October 2012 - Robert H. Smith School of Business

If you're having trouble vie wing this e m ail, you m ay se e it online .
Share this:
DIRECTOR'S LETTER
Welcome to our Fall newsletter! This academic year has gotten off to an exciting start for the Center for Social Value
Creation. We have launched several new programs and hired our 4th staff member. Please welcome Kelly Hollibaugh to
the Smith School! Kelly is joining the Center for Social Value Creation as our new Coordinator, supporting both our Center
and also the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER). Kelly will manage our administrative
activities, assist with events and marketing, and tackle many special projects. Kelly recently completed a 1 year rotation in
the Americorps VISTA program at the University of Tampa as the Service-Learning Coordinator. ( READ MORE)
IN DEPTH :
Social Entrepreneurship At Maryland: Where Does It Belong?
Written by Guillermo Olivos
In University of Maryland President Wallace Loh’s inauguration address nearly 18 months ago, he announced the launch of
a Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, with the “vision to make innovation and entrepreneurship an integral part
of our academic culture.” The idea is to create an umbrella that integrates the various initiatives and opportunities across
campus under one umbrella— certainly no small task at a school of 37,000 students across 13 distinct colleges/schools.
Almost in acknowledgement as he closed his address, President Loh referenced an adage from his Peruvian roots: “en
mares revueltos, ganancias de pescadores.” Translated, “in stormy seas, fishermen prosper.” ( READ MORE)
WHAT'S NEW :
ChangeTheWorld.org Now Accepting Nonprofit Applications for Spring 2012
The ChangeTheWorld.org Social Venture Consulting Program pairs talented business students with Grassroots.org
Member Organizations in semester-long project-based consulting partnerships. The program is designed to help nonprofit
organizations to increase their organizational capacity by providing them with direct access to free business
consulting.Applications for Spring 2013 are due no later than November 11, 2012 at 11:59 PM EST. ( READ MORE &
APPLY)
The College Park Sustainability Jam (November 2-4)
November 2-4 CSVC will host the College Park Sustainability Jam - a weekendlong engagment aimed at creating new ideas to advance Sustainability by
leveraging principles of Design Thinking. The Sustainability Jam is part of a global
event that connects “Jammers” from all backgrounds to work through an entire
design process in just 48 hours. UMD students and representatives of the
Chesapeake Bay Foundation, EarthColor, Peer Insight and the University of
Maryland's Office of Sustainability will work collaboratively. Jam results - a set of
"workable prototypes", will be uploaded to the event’s international website
along with those from 53 simultaneous jams rallying from such locations as
Moscow, Tehran, São Paulo, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. The other U.S. sites
are in New York City and Kansas City. If you are interested in participating (and
the Jam is open to anyone in the CSVC community), please email Kim Robertella
at [email protected]. We are grateful for the generous financial
support and time of UMD alumni and CSVC friends to make this program
possible.
CEO @ Smith Welcomes Goodwill Industries (November 14)
Goodwill Industries CEO, Jim Gibbons, will give an insider's look at one of the largest social enterprises in the world.
Gibbons is an expert at social enterprise management, socioeconomic program strategy, and leadership skills
development. He is also a veteran speaker and contributor to the Impact section of the Huffington Post. Gibbons
earned his M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, where he was the first blind person to
graduate with a master’s in business administration. ( READ MORE)
RECAP :
Socially-Responsible Fashion Designer Camilla Olson Visits Smith
Written by Megan Burkhardt
On September 7, 2012, preceding the launch of her brand in Washington, D.C., Camilla Olson visited Smith for a
luncheon hosted by the Center for Social Value Creation at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of
Business. The theme for the event was “women as social entrepreneurs.” ( READ MORE)
Verizon’s Shared Success: Creating Long-Term
Business and Social Value
Rose Stuckey Kirk, President of the Verizon Foundation, visited with
Smith students, staff and faculty to discuss Verizon's philanthropic
strategy with an emphasis on projects that demonstrate the use of
Verizon's technology in addressing social issues. ( READ MORE)
Rose Stuckey Kirk addresses Smith students, staff and faculty (right)
FROM THE BLOG :
Does Social Finance Have a Place in the Classroom?
Written by Ryan Steinbach
Two weeks ago I took this question for granted: should social finance be incorporated into the business curriculum? To
me the answer was yes! Social finance is an emerging approach to managing money that delivers a social and/or
environmental return in addition to an economic return. Why wouldn’t we include such an offering in the curriculum?
