Erb Institute: 25 Years

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TAB LE OF CONTENTS 4 The Erb Institute: 25 Years of Advancing Business Sustainability 8 Fred and Barbara Erb: A Legacy of Impact

IN MAY OF 1996,

Fred and Barbara Erb made the original donation that created the Erb Institute.

That generous gift (and even larger gifts that followed) fueled the growth of a unique educational program that goes beyond the traditional dichotomy of business vs. environment to a new aspiration of business for the environment.

Thus was founded the Erb Institute’s original dual-degree MBA/MS program between what are now the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan.

10 Incorporating Justice Across the Board 12 Faculty Directors Spotlight 22 New Working Groups Deepen the Institute’s Business Engagement 26

Today, as we look back on our first quartercentury, the Erb Institute is unrivaled as a university sustainability institute. The generosity of the Erb family and our other donors has made us financially sustainable, which frees us to focus our efforts on making a difference for sustainability. The heart of our success in those efforts lies in our community: a large and increasingly influential alumni base, a passionate group of graduate and undergraduate students, a team of actively engaged faculty affiliates, a dedicated and creative staff, and a committed set of partners and advisors in business and civil society.

Over the years, we have expanded our perspective on sustainability to recognize the importance of not only climate change and the environment, but also social, human rights and diversity issues. Our work is grounded in science, but at its core is a fundamental ethical commitment to realize human potential, build community, steward our natural environment and contribute to what the Ross School calls “positive business” in society. Or, in the words of our institute mission, “to create a sustainable world through the power of business.”

We stand between two schools at one of the world’s premier research universities. Scholarly

Erb Postdoctoral Program: Leading Pivotal Research on Business Sustainability 30 Erb Undergraduate Fellows Hit the Ground Running 33 Erb on the Road Gets Students Beyond the Classroom 34 Impact Projects: Erb’s Signature ActionBased Learning Opportunity 36 Erb Students Create New Climate Venture Fund 38 Student Researchers Shine a Light on Business Sustainability Challenges 40 Alumni Spotlight 46 The Future of the Erb Institute 2

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research is the foundation for educating the next generation of business leaders and will always be central to our impact. In addition to our two pillars of research and education, we are increasingly building out our third pillar: practical engagement with business, nonprofit and policy leaders as partners in achieving our mission. We seek to be a business sustainability institute that is not apart from but rather steeped in the challenges, complexities and opportunities of global business in the 21st century—and that is pointing the way forward.

Looking forward to the next 25 years, we must expect even more complexity and uncertainty, along with continually rising expectations for business. Although our understanding of sustainability, equity and the human condition will continue to evolve, our defining aspiration as an institute will not. We go back to basics: the original inspiration of Fred and Barbara Erb to prepare future leaders and empower business as a force for good.

Tom Lyon Faculty Director, Erb Institute

Terry Nelidov Managing Director, Erb Institute 1

“I have the fondest memories of multiple meetings with Fred and Barbara in the 1990s to ask them to consider funding a then-crazy idea at Michigan: a partnership between the School of Natural Resources and Environment and the Business School.

Dean Garry Brewer and I called it the Corporate Environmental Management Program. Members of both our faculties viewed it with suspicion while a handful were enthusiastic. I’m grateful for the growth and development of the program over the last 25 years, to the Erbs for their abundant support, and to all of you who have made it happen.

Meetings with Fred at his office always involved his questioning us intensively, taking voluminous B . JOSEPH WHITE notes, and treating us to a nice DE AN EMERITUS, R OSS SCHOOL lunch with his favorite dessert, O F BUSINESS a big chocolate sundae!”

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E OWE THE ENTIRE ERB FAMILY A DEEP DEBT OF GRATITUDE for their vision, generous support and ongoing engagement over the course of our first 25 years. Fred and Barbara Erb will always be in our hearts and at the heart of everything we do as an institute. Their spirit of kindness and devotion to the health of their community, the Great Lakes they so loved, and the planet itself serves as a torch that has been proudly carried forward by the next generation of Erb family members. We are honored to be associated with you, and we could not be prouder to bear your name.

Tom Lyon

Faculty Director, Erb Institute

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The Erb Institute 25 Years of Advancing Business Sustainability

BY ALL ISON TORR ES BU RTKA

was his passion, he also was very concerned about the environment and the planet that was being left to future generations. My mother and my father had a deep love of the natural environment.”

The Erb Institute had seven graduates in 1996, and now, more than 600 have graduated with dual MBA and MS degrees from Ross and SEAS, respectively.

What business sustainability means now

hat does sustainability in business mean today, and what does it look like going forward? For the past 25 years, the Erb Institute has been at the forefront of redefining sustainability, and it looks forward to continuing to do so for the next 25.

Looking back In 1996, the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Environmental Management Institute was founded as a joint venture between the Ross School of Business and the then-School of Natural Resources and Environment (now the School for Environment and Sustainability).

At that time, most businesses’ attention to sustainability focused narrowly on 4

environmental challenges. Chief sustainability officers didn’t exist yet, and companies’ consideration of their environmental footprint was typically limited, if they considered it at all.

“Fred and Barbara were way ahead of their time in sponsoring and funding the Erb Institute.

They believed that business needed to play a strong role in bettering their environmental performance and impact,” said Neil Hawkins, president of the Erb Family Foundation. At the time, that was revolutionary, he said.

Fred and Barbara Erb, who met at the University of Michigan, saw a way to bring together business and environmentalism. John Erb, chairman of the Erb Family Foundation, said about Fred, his father: “Even though business E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

The Erb Institute has been at the forefront of broadening the scope of sustainability beyond the environment to include social issues, such as community investment, employee engagement, human rights, and diversity and justice.

“In the recent decade, the focus on social issues, environment and business has grown,” said Associate Professor Sara Soderstrom, an Erb faculty member. “Currently, a specific consideration of justice is gaining more—and needed— attention, especially as we consider the inequitable impacts of climate change and the potential for business to amplify or address these impacts.”

More businesses now have sustainability embedded within their core business models, long-term strategies, and daily operations.

Leaders recognize it as essential to the business, rather than a separate division or a side project.

“Twenty-five years ago, we were fighting to get these issues on the table,” said Sangeeta Ranade, vice president of Distributed Energy ERB.UMICH.EDU

Resources at the New York Power Authority and a 2001 Erb alum. “Now, you see capital flowing into clean energy projects and related businesses.”

The Erb Institute’s mission is to create a socially and environmentally sustainable world through the power of business. This happens through teaching, research, and business engagement — equipping future leaders with the knowledge and skills they need to advance business sustainability.

Education: The dual-degree graduate program prepared 2020 alum Madeleine Carnemark to “speak to business problems while also applying an environmental lens,” she said. “A lot of what we did at SEAS is bottomup research, and so much of business school is top-down. Seeing if you can really lean into that dissonance and explore it” has been invaluable, said Carnemark, now an associate at McKinsey.

The institute provides extensive outside-ofthe-classroom learning experiences, including Erb on the Road, a three-day immersion course that takes students to businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations across Michigan to learn directly from them.

Last year, the Erb Institute launched the undergraduate Erb Fellows program to deliver business and sustainability education, community, and co-curricular learning to Ross BBA and Program in the Environment students.

This program is the first of its kind at U-M, and 73 fellows are currently enrolled.

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“Fred and Barbara were way ahead of their time in sponsoring and funding the Erb Institute.

They believed that business needed to play a strong role in bettering their environmental performance and impact.”

N EI L HAW KI N S

Undergraduates have long been demanding these sorts of opportunities, said Claire Haase, a former undergraduate Erb Fellow: “It’s representative of the organic, growing interest that my generation is having in these issues.”

Research and business engagement: The institute conducts both scholarly and applied research, and it partners with businesses to help them tackle their most pressing challenges. For example, Partnership Projects pair companies and nonprofits with students to launch tailormade projects. Erb’s Sustainability Academy executive education program helps executives transform and rethink business models, strategy, and operations for long-term social and environmental sustainability.

“The Sustainability Academy provided 6

a very strong platform to create cohorts of intrapreneurs to spur innovation within a single company (Dow), and these leaders became powerful change agents within their functions and businesses,” said Hawkins, who previously served as Dow’s CSO. Another area of innovation is corporate political responsibility: Firms need to become more transparent about their political activity, argues Erb Faculty Director Tom Lyon. But many executives lack an integrated view of their firms’ political engagement. The institute has convened a Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce to help companies respond to these challenges.

Looking ahead Business sustainability has made strides, but in its current form, it will not solve the root causes of the problems at hand, argues Ross Professor Andy Hoffman. Business must transform the market, and this market transformation is the next phase of business sustainability. The institute will continue to focus on market transforE R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

mation moving forward, and its forthcoming five-year strategic plan lays out its vision for how it intends to help realize this transition.

Erb Institute Managing Director Terry Nelidov is looking ahead to the institute’s 2022–26 strategy. “We completed a series of roundtables with senior business and nonprofit leaders around the globe to provide input to our next strategic plan,” he said.

“Their message was loud and clear! If we really believe that this is the ‘decisive decade’ for sustainability action, then we need to think big and bold about business transformation and how to prepare the next generation of business people to lead the charge.”

“By being at the forefront of sustainabilityfocused research, engaging with hundreds of ERB.UMICH.EDU

students in the classroom, connecting diverse stakeholders in scaling our knowledge, and supporting networks of alumni, stakeholders, and students, the Erb Institute is uniquely situated to scale local impact globally, amplifying our expertise and supporting each other to mobilize for change,” Soderstrom said.

