa $2,000-$5,000 General Motors Foundation Kari and Ryan Waddington Peter N. Scott Alfred R. Glancy III Joan C. Glancy Scott A. Robinson Glancy IV Douglas R. Glancy The Glancy Foundation Ruth Roby Glancy

$500–$750 Patricia Smotherman Kevin A. Greiner Robyn S. Roberts Maia S. Sallouti Melissa K. Vernon Erb Family Foundation Anne S. Barton $200-$400 Rebecca E. Nadel Richard F. Chandler Bryan D. Magnus Dr. Mark B. Milstein Accenture Foundation, Inc. Laura K. Bruce Lance Smotherman Dr. Maureen G. Phipps Rachel E. Fineberg Alan W. Phipps Rachel Sylvan Theodore J. Ludwick

$75–$125 Jon M. Stauffer Elizabeth B. Abbett Ashley B. Swenson Jake M. Swenson Michele L. Diener Nina Henning Jennifer R. McLaughlin Elizabeth M. Uhlhorn Kristofer L. Jadd Robert Tierney Heather A. Lair $25-$70 David N. Cieminis ChevronTexaco Dr. Donald E. Cleveland Jennifer A. Layke Megan A. DeYoung Nathan A. Arbitman Marianna V. Sachse Astrid E. Cleveland Joel T. Mlinar Aaron Emery James Nicole J. Armbruster Rebecca S. Brooke

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Mary Jo Frank: writer Mike Gould: principal photographer Dominique Abed: editor Design: Savitski Design, Ann Arbor Printing: University Lithoprinters, Inc., Ann Arbor

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