After spending two weeks talking with professors and industry professionals as to why social finance isn’t more prominent
in college education, I’ve come up against some serious reality checks. Here’s what I learned. ( READ MORE)
connect with us:
R obe rt H. Sm ith School of Busine ss - The Unive rsity of Maryland Suite 2410 Van Munching Hall | C olle ge Park , MD 20742 US
This e m ail was se nt to [email protected]. To e nsure that you continue re ce iving our e m ails, ple ase add us to your addre ss
book or safe list.
manage your pre fe re nce s | opt out using TrueRemove®.
Got this as a forward? Sign up to re ce ive our future e m ails.
If you're having trouble vie wing this e m ail, you m ay se e it online .
Share this:
DIRECTOR'S LETTER
Welcome to our Fall newsletter! This academic year has gotten off to an exciting
start for the Center for Social Value Creation. We have launched several new
programs and hired our 4th staff member. Please welcome Kelly Hollibaugh to the
Smith School! Kelly is joining the Center for Social Value Creation as our new
Coordinator, supporting both our Center and also the Center for International
Business Education and Research (CIBER). Kelly will manage our administrative
activities, assist with events and marketing, and tackle many special projects. Kelly
recently completed a 1 year rotation in the Americorps VISTA program at the
University of Tampa as the Service-Learning Coordinator. Prior to this, Kelly
worked as a research intern in The Gambia and as an SAT Instructor in South
Korea. She also launched a for-profit social enterprise based in North Carolina and
Peru creating and selling eco-ethical fashion accessories from local artisans out of
recycled cloth, organic materials and indigenous fabrics. I hope you can meet her
soon!
This week is particularly exciting as the Smith School is taking over Baltimore – well, the annual Net Impact Conference
certainly is. Thousands of students and industry leaders in the social value creation space will be descending upon
Baltimore for the 20th Annual Net Impact Conference. The Smith School is one of the lead university partners and will be
there in full force, bringing a delegation of over 100 MBA students, undergraduate students, staff and faculty.
On Friday October 26, the Center for Social Value Creation is co-hosting a networking happy hour with Smith's Net
Impact Club at Hersh's Pizza and Drinks (http://hershspizza.com/.) The restaurant is co-owned by a Smith alumnus and
was recently named Baltimore Magazine's Best of Baltimore winner for pasta! I invite you to join us from 5:30 – 8 PM to
network with Dean Anand, Maryland students, alumni and friends of CSVC. Hope to see you there!
I also want to take a moment to tell you about a new sustainability program that we have launched. On the weekend of
November 2, the Center for Social Value Creation will host the College Park Sustainability Jam. The Jam is a weekend long
engagement that uses the principles of Design Thinking and rapid Design Prototyping to create new, real-world ideas to
promote and advance sustainability. You can learn more in the ‘What’s New’ section of this newsletter.
Last but not least, we have launched a new biweekly list serve especially for our student community. "Here&Now" covers
opportunities in social impact and sustainability at CSVC and beyond. If you are interested in receiving this email, please
register here (http://ter.ps/svcsignup )
Please stay in touch.
Warmest Regards,
P.S. Save the date – March 1, 2013 5th Annual Social Enterprise Symposium. If you would like to learn more about
speaking opportunities, sponsorship levels, or networking activities, please email Kim at [email protected].
connect with us:
R obe rt H. Sm ith School of Busine ss - The Unive rsity of Maryland Suite 2410 Van Munching Hall | C olle ge Park , MD 20742 US
This e m ail was se nt to [email protected]. To e nsure that you continue re ce iving our e m ails, ple ase add us to your
addre ss book or safe list.
manage your pre fe re nce s | opt out using TrueRemove®.
Got this as a forward? Sign up to re ce ive our future e m ails.
If you're having trouble vie wing this e m ail, you m ay se e it online .
Share this:
IN DEPTH :
Social Entrepreneurship At Maryland:
Where Does It Belong?
Written by Guillermo Olivos
In University of Maryland President Wallace Loh’s inauguration
address nearly 18 months ago, he announced the launch of a
Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, with the “vision to
make innovation and entrepreneurship an integral part of our academic culture.” The idea is to create an umbrella that
integrates the various initiatives and opportunities across campus under one umbrella— certainly no small task at a school
of 37,000 students across 13 distinct colleges/schools. Almost in acknowledgement as he closed his address, President
Loh referenced an adage from his Peruvian roots: “en mares revueltos, ganancias de pescadores.” Translated, “in stormy
seas, fishermen prosper.”