The Erb Institute will continue to spark these conversations, equip leaders to confront tough challenges, and help develop solutions that will keep pushing sustainability forward—for the next 25 years and beyond.

This article was originally published in Ross Dividend.

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JO H N E R B

school alone. Joe had been working developing a program with Gary Brewer at the School of Natural Resources and Environment and some others and introduced my parents to the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP). They were excited about it and made their first gift of $5 million in 1996. The program started small—with only a couple of students per cohort—but it grew. Three years later the University approached them again to help endow professorships. My father offered a $5 million gift if the University could find others to match it. That helped bring on Dow Chemical and Holcim Cement to secure the total $10 million that was needed. Later, they made another $10 million gift with a match for scholarships. My parents loved the interactions they had with the Erb students over the years and getting to hear about their interests and stories.

“Erbers are passionate.

Engaged. The Erb community cares and is such an engaging and highly involved community. There’s no boundary or limits.

When Erbers see an issue, they address it.”

Fred and Barbara Erb A Legacy of Impact

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ohn Erb is the son of Barbara and Fred

Erb, whose generosity helped ensure a stronger future for the Erb Institute 25 years ago. John is Chairman of the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation and serves on the Strategic Advisory Council Board for the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, the Advisory Board for the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute, and the President’s Advisory Group.

Amelia Brinkerhoff and Carlotta Pham are CoPresidents of the Erb Institute’s Student Advisory Board and graduated in April 2022. Amelia and Carlotta sat down with John to learn more about the Erb Institute history.

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Could you share with us the story of how your parents, Fred and Barbara, decided to create the Erb Institute?

My dad started his college career in engineering at Cornell, but ultimately went on to get a degree from University of Michigan’s business school. Because my dad was an alum, my parents became acquainted with Joe White, who was Dean of the Business School at the time. Joe asked my parents what they were most passionate about. They said that they were concerned about the planet for future generations. He understood that my parents had a more expansive perspective on business than what was represented at the business E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

It’s 2022, the climate crisis is growing all around us and we see many impacts on a local level. What do you think your parents would think about the state of the Erb Institute and Foundation today?

My mom would say that the student Erbers need to get out there and do more! They would be disappointed that more progress hasn’t been made on climate and sustainability issues—but they would also be optimistic about everything that needs to be done. Sustainability was an emerging concept at the time and my parents wouldn’t have had a definition for it, but they would have supported what it looks like today! I think that they would also hope to see sustainability embedded across all the schools in the University—we need the engineers, the public policy people, artists, scientists, the public health experts, and all. We need every school invested and involved to be able to address these critical sustainability issues.

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What are some words that come to mind when you think of Erb? Passionate. Erbers are passionate. Engaged. The Erb community cares and is such an engaging and highly involved community. There’s no boundary or limits. When Erbers see an issue, they address it.

What are your thoughts/feelings about investing in a degree that emphasizes the private sector as opposed to a public policy or technology focused approach?

Everyone has to be involved; business has to be at the table. There is a people side to business. People need income and a quality of life. Business has to be for the good of people, but businesses can also be to the detriment of people when they are just about the owners and shareholders and the short term profit. The smart business people think long term. You can make short term profit for your family for a generation or two, but if you damage the environment, what is it worth? The business case is there for investing money on the prevention of environmental degradation and finding the solutions. It is much more economical in the long run—and it’s the right thing to do. We need to understand the true, full costs of business processes for people and the planet.

When you think about your family’s legacy, what feels most important for the community to know?

My parents were dynamic, intelligent individuals.

At the end of the day they were normal, humble people. But they got involved. They might not have been “the experts”, but showing up, learning and being part of something is what counts. It is up to individuals to get involved instead of sitting back. What my parents loved and respected in Erb students was that they were people willing to get involved in things beyond traditional business and see broader opportunities where they could apply their skill sets. My parents knew that talented and passionate Erbers could—and would—change business for the good of the planet and future!

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Incorporating Justice Across the Board

problems. Ellen Shenette of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Climate Corps visited the class to talk about challenges EDF was grappling with, and the students completed a project offering various suggestions. Next fall, Soderstrom will teach an iteration of this course for grad students at SEAS.

Environmental Defense Fund

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he need to understand the connections between business sustainability and justice is becoming more apparent, and these two issues are intrinsically connected. Erb faculty member Sara Soderstrom has been building research and classroom instruction pathways that demonstrate how critical it is for business leaders to adopt justice-centered approaches to their sustainability work.

“They might not historically have been talked about together, but as these issues are becoming—unfortunately—more problematic, you’re seeing these connections,” said Soderstrom, who is director of the Erb Undergraduate Fellows program.

The relationship between business sustainability and justice is increasingly evident in the classroom. “Many [students] are starting to see connections between things like climate justice and business climate strategies, so it feels like it’s an area they need to be able to understand,” Soderstrom said.

Soderstrom’s work often highlights issues of justice, diversity, equity, inclusion and 10

accessibility (DEIA). In “Business and the Natural Environment,” a course she teaches, she said, “we made sure that we were bringing in cases that considered issues of justice. We ran a climate simulation that talked about the various impacts of different policies for addressing climate change and how business plays into that space.”

Four Erb dual-degree students served as graduate student instructors in this course this past year. “[Justice] is something that we have integrated in multiple touch points over the course of the semester,” Soderstrom said.

Soderstrom’s courses ask students for some self-reflection. For example, she said: “Recognizing this as a problem, what do [students] wish was part of their education? And what would a business degree of the future look like if it was centering around sustainability and justice?”

In the fall of 2020, Soderstrom started teaching the course “Business, Sustainability, and DEIA” for undergrads. “I use research quite a bit in this class to show that there are issues with lack of sustainability and unjust outcomes, and then to articulate how difficult it is to tackle these,” she said.

The course also presents some real-world E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

Shenette’s involvement in that course led to a research project in which Soderstrom and Chantelle Barretto, then an Erb dual-degree student, helped integrate DEI and justice perspectives into EDF’s Climate Corps fellowship program.

They conducted interviews and workshops for people who work at EDF and for its Climate Corps alumni. They delved into issues such as how fellows are recruited, how to engage fellows during training on issues of justice, and how to partner with sponsors in considering the justicerelated effects of their work. Soderstrom and Barretto then built out recommendations for EDF. Soderstrom’s ongoing research with EDF has also included work with former postdoc Todd Schifeling on how EDF is building a network around climate. (“Advancing Reform: Embedded Activism to Develop Climate Solutions,” Academy of Management, 2021.)

FoodLab Soderstrom teamed up with Associate Professor Kate Heinze in UM’s School of Kinesiology for research on small-scale food entrepreneurs in Detroit and the business collective organization FoodLab. Their research was published in Organization & Environment (“From Paradoxical Thinking to Practicing Sustainable Business: The Role of a Business Collective Organization in Supporting Entrepreneurs,” 2019).

FoodLab was bringing together diverse entrepreneurs and engaging them in dialogue ERB.UMICH.EDU

about environmental and social issues that have broader sustainability implications, such as: “How do we think about an equitable food economy?

How do we lower barriers of entry for food entrepreneurs so that this is a more accessible market?” Soderstrom explained. “What they were doing uniquely is really intentionally thinking about the diversity of who’s involved in this work.

And how do we learn from each other?”

As FoodLab facilitated dialogue, entrepreneurs started conversations, began to work together, and then worked with FoodLab “to make larger-scale collaborative action toward a more sustainable space,” Soderstrom said. They also considered how the entrepreneurs can do so “in a way that reflects the diversity of the entrepreneurs involved in the industry and that lowers the barriers of entry for entrepreneurs in the future.”

Another paper by Soderstrom and Heinze on FoodLab that is currently under review suggests that, “by having these types of dialogues with people whom you wouldn’t normally meet, you start building relationships that then lead to more effective networks for change,” Soderstrom said.

Wolverine Pathways This summer, Soderstrom’s teaching will extend to even younger students. She has adapted her business and sustainability course into a fourweek class that she will teach for the Wolverine Pathways college prep program. “The idea is to give students a chance to explore what classes are like but also think about how that might influence what degrees they pursue and what careers they think about,” she said.

The program targets students who come from areas that are not well represented at the University of Michigan, Soderstrom said. “This is a way of trying to engage in a conversation around business and sustainability and expand who thinks about this as a career path.”

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Faculty Directors Spotlight Interviews showcasing the breadth and depth of the Erb Institute’s impact over the last 25 years

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE THROUGH JUSTICE AND CORPORATE POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY An Interview with

TOM LYON

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he Erb Institute’s current faculty director, Tom Lyon, first arrived in 2004.

He has seen both the institute and the landscape of business sustainability evolve significantly since then and through his first stint as director from 2006 to 2011. Here, he shares his perspective on where the institute has been and where it’s going.

What was the Erb Institute like when you joined it in 2004?

At that point, it was a small, insurgent organization. It had a bit of a countercultural vibe to it. Sustainability in the corporate world just wasn’t a very established thing. So the students who found their way to the Erb Institute were pretty self-motivated, pathfinding individuals because they had to be— because there was no path out there for this kind of career. And so we would meet out at Tom Gladwin’s barn, and it was big enough to hold the whole community. It was a small, family kind of experience.

Over the years, it’s gotten much larger, and we’ve gone from a small start-up to more of a midsized organization that has become more professionalized, more structured and more institutionalized, all in good ways. Those things may sound boring, but they’re necessary to grow to the professional level. We have a bigger staff 12

now, we have better data and we operate much more efficiently.