The CIE initiative gives Maryland the structure to harness a rich history of entrepreneurial opportunities for students from
multiple disciplines and directions. The Smith School of Business’ Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, for example, has
been connecting students to tools, resources, and networks since 1985, while the Clark School of Engineering’s Maryland
Technology Enterprise Institute (MTECH) has had multi-billion dollar impact on the Maryland economy since 1983. Both
entities have dozens of curricular and extracurricular touch points with thousands of students each year through classes,
competitions, and other programs (for further details on these existing opportunities, check out the recent press release
from Maryland’s news desk at http://newsdesk.umd.edu/engaged/release.cfm?ArticleID=2784). To supplement Dingman
and MTECH, the School of Public Policy’s Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership has a number of programs
enabling students with the tools and experiences to develop non-profit ventures (including its annual Do Good Challenge)
As CIE formalizes the structure around this variety of programming offered by independently functioning entities, it seems
to be a prime opportunity to ingratiate the concept of social entrepreneurship into the campus vernacular. However, this
is easier said than done as the concept of “social entrepreneurship” itself has a less than clear and often misunderstood
definition. Further, this isn’t an issue unique to UMD— I recently travelled to Denver, CO to attend “The Huddle,” a
national conference hosted by the non-profit organization “ThinkImpact” and dedicated to #socent issues and
experiential education. Many of my peers at institutions from coast to coast spoke of the issues that permeate their own
unique approaches— certainly questions that merit consideration. One question particularly struck me in its ubiquity;
namely, should social entrepreneurship as a campus-sponsored movement live in a business school?
The Center for Social Value Creation has taken the lead on ownership of #socent initiatives on campus, but there are
certainly other examples where the practice doesn’t fall under an umbrella like that for which the CSVC stands.
Georgetown houses social entrepreneurship as a “global social enterprise” initiative within the McDonough School of
Business as part of a more internationally focused center. Middlebury College has its own “Center for Social
Entrepreneurship” at the campus level (although Middlebury does not have a business school.)
I can’t deny my bias on this issue— I approach social entrepreneurship from a business perspective when I frame it in my
mind (and as I lecture it on occasion.) To be a successful social entrepreneur, you must start with the basics. It seems
only natural that #socent would live at the Smith School in that we teach and foster skills in management to espouse
successful and wide-minded ventures. However, it goes without saying that the possibilities from a subject perspective
are much more expansive than traditional business. Social entrepreneurship isn’t about a “do good” sticker on a traditional
start-up— it’s about taking your passion and giving it the legs to sustain and survive. The benefits of understanding this
path can be taken advantage of by students of any walk or major— global health, education, agriculture, law, and so
forth.
The University of Maryland is one of nineteen AshokaU Changemaker campuses— in the words of their website, “Ashoka
U works with the system, leveraging the entire institutional eco-system – admissions process, coursework, extracurricular
activities, research, career services, and alumni programs – for social impact.” To deliver on this commitment, the Center
for Social Value Creation houses a team of AshokaU Terp Changemakers, a collection of students committed to these
same tenets. While the Changemaker initiative lives with the CSVC and thus the business school, the students involved
come from schools across the entire campus— neurobiology, philosophy, agriculture, etc.
Social entrepreneurship should be part of campus culture. Its roots are in best practice business approaches, and for that
reason it makes sense to be managed out of Smith. However, its actionable agents are from all majors, so for that reason
it behooves the Center to continue engaging partners and stakeholders from across campus. And if #socent eventually
migrates to a level beyond the business school like President Loh’s CIE in the future, then it needs to keep this duality of
components in place (i.e., management-driven approaches combined with cross-disciplinary application.)
As Maryland continues to establish itself as a leader in the art of taking ideas to product to action to market, it is
comforting to know that social entrepreneurship is part of that conversation. My optimism aside, this facet of the venture
creation process is imperative should new businesses seek to survive in a future of constrained resources. It is not
enough to come up with world-changing ventures that only seek to serve the owner’s bottom line, and this will become
an only more pronounced reality as the years go by. We must support those entrepreneurs seeking to deliver value to
the society and to the planet in addition to themselves; if we don’t, we are not the leaders in innovation that we profess
to be.
Guillermo Olivos is the Assistant Director of Programming and Social Entrepreneurship at the Center for Social Value
Creation at the Robert H. Smith School of Business of the University of Maryland.
connect with us:
R obe rt H. Sm ith School of Busine ss - The Unive rsity of Maryland Suite 2410 Van Munching Hall | C olle ge Park , MD 20742 US
This e m ail was se nt to [email protected]. To e nsure that you continue re ce iving our e m ails, ple ase add us to your
addre ss book or safe list.
If you're having trouble vie wing this e m ail, you m ay se e it online .
Share this:
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT :
Blake Carlton (MBA ’14) Shares His Story
By Amarpreet Singh, MBA '14
For this quarter’s Student Spotlight, CSVC Graduate Assistant Amarpreet Singh
sits down with Blake to discuss his unique path from journalism in New York to
Van Munching Hall…with a three year stop in a Brazilian village.
CSVC: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. Can you tell me about
your professional work before Smith?
BC: I grew up in South Carolina, and then attended New York University to study
Journalism. After some years I got a little tired of living in the Big Apple and
decided to do a volunteer project in Brazil. I was originally supposed to be there for only 2 months, but ended up staying
in Brazil for 3 years working with an environmental NGO. My work with this organization is what inspired me to go on to
business school. I really want to help organizations, like the one in Brazil, better organize so that they can attract funding
and do all the great things that they have set out to do.
CSVC: Were you satisfied with the way your (non-profit) organization operated? And what problems you faced while
working with the non-profit organizations?
BC: I was not satisfied at all— they were very disorganized. And unfortunately they didn’t have the budget to pay
someone to help them get organized so that they could be effective and achieve their goals. I would also add that this
was an 8000-person town in the countryside of one of the poorest states in Brazil. The organization was made up of a
core of about 10 people, yet it took on addressing the needs of the entire town. Instead of just focusing on the
environment, which was their main objective, they spread themselves too thin by also taking on cultural projects
providing classes to hundreds of youth and other residents. It was overwhelming considering the very few people who
worked for this organization. Another problem was the lack of human capital. In business school I meet a lot of people
who have good skills and great ideas, but it is not their intent to focus their talents on the non-profit sector. I on the
other hand went to business school for exactly that reason, and I think non-profits should be run just as efficiently as
businesses. These organizations should be just as concerned about the bottom-line as organizations that are privately-run.
Separate from the management facets of the organization, one of the biggest issues that I personally faced while in Brazil
was actually coming to understand more about myself. I went into the experience thinking I was a very flexible person,
capable of moving to any country and being around people of various religions and cultures. I quickly discovered how
difficult is it to be the only foreigner in a place where everybody does things differently than you. Northeast Brazil has a
similar feel to my roots in the Southeast U.S. In many ways it was comfortable, but the technology hadn’t caught up to
where it has in the States so things could be a little slower.
CSVC: You have experiences working with for-profit and non-profit organizations. What do you think for-profits
organizations can learn from non-profits?
BC: I think both can help each other to achieve their goals. For-profit organizations need to be concerned about the
bottom-line and how their business operations affect the rest of the world. In many cases, they could potentially work
with non-profits to become more sustainable. And, I think larger for-profit organizations could benefit from some of the
tactics of non-profits in terms of being resourceful, since non-profits tend to function with very little money.
CSVC: Why do you want to get an MBA? And what are you looking forward to most in the coming years of your Smith
experience?
BC: I want to consult for non-profit organizations in developing countries to help them function more efficiently. My
secondary option would be to work in microfinance with organizations such as The World Bank, funding projects around
the world.
There are two things that really excite me about Smith. First, it is already out of character for me to come to business
school, so that in itself is a challenge. I want to expand upon the experience to challenge myself in other ways too – like
strengthening my quantitative skills by taking classes like Data Models and Decisions. I also hope to take part in a Smith
Experience consulting engagement, and leverage the opportunities of the Center for Social Value Creation. So far I have
been to several of their events and they have proven extremely exciting and informative.
CSVC: Do you have any hobbies or hidden talents not related to social impact or school that you could share with us?
BC: I almost did a road trip around the US taste-testing at microbreweries and doing a baseball stadium tour…but instead
I went to Brazil. I sometimes wonder if I will ever make that road trip. Since living in Brazil I have absorbed a decade’s
worth of Brazilian culture and Latin American culture more generally. I am interested in Capoeira, which is a Brazilian martial
arts-dance combination.
I’m also very interested in cinema studies and photography – something I picked up while
studying Journalism at NYU. Through cinema studies, I became very interested in David Lynch movies, which I don’t think
is common, especially among my business school cohort.
connect with us:
R obe rt H. Sm ith School of Busine ss - The Unive rsity of Maryland Suite 2410 Van Munching Hall | C olle ge Park , MD 20742 US
This e m ail was se nt to [email protected]. To e nsure that you continue re ce iving our e m ails, ple ase add us to your
addre ss book or safe list.
manage your pre fe re nce s | opt out using TrueRemove®.