It’s important for us to remember how fortunate we are to have this institute. It has 25 years of history behind it, and we’re incredibly fortunate to have the Erb family still very actively involved. Fred and Barbara Erb have passed, unfortunately, but we will always appreciate and honor them for having created this community of people with a shared commitment. Now, we need to appreciate what we’ve got and maintain it and be good custodians, and I think this community is very cognizant of that.

How has the institute changed as business sustainability has become more mainstream?

In my first stint as Erb director, I felt like a lot of what I was doing was helping us go mainstream—helping us develop capabilities, processes and placement opportunities for students. We were also very active in pushing the research agenda around corporate sustainability and establishing it as a legitimate research E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

field. By the middle of the twenty-teens, we had become very professionalized. There’s a progression, where you incorporate the latest advances in thinking about sustainability, and then the definition of the field kind of moves forward. We’re really seeing that happening right now, as we talk more about justice and corporate political responsibility. Those are things that were not part of the conversation 10 years ago.

So what we’re focusing on for the next five years is not mainstream. We’re once again kind of a countercultural, insurgent bunch of radicals pushing the envelope.

What do you see changing in the coming years that the institute and its graduates will need to be prepared for?

We see fundamental changes in how people think about business and capitalism coming over the next five to 10 years. And this isn’t about socialism—it’s about changing the rules of the capitalist game so that it provides for the planet, so that it’s equitable, so that it treats people fairly without regard to race or gender.

If we do regenerate and rebuild a bigger, better form of capitalism that’s more inclusive and more responsive to the needs of everyone, our graduates are going to need to be trained

BUILDING MOMENTUM FOR BUSINESS AND THE ENVIRONMENT An Interview with

STUART HART

to operate in a different way than was the case 20 years ago. If we are going to have a different form of capitalism, then we need to train our students to lead in that new world.

How do you see Erb continuing to lead amid these coming changes?

In all fairness, we’re the biggest and the best business sustainability institute at any university—we’re the best funded, and we have the biggest alumni base. So it really is incumbent upon us to lead. And the strategic plan that we’re formulating for the next five years is pretty bold. It pushes the envelope in a lot of ways. We can really stand proud that we are pointing a way forward that is not conventional wisdom—it’s not what we know how to do already. And we’re forcing ourselves to reinvent the institute to address the challenges that are emerging. I like to think we’re going to be able to greatly expand our impact, partly by expanding to have the undergraduate program, but also by reaching out more effectively through more executive education programs and through the thought leadership that comes out of this emphasis on justice and on corporate political responsibility that will continue to expand in the coming years.

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n 1992, Stuart Hart started up the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP), which later became part of the Erb Institute. He became the faculty director of CEMP in 1996 and was appointed Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise. He left Michigan in 1998 but returned as a visiting faculty member in 2008.

How did you get involved with the Corporate Environmental Management Program at first?

I joined the business school faculty at Michigan in 1986, and my background was non-traditional—I had a master’s degree from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, but my Ph.D. was in

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strategic decision-making from Michigan. When I joined the faculty, I started teaching the core course in corporate strategy, and by the late 80s, I was sort of growing frustrated, because I was trying to bring in content that would be relevant to what was then called “business and the environment,” before sustainability was a term of art. But there was little appetite for this kind of thing in business schools in the ’80s.

I recently did a session in Andy Hoffman’s new course on capitalism, and I’m writing a new book called The Next Capitalist Reformation. So I’ve done a lot of historical research in the past few years; one of the things that’s interesting to realize—and I lived it—was that in the ’80s, financial economists became a dominant force in business schools, helping to usher in the age of shareholder primacy and market fundamentalism that we have all been living through these past four decades. So at the time, anything that smacked of social responsibility or government intervention got pushback.

How did that begin to change at Michigan?

Around 1990, Joe White became the new dean of the business school, and Gary Brewer came from Yale to become the new dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Gary came to Michigan with the idea of building a bridge between the business school and the School of Natural Resources and Environment, so then there was energy, interest and momentum to do something in the area of business and the environment. And that’s what opened the door for me.

I jumped in with both feet, beginning in 1991.

How did the dual-degree program initially get off the ground?

It took a year or so to get all the formal approvals for the dual-degree program, so in the early going, we simply encouraged students who were already in one program or the other to apply to the other school. It took until about 1993 for us to formally launch the dual-degree program— originally called the Corporate Environmental Management Program (CEMP)—where we were able to admit students who had applied to both 14

schools from outside. As the founding director, my role was to build the program. I developed and taught two new courses—one on “Strategies for Environmental Management” and one on “Strategies for Sustainable Development”—a new term that was gaining currency.

How did the Erb Institute come about?

Fred and Barbara Erb first became interested in what we were doing about the same time we were creating the CEMP program. In fact, the early CEMP students were key to persuading the Erbs to give the original gift for the creation of the Erb Institute. Originally, it was called the Erb Institute for Environmental Management and was separate from the CEMP Program. Only later was the dual degree merged into the institute, in the late ’90s.

Could you tell us a little about your path after leaving Michigan and then returning as a visiting faculty member?

In 1998, I went to the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, where I founded the Center for Sustainable Enterprise.

I then moved to Cornell’s Johnson School of Management in 2003, where I started the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise. Most recently, I have been deeply involved in creating a new MBA program at the University of Vermont called the Sustainable Innovation MBA program.

In 2008, I was on sabbatical at Michigan from Cornell, and my visiting faculty position was a joint appointment between Erb and the William Davidson Institute. That was when I developed the line of thinking around the “Green Leap,” which leveraged my work with Clay Christensen on disruptive innovation for sustainability—that the big early opportunity when it comes to clean technologies, things like distributed solar and point-of-use water treatment, isn’t here in the U.S. mainstream market, but in underserved rural villages and urban slums. It’s a way to connect the idea of clean and regenerative technology to development and underserved communities.

I’ve been kind of a serial program starter— but it all began at Michigan. That’s really where E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

I was able to develop my perspective and point of view and write what became some of the foundational work in the emerging field, like the article “Beyond Greening: Strategies for a

Sustainable World,” which won the McKinsey Award for Best Article in the Harvard Business Review in 1997, and “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” with C.K. Prahalad in 2002.

RETHINKING SUSTAINABILITY— AND CAPITALISM MORE BROADLY An Interview with

ANDY HOFFMAN

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n 2004, Andy Hoffman was appointed Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise.

In 2011, he became the Erb Institute’s faculty director. His research on market transformation has been essential to the students’ education and the institute’s direction.

How has the Erb Institute evolved since you became Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise in 2004?

When I came here, the institute was very compact. Since then, it has gone through a transition, like going from a small-scale start-up to full commercialization. Now it’s got a very sophisticated staff with multiple functions. It has the educational program, which is always the core and still going strong. But it’s added both the undergraduate program and a stronger focus on research and engagement.

Your research has highlighted the need for market transformation as the next phase of business sustainability, to follow the initial phase of enterprise integration. How much progress has business made?

It’s scattered. There are many companies that are only now waking up to the issue of sustainability, so enterprise integration is something that they can grab onto. It makes sense to them.

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In terms of market transformation, there are areas of change happening. For example, conversations around carbon neutral or carbon negative cannot be approached with the same kind of frameworks as just carbon reduction.

Screwing in an LED light bulb will reduce my carbon footprint, but going carbon neutral is a totally different equation, a totally different way of thinking. So it’s been interesting to watch how that change in thinking has happened in some parts of the economy. For example, there are shifts going on in the auto sector. While EVs are the focus now, that is still enterprise integration. The Tesla is a great car, but it is still a car, and that is not the answer. As they start to think about alternative mobility, we start to move towards the new kind of thinking that market transformation demands.

We are also watching the beginnings of a shift within the fossil fuel sector. The war in Ukraine, for example, has forced many countries (particularly in the EU) to reexamine their dependence on fossil fuels and the vulnerabilities that dependence creates. But it’s not easy.

As much as we advance, we’re also stuck in some old ways. The oil industry will not go peacefully into the night. But how do we have a net zero economy with a fossil fuel sector? It’s just not 15

“I’ve never seen so much attention on sustainability within the corporate sector as I’m seeing right now. And I’ve never seen so many jobs for students as I’m seeing right now. We’re in a very interesting period of rapid transition.” —Andy Hoffman possible. Some companies are going to have to sunset, some sectors are going to have to sunset, and that’s going to take some time, and it represents a new challenge. For example, how do we teach future business leaders how to sunset an industry? Again, that requires a totally new way of thinking.

What insight has the experience of teaching given you on how things are changing?

I read an article recently that made an important point: As professors, we should not call our teaching a teaching “load.” It’s not a load, it’s not a burden; it’s what we do. We do research, of course, but we also teach, and teaching is not just a oneway experience—students teach me as well. I’ve had students, both undergrad and grad, analyze a case and have insights that have made me think: ‘Wow, that was really thoughtful. I never thought about it that way.’ That’s one of the joys of being at a place like the University of Michigan—the students are very bright and very engaged.

They are educating me on the extent to which the world is changing around us. They see the world very differently. For example, the Millennials’ experience has been 9-11, the great recession, COVID and now the war in Ukraine. I grew up thinking the world was stable—they’re growing up saying the world is not stable. I grew up in a world that was starting to wake up to climate change, where people were questioning it, and in my generation, some are 16

MAKING STRIDES AS A THOUGHT LEADER An Interview with

JOE ÁRVAI still questioning it. They grew up in a world that takes climate change as a given. Their generation is going to come in and supplant ours. It’s their world, and they are taking ownership of it.