Got this as a forward? Sign up to re ce ive our future e m ails.
If you're having trouble vie wing this e m ail, you m ay se e it online .
Share this:
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT :
Smith Alumni at the 2012 Net Impact Conference
By Emmy Lang-Kennedy, MBA '13
The annual National Net Impact Conference, now in its 20th year, is the premier
event for students and professionals using their careers for good. Net Impact will
bring together more than 2,800 changemakers from all over the world, and 300
dynamic speakers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to emerging nonprofits.
From October 25 to 27 the conference will review the accomplishments of the
past 20 years and explore opportunities to accelerate impact in building real
solutions for the decades to come. This year Smith will have a great turn out at
the Conference with over 100 MBA and undergraduate students, along with faculty and staff. As recognized thought
leaders in the region, Smith School and UMD alumni will also be speaking at the Conference. We wanted to take this
opportunity to highlight some of these individuals.
Smith and UMD Alumni Speakers:
Beatriz Perez
B.S. ‘91, Marketing, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, Coca-Cola
Beatriz Perez will give the opening keynote address the Conference along with Seth Goldman of Honest addressing best
practices on partnering for impact. Ms. Perez is the Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, Coca-Cola, leading a
new global Office of Sustainability responsible for creating and overseeing an integrated sustainability strategy; setting
high-level goals and commitments; assessing and driving scaled investments; and managing global sustainability
partnerships and programs. Bea joined the company in 1996 and has held various roles of increasing responsibility,
including Associate Brand Manager, Vice President, Sports and Entertainment for Coca-Cola North America; Senior Vice
President of Integrated Marketing for Coca-Cola North America, and most recently, Chief Marketing Officer for Coca-Cola
North America.
Catherine Sheehy
MBA ‘06 Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
Program Manager, Sustainability Services at UL Environment
Catherine Sheehy will moderate a session on human rights in labor and sourcing issues in supply chains with panelists from
Microsoft Corporation, Best Buy Company Inc. and the Fair Labor Association. Ms. Sheehy has twenty years of project
and program management experience. As a Program Manager with UL Environment's sustainability services, she supports
its Sustainability Quotient Program through which UL provides corporate responsibility and sustainability services. Before
joining UL Environment, a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories, Catherine was a Manager with Accenture where she
led organization design and change enablement teams.
David Feldman
MBA ‘91 Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland
CEO, Livability Project
David Feldman will be speaking on about best practices on how to incubate early stage social enterprises on the
Accelerating Impact: Four Daring Ideas panel along with the Unreasonable Institute, Solar for Universal Need Cube
(SfunCube) and Agora Partnerships. Mr. Feldman is CEO of Livability Project a socially responsible consulting firm with a
unique methodology for building sustainable communities. Their Livability Framework brings together diverse stakeholders
in local communities to make systemic, long-lasting change. He is also Executive Director of Bethesda Green, a living
model to sustain current and future development of Bethesda Maryland. He has been named one of “The 25 CEOs You
Need to Know” by The Gazette of Politics and Business and as “Innovator of the Year” by The Daily Record.
Sonal Pandya Dalal
M.S. ‘96 Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development, University of Maryland
Senior Advisor, Corporate Leadership Strategies at Conservation International - Center For Environmental Leadership in
Business
Sonal Pandya Dalal will be a facilitator for a session that will look at the practical, political, economic, moral and
accountability issues involved in valuing ecosystem services. Ms. Dalal is the Senior Advisor, Corporate Leadership
Strategies at Conservation International - Center For Environmental Leadership in Business. In this role she provides
expert counsel to corporate partners in addressing critical environmental and social issues, including climate change, water
scarcity, human rights and the protection of natural capital. Ms. Dala serves as a subject matter expert for stakeholder
reviews and corporate committees. She also serves as technical expert for several groups, including the Climate,
Community and Biodiversity Alliance, the GHG Protocol Initiative and Global Reporting Framework.
http://netimpact.zerista.com/event/member/57542
Interested in attending the 2012 Net Impact Conference? Register now!
connect with us:
R obe rt H. Sm ith School of Busine ss - The Unive rsity of Maryland Suite 2410 Van Munching Hall | C olle ge Park , MD 20742 US
This e m ail was se nt to [email protected]. To e nsure that you continue re ce iving our e m ails, ple ase add us to your
addre ss book or safe list.
manage your pre fe re nce s | opt out using TrueRemove®.