At the end of the day, that’s what gives me hope—the students. They are not looking at problems as things that cannot be solved.

They’re looking at challenges and want to solve them. And the energy, the passion and the initiative they bring to this is inspiring. I’m getting approached on all sides by students who want to advocate to change the curriculum, to bring more of this content into the core of the business school. In the 18 years I’ve been here at Ross, I’ve never seen this kind of interest and energy to try and take hold of the curriculum and change it.

How do you see the Erb Institute’s role as sustainability continues to evolve?

Now is not the time to rest on our laurels. Now is a time to really think hard about what’s the next frontier, and that’s uncomfortable. But it’s where the interesting stuff lies.

Erb is the strongest program out there on business sustainability. I say that for one very simple reason: the strength of the culture. You can’t fake that—you can’t impose that. A culture happens. You can nourish it, which we’ve done.

But the extent to which Erb students take the culture on as their own and hand it off to the next generation—you can’t make people do that.

People do it because they want to, and that’s really special. That’s what the Erb Institute is.

Now we need to take that culture and bring it into the 21st century—to ask the hard questions, now that everyone is embracing the easy questions.

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n 2015, Joe Árvai took over as faculty director and was appointed Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise. His research focuses on advancing the understanding of how people process information and make decisions, especially how people make trade-offs across social, environmental and economic priorities.

How did the Erb Institute’s faculty grow during your years there?

It historically had been just the three endowed chairs that were part of Ross and SEAS, so Andy Hoffman, Tom Lyon and myself. But we made an effort to build that out and bring in faculty perspectives in an affiliate capacity. That included Sara Soderstrom, Shelie Miller, Josh Newell, Ravi Anupindi and Wren Montgomery, having them teach executive education, participate in Erb events, and so on.

How else would you say the institute evolved?

We really front-lined diversity, equity and inclusion. We diversified our student body, not to the point that any of us were happy, but at least feeling like we were beginning to make some progress. We continued to build relationships with others with respect to building that DEI pipeline, and rather than just talking about DEI as something that was important and that we planned to do, we actually made some strides to do it, with major props to Carmen Quinonez and Terry.

We also brought some new perspectives into the board. When I joined, I think there were two or three women on the board and 13 or 14 men, and we worked over the years to improve that ratio. And we brought some other forms of diversity to the board. The kind of input and ERB.UMICH.EDU

“We made a lot of big steps in engagement. We brought a lot of high-profile events to Detroit, Sustainable Brands being one of those, and Innovation Forum.…

Engagement became something that wasn’t just a nice thing to do, but it was the plan annually.” insight we got from our board, in addition to the opportunities that our board created for us, improved as a result of that.

We created partnerships with some companies—Ford, Amazon, Panera and others— where we were really trying to put ourselves out there as an entity that could do “academy in the public square” type research, versus just individual faculty members doing their own research. We put the institute out there as a research enterprise.

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“The University of Michigan’s vision to unite two premier schools to help bring cutting-edge learning and leadership training on environmental issues and business practice was a critical force in advancing sustainable development.

Thank you, Michigan and the Erb family, for supporting the pioneering work of Stuart Hart, Tom Gladwin, Tom Lyon and the hundreds of Erb students who are helping change the world. As we face huge climate change impacts and less than a decade to transform our societies, it gives me great comfort to know that the Erb diaspora is equipped to lead our world with care and solutions.”

In our executive education, we collaborated with these partners, and it helped us to be a thought leader amongst the people who could take what we were doing as an institute and immediately implement it—instead of waiting for a student to graduate and ease their way into a career over several years.

What other programs and projects gained speed?

It was really an opportunity for growth, with toolboxes, exec ed and the undergraduate program. We made a lot of big steps in engagement. We brought a lot of high-profile events to Detroit, Sustainable Brands being one of those, and Innovation Forum. We also did a big meeting in Washington, D.C., with Terry Yosie and World Environment Center, where we took our show on the road around developing sustainability metrics.

Engagement became something that wasn’t just a nice thing to do, but it was the plan

EXPANDING THE POSSIBILITIES AND GROWING COMMUNITY An Interview with

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How did these things help move the institute forward?

They gave us an opportunity to not just be a place that was a pipeline for talent, but that became a thought leader, where we were generating our own insights through our own research and our own engagement activities.

We had this incredibly deep talent pool within Erb, with Andy, Tom, Sara and other faculty that we could tap into, and we were able to become a megaphone for their voices and for their ideas, and for the ideas that are being generated by the institute as well.

This gave it a greater reach. We were able to, hopefully, influence organizations, companies and consultancies for the better.

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om Gladwin was appointed Max McGraw Chair of Corporate Environmental Management and faculty director of CEMP in 1998. CEMP later became part of the Erb Institute. He passed the baton as director of the institute in 2006, when he became associate director until he retired in 2014.

Gladwin and his barn remain a vital part of the Erb community.

When you became faculty director of CEMP in 1998, what did you set out to do first?

We needed to urgently and dramatically increase our fundraising, staffing, partnerships, conferences and coursework, to boost our global reputation for leadership in corporate environmental sustainability. We launched a strategy to do that in 1999, with great institutional support from Joe White, dean of the Business School at that time, and Dan Mazmanian, dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Immediately,

JEN N I FER LAYKE, M BA / MS 19 9 7

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annually. And I still hold up my copies of ICYMI! as a way to engage on behalf of the institute in a way that made us look like more than just a graduate program.

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both of them supported a massive fundraising campaign that would bring additional resources to the institute.

We had a lot of success. Dow established a new endowed Chair of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce, which Tom Lyon filled in 2004. Holcim funded a new Professor of Sustainable Industrial Ecology, and that allowed us to hire Andy Hoffman. Fred and Barbara Erb also agreed to increase their giving then, plus again a few years later, which put us on firm financial footing. Also in the early 2000s, we were able to dramatically increase our staffing, with the hiring of program administrators, visiting faculty, postdocs, doctoral students and faculty affiliates. Within about five years, our enrollment had quadrupled.

The two new Dow and Holcim professorships made the University of Michigan Business School the only place on Earth where three endowed professors were working on sustainable enterprise, which was pretty remarkable. The news circled around the world and brought us a lot of attention. We won several national and international awards in the early 2000s, especially from the World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute, for our dedication to social and environmental sustainability.

What else was the institute working toward in the early 2000s?

Another very important objective was to get the entire university on the pathway toward sustainability. We created dozens of partnerships, and one of our strongest was the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. Another was with the 20

College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and we also hooked up with the engineering school and the sustainable systems program that was emerging at the School of Natural Resources under the leadership of Greg Keoleian. We became very close partners, so the Erb Institute and the Center for Sustainable Systems were joined at the hip.

We also wanted to extend our external partnership network so that we could create new sources of funding, especially new sources of internships and MAP projects. We hooked up with about 24 companies, expanded our advisory board, and created partnerships with Ford Motor Company, Pfizer, the World Bank and other companies. That gave us a dense, rich external network combined with the University of Michigan internal network.

Your farm has its own role in the Erb Institute’s story. How did that come about?

My wife, Ann, and I are living on a farm to the west of Ann Arbor, and we converted a horse barn that we bought in 1998 into an environmental conference center that’s solar passive.

It fits about 50 to 60 people, and over the years, it became the off-campus home of the Erb Institute. At first, there were five or six events per year, and they added up over the years to hundreds of events, so all these students were bonded by that experience. We’ve dedicated it as the home of the Erb Institute in perpetuity. We made it available to students for any purpose, which included master’s projects, group meetings, and new Erb student orientations, plus parties. The barn shut down for the pandemic for a couple of years, but it’s coming back with joy.

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LE Y ROUNDTAB STAINABILIT USINESS SU MICHIGAN B

Climate Working Group Landscape Assessment Michael Le

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30 November 2020

Erin Seg uin Erb MBA & Melissa /MS Zaksek Erb student Institu

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New Working Groups Deepen the Institute’s Business Engagement

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uring the pandemic, the Erb Institute launched two new business working groups that have already become an essential part of its business engagement. While the institute initially focused on teaching, it later evolved “to focus more on scholarly research and converting that into applied research like toolboxes and case studies,” said Terry Nelidov. The next step was: “How do we take that teaching and research out of the university, to engage with business, to project our thought leadership out where business decision-makers can use it?”

This expansion into business engagement has created rich dialogue between the institute and the business and nonprofit worlds, Nelidov said. “We started with conference partnerships, including Sustainable Brands, BSR and Innovation Forum. We continue those, but now 22

we’re evolving into the next step of impact, which are these working groups—actually working with business leaders today to get things done for sustainability.”

Michigan Business Sustainability Roundtable Launched in 2020, the Michigan Business Sustainability Roundtable (MBSR) was created to build an equitable and socially and environmentally sustainable State of Michigan through the power of business.

The MBSR brings together several of Michigan’s senior business sustainability leaders who are committed to working toward transformational change in the social and environmental performance of their companies, their industries and the State of Michigan.

MBSR members come from some of Michigan’s E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

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most influential and innovative companies in various sectors. They include leaders from some of Michigan’s largest companies, such as Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford Health, DTE Energy, GM, Related and Walker-Miller Energy Services.

“The MBSR provides us at the Erb Institute unique insight into emerging and horizon issues that Michigan companies are facing, and the opportunity to bring expertise from Erb, UM and beyond to the table to help our business partners work through these complex issues,” said Melissa Zaksek, Associate Director of Research at the Erb Institute and director of the MBSR. The idea for the MBSR grew out of conversations with Kerry Duggan, CEO of SustainabiliD, about how chief sustainability officers in Detroit and southeast Michigan have many of the same issues, “but they have few opportunities to interact among themselves and share resources and challenges and approaches,” Nelidov said. Those conversations turned toward creating a forum to allow this kind of interaction, and that became the MBSR. It’s unique in that it brings together CSOs in a Chatham House environment to candidly share their challenges and their approaches, he said.

The MBSR has set its sights on advancing climate action as well as racial, social and environmental justice at the state level. “They want to promote state-level policy to help Michigan really position itself as a leader in climate and justice, and also help them get their company objectives and goals done by lifting obstacles and trading accelerators at the state level,” Nelidov said.

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“The Erb Institute’s new business working group model allows us direct insight into the real-time obstacles and opportunities that our business partners are facing. This insight helps us provide tailored research, information, resources and support to help them work through these challenges more effectively and nimbly.”

Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce The Erb Institute convened the Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce (CPRT) to help firms manage risks and concerns related to their corporate political activities. Too often, executives don’t have an integrated view of everything that they’re doing and how external stakeholders perceive their activities, said Elizabeth Doty, director of the taskforce.

The initial seed for the CPRT was planted around 2016, when Tom Lyon organized a group of leaders from the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability to delve into the question: What’s the role of the corporation in systemic change for sustainability?

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“Part of what [CPRT is] doing is trying to help companies think through: What’s a legitimate basis for us to engage in politics? And how can we align what we do in the political world with what we say we care about?” —Tom Lyon

“This was all driven by the recognition that companies were doing good things through incremental improvements, but the overall system as a whole was getting worse,” Lyon explained. The leaders who convened were asked to come up with examples of a company that had led systemic change. “Basically, we came up empty. It was really disappointing,” Lyon said.

“People would say, ‘Well, what about Tesla?’ Yes, Tesla’s been important, but they wouldn’t have succeeded without government subsidies. You can’t really say the business led the systemic E LI Z AB ETH DOTY change. Business played a role, but without the government policy in place, it wouldn’t work. So we really came up pretty dry in looking for cases where business led the way.”

However, Lyon said, “we found lots of examples where companies are blocking systemic change, and the biggest is climate change.” This includes the oil industry’s disinformation campaign with think tanks, he noted. “We backed out of that event realizing we had to pay attention to corporate political responsibility.”

That led to Lyon’s article “CSR Needs CPR: Corporate Sustainability and Politics,” which 24

was chosen as the Best Article in California Management Review in 2019. The article, in turn, prompted the formation of the CPRT after Doty read it and reached out to Lyon to discuss how its ideas could be put into practice.

“Essentially, what we’re doing, which is really exciting for a university, is we’re trying to put thought into action, by taking a thought leadership piece and creating a working group to look at how to align their lobbying with their stated sustainability goals,” Nelidov said.

The conversations the CPRT has sparked so far have focused on how businesses should respond to the growing pressures on them to take political positions. “Companies find themselves in very difficult positions, where if you say nothing, you get attacked, if you speak out on one side, you get attacked, and if you speak out on the other side, you get attacked,” Lyon said. “Part of what we’re doing is trying to help companies think through: What’s a legitimate basis for us to engage in politics?

And how can we align what we do in the political world with what we say we care about?”

The CPRT has developed a set of principles to guide company response to engagement.

“The whole point of that is that it brings together a network or ecosystem to help company leaders deal with these really difficult issues,” Nelidov said.

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“As an Executive in Residence at Erb, I have had the distinct honor of providing input to programs and curriculums, lecturing in classes, but most rewarding, interacting with engaged and passionate Erbers! It is incredibly encouraging to see our next generation of professionals embrace the principles learned as part of their Erb curriculum, completely enabled by the vision of the Erb family to create a program that matches the sustainability needs of this world with the business needs of organizations. After concluding the Erb Institute’s last 25 years, I have no doubt the Erb Institute, the Erb Family Foundation, and members of the Erb family will provide the same visionary sustainability impact to the Erb Institute for decades to come.” JOH N VIERA , ERB INSTITUTE EX ECUTIVE IN RESID ENCE ERB.UMICH.EDU

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Erb Postdoctoral Program Leading Pivotal Research on Business Sustainability “We’re seeding business schools with faculty who can teach and engage in research in business and sustainability.” —Sara Soderstrom

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he Erb Institute’s postdoctoral research fellows program has been helping to shape research on sustainability in business since it began in 2006. It is one of the best-known business sustainability postdoc programs in the world, and it has supported more than 20 postdoctoral fellows.

The program has produced some of the world’s leading business sustainability scholars, who are now engaged in this vital work in several different countries.

“If you look at where postdocs have gone in academia, it’s making a huge footprint on the field,” said Erb faculty member Sara Soderstrom, who came to Erb as a postdoc, became an assistant professor, and is now a tenured associate professor. “We’re seeding business schools with faculty who can teach and engage in research in business and sustainability.”

Postdoctoral fellows conduct high-impact research and write jointly authored and peerreviewed articles. These scholars work to advance research at the nexus of sustainability and the private or nonprofit sector.

“Transforming markets into more sustainable places for doing business requires new research and innovation in teaching and practice,” said Nicholas Poggioli, a current postdoc. “The Erb postdoc program provides a world-class incubator environment for postdocs to push the boundaries on sustainable business and be a driving force in market transformation.”

The Erb postdoc opportunity gives earlycareer scholars the chance to develop their research identity, Soderstrom said. “The postdoc is this space to learn from others and think and develop as a scholar. I think it’s unparalleled, and doing that at the Erb Institute, you’re centered between Ross and SEAS, so you have these connections in both spaces. And you’re also in the midst of the interdisciplinarity that is Michigan.”

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Some notable postdocs: Stephanie Bertels (2006-2008): Director,

Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability, Simon Fraser University, Beedie School of Business; Founder, Embedding Project Haitao Yin (2006-09): Vice Dean &

Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China Judith Walls (2007-09): Professor & Chair

for Sustainability Management, Institute for Economy and the Environment, University of St. Gallen Sara Soderstrom (2010-12): Associate

Professor, University of Michigan; Erb Undergraduate Fellows Program Director Ethan Schoolman (2011-13): Assistant

Professor of Human Ecology, Rutgers University

Panikos Georgallis (2014-16): Assistant

Professor, University of Amsterdam

Todd Schifeling (2015-17): Assistant

Professor, Temple University

Soderstrom explained, “Work like this is so interdisciplinary, and being able to be in a space for two years where that’s what they value of you allows you to really immerse yourself into that process and develop your own skills while making an impact.”

Current postdoc Ian Li agreed. “The program is eye-opening. It provides many opportunities to see environmental issues from a crossdisciplinary lens. It is a very valuable experience 27

NICH O LAS P O G G I O L I

“The Erb postdoc program provides a world-class incubator environment for postdocs to push the boundaries on sustainable business and be a driving force in market transformation.”

for developing my research agenda,” he said.

For Soderstrom’s part, the research focus that she honed as a postdoc has been on how people advocate for changes internally in organizations.

“For example, how do you build up enough of a support structure to think about greening supply chain or greening product development, or actually achieving carbon neutrality—not just making the commitment, but making those changes?” she said.

Her research has included work with former postdoc Todd Schifeling on the Environmental Defense Fund and how it could provide resources to people trying to amplify change within their organization around climate, as well as work with current postdoc Katrin Heucher on how to keep attention on sustainability amid often conflicting goals.

Erb faculty continue to collaborate with postdoc alumni long after the postdocs have left Erb. Along with Soderstrom’s research with Schifeling and Heucher, these collaborations include: •

Recent publications coauthored by postdoctoral fellows: Katy DeCelles (2007-09): “Consumers— especially women—avoid buying from firms with higher gender pay gaps” (Schlager, Mohan, DeCelles, Norton, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2021) Judith Walls (2007-09): “Does having

a critical mass of women on the board result in more corporate environmental actions? Evidence from China” (Gong, Zhang, Jia, Walls, Group & Organization Management, 2021)

“Bill McKibben’s influence on US climate change discourse: Shifting field-level debates through radical flank effects,” by Todd Schifeling and Andrew Hoffman, in Organization & Environment (2019)

•

“Why do states adopt renewable portfolio standards?: An empirical investigation,” by Thomas Lyon and Haitao Yin, in the Energy Journal (2010)

•

Good cop/bad cop: Environmental NGOs and their strategies toward business, by Thomas Lyon (2012). This book was based on a conference held at Erb, and Stephanie Bertels contributed a chapter.

“Natural resource dependence: Understanding why companies (do not) disclose on biodiversity” (Stappmanns, Vogel, Walls, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2021) Panikos Georgallis (2014-16): “Sustainable entrepreneurship under market uncertainty: Opportunities, challenges and impact” (Lee, Georgallis, Struben, Handbook on the business of sustainability, 2021)

The program arms postdocs with a foundation, a skill set and a network, as well as “that greater sense of what their identity is,” Soderstrom said. “And it has reverberating impact across the field.”

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Caitlin (Drummond) Otton (2017-20):

“Public perceptions of federal science advisory boards depend on their composition” (Drummond, Gray, Raimi, Árvai, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020)

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Erb Undergraduate Fellows Hit the Ground Running

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he Erb Institute has been empowering graduate students to lead with purpose for 25 years, but until 2020, it didn’t have any similar offerings for undergrad­uate students. The Erb Undergraduate Fellows program now fills that need.

University of Michigan undergrads have long been active in sustainability, with numerous student groups and classes across campus, said Sara Soderstrom, director of the Erb Undergraduate Fellows program. “But students have found themselves more isolated as they tried to build a curriculum, navigate career considerations, or connect with other students at the intersection of business and sustainability.”

The Erb Fellows program helps undergrads make these connections as they navigate their path at the university. It delivers business and sustainability education, community and co-

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curriculars to Michigan Ross BBA students and Program in the Environment students.

The program immediately drew in interested undergrads. The first class of Erb Undergraduate Fellows, the class of 2021, included 24 students.

The class of 2022 includes 35, class of 2023 includes 39, and the incoming class of 2024 includes 69 students.

“In our second year, we’ve already seen strong cohorts, high levels of engagement, and unique connections that amplify the power of Erb through adding undergrads to our community,” Soderstrom said. And undergraduate students have made it clear that they want classes on business and sustainability.

These students are also willing to put in the work. Erb Fellows commit to doing 12 credits of additional classes and several co-curricular activities, Soderstrom pointed out. “They’re doing additional work and fundamentally changing aspects of how they’re navigating their coursework and their free time to do more around business and sustainability and build these ties,” she said.

“I’m just so excited about the potential for them to go out post-graduation. What are they going to do as alumni?” Soderstrom said. “I’m thrilled that I’ve gotten to be the faculty director for this part of it.”

Undergrads have long been asking for a program like this, but it also fills a need for business, said Erb Institute Faculty Director Tom Lyon. “We need students to graduate understanding sustainability and what it means, and we want those students to be getting out there where they can use those ideas in their first jobs,” not just after they go back to school for an MBA. E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

Ideally, this approach will lead to a situation where all students at the University of Michigan receive the kind of education that the Erb Fellows receive, so it just becomes a standard part of the curriculum, Lyon said. That may not happen soon, but “in the intervening time, what we’d like to do is keep growing the program and build our capacity to serve that need.”

Establishing the undergraduate fellows program also helps maintain the institute’s voice as a thought leader, said Joe Árvai, former faculty director. “It was a chance for us to once again demonstrate some leadership, which is what the Erb Institute has been known for—for 25 years— being first on a lot of different levels.”

The program, extending Erb’s reach to undergraduates, comes at a time when the MBA landscape is shifting, Árvai said. “In particular at Michigan Ross, where the undergraduate population is one of the best in the country, to be able to provide them with career-focused sustainability education at the business level was important.”

Opening doors to undergraduates also diversifies the Erb community. Soderstrom noted that just under half of the Erb Fellows are getting BBA degrees, just under half are ERB.UMICH.EDU

“One of the most incredible things, which is a testament to the undergraduates, is that they were able to create a community from zero in one year.” —Terry Nelidov

environment majors, and some have business minors and environment minors. “This shows the importance of the diversity of degree, skill and background, and you’re bringing all that together to build this network of people who want to see business do more. They’re coming at it from different perspectives,” she said.

The Erb Fellows are eager and engaged.

“One of the most incredible things, which is a testament to the undergraduates, is that they were able to create a community from zero in one year,” said Managing Director Terry Nelidov.

“The graduate community is super strong— many students come here specifically for that community—and they had 25 years to create it.

The undergraduates were able to do that in one year, and they did it exceptionally well. We had incredible student leaders, and they created their own student advisory council.” Only one year later, it’s up and running as its own community alongside the graduate program, he said.

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Erb on the Road Gets Students Beyond the Classroom

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rb on the Road rolled out in the fall of 2019 as a three-day immersion course for Erb graduate dual-degree students.

Students took a trip around Michigan to see sustainability up close and learn from companies, nonprofits and activists. A series of in-classroom sessions complements the on-the-road portion of the course.

The course, taught by Emily Keeler, Associate Director of Student and Alumni Affairs at the Erb Institute, switched to a virtual format during the pandemic but picked up again in the fall of 2021. This time, Erb dual-degree students spent two separate days in Detroit, where they met with companies, nonprofits, community groups and activists. “We learned from the pandemic, and we refocused on business and justice and took it to Detroit,” said Terry Nelidov.

This spring, a group of Erb Undergraduate Fellows became the first undergrads to do Erb on the Road, taking a one-day trip to Detroit.

In its first year, the Erb on the Road experience focused on companies’ social and environmental impact. Then in 2021 and 2022, “in Detroit, we looked specifically at this core question: What’s the role of business in justice?” Nelidov said. “Detroit has a legacy of justice issues, and some of the biggest corporations in the world were born in Detroit. So it’s a great place to try to understand this connection between business and justice, and where things go right and where they go wrong.”

Erb on the Road is a way to make sustainability real, Nelidov said. “We’re part of one of the world’s top research universities, so there’s always lots of thought leadership and new ideas and challenging concepts that come out of the university. I think that as an institute, the special role we can play is to make those ideas relevant to our students for their future careers.”

The immersion course allows grad and undergrad students to meet not just with business leaders and managers, but also with activists, so that they “hear various sides of the legacy of justice, particularly racial justice in Detroit,” Nelidov said. “This is something that we can only do out in the streets of Detroit, not in a classroom.”

“This course is an important first step in the Erb experience.

It teaches students to lean into the complexity of ‘doing’ business and sustainability work. As the instructor of this course, I am so pleased to see students continuing to challenge their own learning and perspectives by pursuing research in this space, taking on projects and internships with the partners we visited and championing for these diverse perspectives to be further integrated into their educational experiences.”

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Impact Projects Erb’s Signature Action-Based Learning Opportunity

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mpact Projects empower Erb dual-degree students to take their learning into their own hands. The Erb Institute offers financial support to help bring student ideas to life and build their capacity and network to further their career goals. Erb Impact Projects offer students the opportunity and flexibility to design and pursue learning experiences that reflect their own unique interests and skill sets.

“My experience with the Erb family and the Erb Institute has been very important to me. I was changed and stimulated by the mission of Erb. I learned so much from John Erb, his family and the institute. The Erb family works tirelessly to protect our resources and educate others to have the same commitment to Michigan. We should never forget what a gift this has been to our state. Here’s to many more years.”

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“[C]reating MCV was about harnessing U-M’s excellence in entrepreneurship studies and history of studentrun impact funds to meet the needs of sustainability entrepreneurs who are innovating in the space of decarbonization.” —Colleen Sain, ’22

Erb Students Create New Climate Venture Fund

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n 2021, the Michigan Climate Venture fund became the first climate-focused, University of Michigan student-run venture fund targeting early-stage climate tech companies. The fund is a partnership among the Erb Institute, Ross and SEAS. The fund is part of the Michigan Climate Venture (MCV), a multidisciplinary U-M program at the intersection of climate technology and venture capital. The aim is to invest in early-stage climate tech companies that have significant potential to push decarbonization.

The fund’s founding leadership team includes seven Erb students: Sam Buck, ’22; Laura Dyer, ’23; Janet Genser, ’23; Chelsea Parker, ’22; John Pontillo, ’23; Olivia Rath, ’23; and Colleen Sain, ’22, under the supervision of Professor Gautam Kaul. Erb class of ’23 Celia Bravard and alumni Joe Garcia and Leah Gustafson also helped get the fund up and running.

MCV “combines students with a wide array of personal and professional backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences to embark upon a shared learning and practical experience of evaluating and investing in technologies and solutions to help mitigate global climate change,” Rath told Michigan News.

The Erb Institute provided funding to support this venture fund—for the sake of the students, the companies, and the companies’

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potential contributions to fighting climate change.

“MCV seeks to be a signature educational experience at a top public research university: issue- and action-based, rigorous and data driven, multidisciplinary, technology-enhanced, and co-created and managed by students,” Kaul told Michigan News.

During the academic year, graduate students in the fund collaborate to source, screen, vet, and invest in companies that support the MCV vision. The process helps students prepare for careers that approach climate change head-on.

“Having worked in startups at various stages, both before and during graduate school, I’ve witnessed firsthand the power of infusing capital into the bold visions of a passionate founder,” Sain told Michigan News. “Given our world’s most pressing problem, creating MCV was about harnessing U-M’s excellence in entrepreneurship studies and history of student-run impact funds to meet the needs of sustainability entrepreneurs who are innovating in the space of decarbonization.”

The Michigan Climate Venture fund seeks to advance three themes as they relate to climate: food and agriculture, materials and waste, and transportation and mobility. Its primary focus is on companies that are addressing challenges in the Great Lakes region.

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Student Researchers Shine a Light on Business Sustainability Challenges

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esearch conducted by Erb faculty has long been essential to the institute, as it advances the understanding of many aspects of business sustainability. But research conducted by Erb students does so as well. Erb student research has grown in depth and breadth in recent years, reaching across various sectors. It is helping to define and address the sustainability challenges that businesses face.

Increasingly, Erb is looking to its students as business sustainability thought leaders. Erb students bring their unique perspectives and first-class Ross and SEAS training to bear in developing bespoke research and analysis that responds to the emerging and horizon business sustainability challenges.

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Examples include: Erb dual-degree student Marney Coleman, class of 2023, coauthored “COVID-19 Supply Chain Impact on Farmworkers and Meat Processing Workers,” published in SSRN. This research looked at the effects of COVID-19 on farmworkers and meatpacking workers, who were especially needed on the front lines during the pandemic but also vulnerable because they worked in close quarters, with limited or no access to personal protective equipment.

The researchers interviewed experts across sectors, analyzed existing data and literature, and found that the pandemic exacerbated existing vulnerabilities. Human rights risks were compounded by historically weak worker protections, and the pandemic exacerbated these problems in particular: labor trafficking, wage theft, unsanitary working and living conditions, fear of retaliation, unenforced worker safety standards and child labor. The researchers E R B I N ST I T U T E C E L E B R AT E S 2 5 Y E A R S

provided recommendations for policy and legal changes as well as for institutional food procurement actors.

Junghoon Park, class of 2022, cowrote

“Approaches to Assessing Corporate Performance on Socially Responsible Operations,” a study reviewing indicators that different assessment methodologies use to measure corporate performance on socially responsible operations.

The researchers reviewed 19 assessment methodologies, including management guidelines, reporting frameworks, environmental, social and governance ratings and compliance standards, and they analyzed the individual metrics that each assessment methodology used. They found that different biases in the social performance indicators influence their usability in improving outcomes for affected stakeholders. This project was funded by the University of Michigan President’s Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights (PACLSHR) and the Erb Institute.

Devika Agarwal, class of 2022, cowrote

“COVID-19 and the Global Apparel Value Chain: A Call for Responsibility and Resilience,” which suggests that COVID-19 disruptions made it ERB.UMICH.EDU

clear that the apparel sector lacks resilience and faces long-standing issues in the global apparel value chains. These issues include global brands holding an inordinate amount of power over suppliers, and batch-oriented production and distribution that create large inventories. The researchers explain: “The breadth of change that needs to occur can be achieved only through shared responsibility. Stakeholders must shift the ways they work together to develop a resilient and sustainable apparel value chain,” in which garment workers are the primary stakeholders.

As part of a series by Network for Business Sustainability that provides essential knowledge about core business sustainability topics, Heeseung Kim, class of 2022, wrote about the circular economy and how it works. As part of the same series, Agarwal coauthored pieces explaining the concepts of corporate sustainability and social sustainability and why they’re important.

As more Erb students contribute to the research on business sustainability challenges, they will deepen their own understanding of these often complex issues—as well as that of leaders and businesses grappling with them.

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Alumni Spotlight 25 Years of Education CH UCK H ORNBROOK

LOOKING UP––AT A VERTICAL FARMING COMPANY

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eroFarms is a vertical farming company and a B corp with a mission to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity. Megan DeYoung, Erb class of 2002, is the company’s business development director.

Could you tell us about your current role?

At AeroFarms, business development is about sourcing new ideas and partnerships. My group thinks about what is after leafy greens, which we sell commercially. We think about how to use AeroFarms as a platform to help solve some of the larger agricultural challenges out there.

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What do you like most about working in this space?

I like that this is a very cutting-edge way of tackling different agricultural supply chain challenges. My career has focused a lot on pushing change, and when I feel like that change is starting to be accomplished in the mainstream, I like doing something that’s more cutting edge. So the idea of using technology as a way to grow plants completely differently, and to think about our relationships with agriculture, technology and food is exciting to me.

How did your career path take you to AeroFarms?

I was a long-term consultant, including spending 10 years at Corporate Citizenship, a boutique consulting company, which I helped grow globally as part of the executive team. Two things were happening at the time that made me decide to look for a different kind of role.

One was that I wanted to be closer to where the actual solution was being not only created but also implemented. In consulting, you are always at least one step away, no matter how embedded you are with your clients. So I wanted to be in a company that was coming up with the ideas and implementing them.

I also had been interested in sustainable agriculture for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was a corn and soybean farmer in Illinois, my grandparents and my mother are gardeners, and my great-grandfather was a breeder for corn, so I had this agricultural bent.

AeroFarms’ mindset of being agile and out there driving change really aligned with what I was interested in.

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How would you say Erb helped prepare you for the work you do now?

Erb was an incredibly small community back then—I entered in ’99—but it was a community of like-minded individuals. Honestly, I hadn’t really found other like-minded individuals before that. It was reassuring to realize I wasn’t the only one that had this kind of crazy idea to use business to make sure that the world’s doing OK. One of the most vital things Erb did is it gave me the business lexicon, and it taught me systems thinking—thinking holistically, really connecting a lot of dots. Previously, when I’d been exposed to environmental topics, people were specialists: They knew everything there was to know about soil or this bird or this tree.

And I thought: That’s great, but I don’t get that narrow. The idea that you have this way of connecting all those more specific points of information was hugely valuable to me and something that I’ve used throughout my career.

How do you view the Erb Institute’s evolution over the years, as business sustainability has evolved?

I think the institute has been really good at looking into the future and understanding what the business and environmental worlds are going to need, and then being there to meet it. It’s been able to say: There are some really big, meaty issues out there, and we think that the world is starting to wake up to them. So let’s wake up to them first and prepare our students.

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THE VALUE OF THE ERB ECOSYSTEM

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huck Hornbrook is an independent

advisor for startups focused on distributed energy resources, and he also works with nonprofits on land use and management issues. Since he graduated from the Erb Institute in 1998, the environmental and sustainability landscape has shifted.

Where did your career path take you when you graduated in 1998?

When I graduated, it was harder to put business and the environment together. The opportunities were there, just harder to find and/or requiring a lot of patience. For eight years after graduate school, I worked in high tech building a career in general management. I was not 100% focused on sustainability or the environment but stayed engaged with nonprofits focused on the space.

Later, around 2007, I was able to make a pivot and go into sustainability, specifically distributed renewable energy.

Before I went to graduate school, I was living in D.C., working for the Brookings Institution, and doing policy work. So I’m kind of a policy wonk. Working in energy is a confluence of policy, business, and new technology. When I made the transition into renewable energy, I did it with a strong background in business and the MS in environmental policy. Erb’s joint degree program gave me that validation that I could work in business and sustainability even though I hadn’t been purely in sustainability for several years.

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“I cherish my part of the Erb Institute’s formative years and the impact we’ve had over the past 25 years.

The Erb Institute produces leaders that are changing our world for the better.

And the opportunities for impact are only expanding.

Erbers amaze me with their creativity and knowhow to influence and instill sustainability across all sectors of our lives.”

“Recent grads are having conversations that you couldn’t have had 25 years ago about how business, more broadly, can be part of making sure we survive as a planet.” —Chuck Hornbrook

How did your time at Erb prepare you for that?

It gave me an ability to work in both environments. I think they’re not so separate now, but back then, I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing at the School of Natural Resources, and kind of a tree hugger at the business school. But I think that gave me the power or insight just to be comfortable in different settings and to be able to understand different perspectives and approaches.

Having both programs provides you that ability: If you go to work for an environmental nonprofit, one has the language/perspective in their tool chest to work with different stakeholders. That gives an Erb graduate legitimacy with many players. If one heads into a pure business role, the study and collaboration at SEAS provides the language allowing one to understand customers, products and systems in sustainability and the environment/policy—and just not a top-layer understanding but a deeper, complete perspective. And it gives a graduate the credibility that other people don’t have.

How else did your Erb experience affect you?

Even when I was a student, I felt very empowered to make changes and to help things move forward. We were asked how we could shape some of the core classes at that time. That gave me a great deal of confidence that I didn’t have to be a passenger. No matter what my position, I can effect change.

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What do you think that means for current Erb students, now that sustainability has evolved further?

At a recent Erb event for the 25th anniversary, founder Stu Hart was sharing some examples about how McDonald’s used to put hamburgers in polystyrene clamshells. And businesses got on board to change this packaging to reduce waste and cost. But it’s more than just cost minimization anymore. You have this rich history of businesses evolving.

Now, Erb students can more aggressively push those issues and have them be more mainstream. Recent grads are having conversations that you couldn’t have had 25 years ago about how business, more broadly, can be part of making sure we survive as a planet.

At some point, Erb could have decided to become more singularly focused in a specific sustainability area like energy or land use. The program did not, and Erb continues to attract interesting, curious individuals of diverse backgrounds to solve challenging and evolving issues and be leaders. And that is critical— the diversity of backgrounds drawn to the program and also where graduates end up. It’s an ecosystem that includes professionals in land use, environmental stewardship, energy use, venture capital, farming, private equity, politics and policy, technology and many, many others. This graduate pool after 25 years is very transformative in the business world, socially and culturally.

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L AURA RUBIN, MBA /MS 19 9 5

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to navigate that dissonance is invaluable.

Experiencing both helps you empathize and build the bridge for others.

I think right now in business and sustainability, that’s exactly what we’re doing: We’re bringing disparate stakeholders together, helping them translate their goals to uncover alignment, and moving toward better solutions.

Particularly as a consultant, so much of what I do is helping organizations think about the art of the possible. And the more perspective that you have, the wider that vision of possibility becomes.

I also believe that Erb can accelerate impact.

Before Erb, I used to work in a small organization where I had a very strong and clearly defined mission, but I had no power. We were always asking people to change but had no leverage to make it happen. An MBA quickly accelerates your ability to have power in these situations but often leaves people wondering about their mission. The programming and experience at Erb, particularly the opportunity to explore for three years, helps you match power with mission.

“An MBA quickly accelerates your ability to have power in situations but often leaves people wondering about their mission. The programming and experience at Erb, particularly the opportunity to explore for three years, helps you match power with mission.”

THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

MA DE LE I N E C A R NE MA RK

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lum Madeleine Carnemark, class of 2020, is an associate at McKinsey and Company’s Denver office, part of the firm’s fast-growing sustainability practice.

She talked with Erb about her experience.

What do you appreciate most about having the Erb dual degree?

The number-one thing is that you get to move between two worlds. You have the opportunity to see and experience two very different perspectives and guide your own path in between them. Your classes, friends, language, pace of work and physical surroundings all change so much between SEAS and Ross—they can feel like dissonant worlds—and learning

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From what you’ve seen at Erb and in your career so far, how do you think sustainability in business is evolving?

Over the last few years, I think we have seen growth in people looking at both sustainability and business more holistically. In sustainability, it’s been amazing to see the justice component emphasized in research and policy development.

More and more, organizations are thinking about inequities across the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change and resource management. By acknowledging the histories of discrimination within environmental movements and keeping a justice component in mind when designing for the future, sustainability practitioners are working toward a more sustainable—but also more just—world.

In business, it’s no longer about whether you have a sustainability program that you’re going to write about in your marketing or CSR report— ERB.UMICH.EDU

that’s become table stakes. Instead, companies are realizing that sustainability must be integral to the business, and that it’s something investors are looking at. Even in my time at McKinsey, I have seen this trend grow. I believe soon—and for many companies now—this means that some of the most critical sustainability roles out there won’t have “sustainability” in the title. By organizations moving to an integrated model, every business unit will be accountable for thinking about climate risk and resilience, sustainable supply chains, natural capital, community justice and much more.

What else do you value from your time at Erb? The Erb Institute has produced so many people who are doing such inspiring work. Pretty much every space I work in (or want to work in!), I can find someone with a connection to Erb. The school I went to for undergrad had very little school spirit. I remember when I first came to Michigan, they said how strong the alumni network was and that you’d be able to scream “Go Blue!” anywhere in the world and someone would respond. While I can attest that that part is true, it’s off the charts for Erb. The experience is so special, and it bonds people across graduating classes. Erbers will show up for each other no matter what, and when we’re trying to push for big change, having that type of camaraderie is vital.

As an alumnus, I see people every day in every type of role reaching out to each other, saying, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing this ambitious thing, can anyone help me?” and the response is overwhelming. Responding to the climate crisis is going to require every type of thinker in every industry coming together.

Erb has created an unparalleled network for activating this type of global support. Two years out of the program, I love seeing how many people are maintaining their mission to create positive change in the world, but even more, I love seeing the community apply its collective power to making that change a reality.

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The Future of the Erb Institute

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o build on the Erb Institute’s success in its first 25 years, the institute has been revisiting its strategy for 2022-26. The institute worked with BSR over the last couple of years on a series of roundtables with students, alumni, business partners, and faculty and staff to hear their thoughts on what the institute’s unique contributions to global sustainability should be over the next five years. The findings from these roundtables, coupled with BSR’s global business sustainability insights and Erb student landscape assessment research, led to the development of the institute’s new 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, which seeks to empower architects of change who work across divides to transform companies, industries and markets for a just and sustainable world.

This strategy identifies the dual imperatives of market transformation and justice in achieving a more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable world.

Market transformation The institute’s previous five-year strategy focused on sustainability at the company level through “enterprise integration” and at the systems level through “market transformation.”

Market transformation moves beyond “business as usual” and the incremental changes that most companies have already begun to make. Market transformation asks what a just and sustainable world would look like—and then works backward to consider business’s role in arriving at that sustainable world.

Market transformation adopts a systems view of structural change in global markets.

Erb’s approach to market transformation is a 46

multi-stakeholder approach, inviting business, nonprofit and policy leaders to the table for a deeper discussion of business models, policy frameworks and sustainability innovation. The institute assumes that individual companies can, and will, continue to tweak strategies, improve efficiencies and reduce negative impacts. This is truly a transformation of the market that will require collaboration across sectors, stakeholder groups and ideologies.

While doubling down on market transformation, the new Erb Strategic Plan complements it with a justice lens—which includes social justice, racial justice, environmental justice and economic inclusion, Nelidov said.

Justice “2020 and 2021 were transformational years, particularly for an institute based in the U.S., with the racial justice movement, combined with the deep divisions in the country on political, cultural and ideological lines,” Nelidov said.

During the strategic planning process, stakeholders raised questions about business’s role in justice. “The drivers of the justice movement have been events like the killing of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Me Too movement. They have forced those considerations onto the table,” said Tom Lyon. For the previous couple of decades, “the sustainable development conversation focused on developing countries and how can we treat them in a manner that’s just, and then we kind of had to turn back in on ourselves and recognize that there’s a lot of injustice going on in our own domestic situation.”

As these instances of injustice occurred, “some companies responded well, and some were caught flat-footed and didn’t know how to respond,” Nelidov said. Erb aims to help companies not just respond but also “go out and lead in promoting a just and sustainable world.”

So the institute made justice a bigger part of its strategy. Erb will work to better define the role of business in promoting justice, create practical tools, and broaden traditional networks to include new perspectives. “We want to build our capacity,” Nelidov said.

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“The whole landscape of sustainability and business has evolved to include more diversity and justice issues,” said Sara Soderstrom. “We see the growing climate impacts and the injustices around who is most impacted by climate change. . . . I don’t think you can talk about climate change without talking about climate justice.”

Soderstrom noted, “We’re missing a piece if we’re not making the connection between business and justice. I think it’s amplified in the climate space, but we see this with everything.

Where are the biggest impacts on air quality or plastics in waters? All of these have threads of injustice and inequitable distribution as externalities. Who’s paying the cost? And I think we have a moral obligation to be engaged in that.”

In some ways, “justice has always been at the core of sustainability,” said Lyon, pointing to the traditional Brundtland definition of sustainability: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.. “It’s really about caring about future generations and treating them with the same regard with which we treat ourselves, so the whole concept of sustainability is fundamentally about justice,” he said. “If you expand the definition of sustainability to include the ERB.UMICH.EDU

present and not just the future, that includes the just treatment of other people living all over the planet now.”

We’re at the beginning of the conversation about what justice in business looks like, Lyon said. But it extends to more equitable distribution of opportunities and access, including access to financial capital, human capital, social capital and natural capital.

Multi-stakeholder governance Now, one of Erb’s three strategic goals is multistakeholder governance. Nelidov noted “the shift from centuries of shareholder capitalism, where shareholders were the most important stakeholder group, to stakeholder capitalism, where capitalism and companies and economic success have to meet the needs of many stakeholder groups, not just the shareholders.”

The institute will include a broader range of stakeholders—traditionally underrepresented voices, activists, government agencies, industry associations and multilateral organizations, for example.

“We’re trying to broaden geographically, culturally, demographically and racially,” Nelidov said.

Soderstrom noted, “As sustainability moves from ‘How can sustainability be a competitive 47

“You see the impact that that one idea had, over hundreds of our alumni, our business partners, all the research and publications we’ve done.… All of that impact and the creation of a global community came from that vision of two people 25 years ago.”

advantage for rich consumers?’ to ‘How does sustainability become the way we do business?’ we have to be thinking about a diverse array of consumers and diversity in many aspects.”

Sustainability with a sense of place “For too long, we as a global sustainability community have focused on the big global challenges, like climate change and human rights, which are systemic issues that require global solutions. But in some ways, we’ve lost sight of local impact,” Nelidov said. So one of Erb’s strategic goals is global visions and local solutions.

This means considering how global challenges are affecting our local communities, including Detroit, and creating scalable solutions.

Scaling impact “The scale of change that we need in this ‘decisive decade’ is going to require that we go way beyond our traditional scale of thinking,” Nelidov said. “How do we take all the expertise, networks and skills we have to scale?”

“As Erb builds its network of undergrad, graduate students and postdocs, the reach of our network is going to continue to have this growing impact on what businesses are doing, but also what is being taught in business school and what is being researched,” Soderstrom said. “Erb is expanding the number of different stakeholders that we’re scaling our impact to.”

Erb will broaden its reach to new, larger audiences of current and future leaders. These 48

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communities may include students at other universities, as well as executives and managers, across the U.S. and around the world.

In recent years, the ways that the U.S. and the world have become increasingly complex and polarized have become apparent. Divides have become deeper.

“We’re trying to develop leaders who can bridge divides,” said Terry Nelidov. “No one is going to win if we’re divided in our response to sustainability, so we need wise, experienced business and nonprofit leaders who can work across differences and promote collaboration to get sustainability done.”

The Erb Institute is equipped to lead in advancing business sustainability. And it has always been capable of setting a vision and making it happen—even from the very beginning.

“The Erb Institute is a reminder that individuals still matter,” because it all started with the vision that Fred and Barbara Erb had 25 years ago to question the role of business in the environment, Nelidov said. “You look forward, and you see the impact that that one idea had, over hundreds of our alumni, our business partners, all the research and publications we’ve done, and now our engagement with business and nonprofit leaders. All of that impact and the creation of a global community came from that vision of two people 25 years ago.”

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“As a student and as Erb’s managing director, I had the good fortune of interacting with Fred and Barbara Erb, and seeing firsthand their passion for the institute and its mission. Two decades later, it’s amazing to see the impact of their legacy. Their vision and support played a tremendous role in getting me where I am today and I know that is true across the Erb nation. It is amazing to see hundreds of Erb alumni working in myriad sectors throughout the world to address daunting sustainability challenges and lead efforts to foster a healthier and just world for generations to come.”

D REW H ORNING, MBA /MS 2 0 01 F ORMER MA NAGING D IRECTOR, ERB INSTITUTE

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Ross School of Business 701 Tappan Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234 School for Environment and Sustainability 440 Church Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041 Contact Us erb.umich.edu / 734. 647. 9799 erbinstitute@umich.edu

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