Got this as a forward? Sign up to re ce ive our future e m ails.
If you're having trouble vie wing this e m ail, you m ay se e it online .
Share this:
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT :
Cary Krosinsky
By Jaqueline Cleaver, MBA '13
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Cary Krosinsky, adjunct Professor of
Sustainability and Investing at Smith and Senior Vice President for Trucost, about
the evolution and growth of the sustainable investing space. Professor Krosinsky
is the lead editor and author of Evolutions in Sustainable Investing: (Wiley, 2012),
and co-editor of Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long Term Performance, both
with Nick Robins of HSBC (Earthscan, 2008). In addition, Professor Krosinsky will
be a speaker at the upcoming Net Impact conference!
CSVC: What is Sustainable Investing and how is it different from Socially Responsible Investing and Impact Investing?
CK: In our first two books we try to address that this is a problem, the terminology war or what ever you want to call it.
In the first book we talked about how the phrase “socially responsible investing” was just too broad so what you really
need to do is pick apart what each fund is doing, what the actual granular investment strategy is and what you end up
with is sub-categories that are very different.
The majority of the SRI field to this day is the sort of negative screening approaches where you take say an index like
the S&P 500 and subtract out weapons manufactures or alcohol producers and that sort of thing. Those fund don’t
outperform the market because they are not designed for that purpose, they are for matching values and money.
The value approach is very different and that is what we have been talking about in our book and what I teach about.
Sustainable investing is more of this positive framework, which actually works quite well.
So on a definitional side unfortunately it is still very confusing to most people and it is something we try to address
through the things we’ve written about. We also try to focus people on the micro-side; for example what is the actual
investment strategy, what’s the goal, what’s the technique being used, is it trying to bring about change on an active
basis or is it passive investment strategy?
CSVC: How well do Sustainable Investment Funds perform? Is there a trade off between high returns and ensuring
alignment with one’s values?
CK: There can be tradeoffs I think is the right answer. In our first book we looked at all the world’s SRI funds and we
tried to break them down, there were about 850 public facing funds back in 2007, and we broke them down into
positive and negative strategies along the lines we just discussed.
Basically when you parse the funds out into these positive and negative categories, the positive funds have been
outperforming the market consistently and that was over 1, 3 and 5 years leading up until the end 2007, whereas the
negative funds were more or less matching market performance. This is sort of what you would expect, if your strategy
is simply to invest in the S&P 500 and just take out some sectors you don’t like for personal reasons or what have you,
those unfortunately are not designed to outperform and they haven’t outperformed so it’s not a surprise.
CSVC: How do you factor in sustainability? What investment criteria do you use when developing a “positive” strategy”?
CK: If you look at the most recent piece I wrote on the subject, the Apple piece in Bloomberg, if we are all being
honest about portfolio returns over the last five years, there were two types of investors, those that had Apple and
those that did not and that might sound silly but actually it’s true. Apple has been such a wild outperformer.
And why, if you are looking at companies through a sustainability lens, should Apple have not only survived that set of
criteria but also came out at the top of the list? Because here’s a company that is producing products that the market
wants and they are quite good at managing their sustainability risk, they’ve gotten a lot of flack for that recently, but
that they are actually looking at these things quite closely.
So the point is when you look at Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) factors or other factors of sustainability that I
like to talk about which is mainstream financial criteria, does the company have a good business model or quality of
management. If you put all of those things into the mixer, Apple comes out, and has in my mind at least, at the very top
of the list for years.
It is very important to make sure that the methodology that is chosen isn’t just sort of a pie in the sky concept but
actually has its roots in making money. The business plan needs to work, you need to pick the companies that really are
well positioned and can translate their strategies into more revenue than the market perceives. That’s to me the Holy
Grail, if you are able as a company to demonstrate that you will be able to make more money, in general, from
sustainability than an analyst covering your sector perceives, that’s when people will start to take notice. So that’s what I
try to do in the investing side is to identify those companies.
CSVC: So clearly this field has undergone quite a few changes. Where do you think it’s headed? Will Sustainable
Investing become mainstream?
CK: That’s a good question, but to be honest none of us really knows necessarily. But I’m definitely seeing more interest
in general in the practical side of this field, it may not be coming from some of the very largest investors say Fidelity or
Vanguard but a lot of folks on the value side are looking at these things quite closely. There are a lot of mid–tier
investors who are looking for well run companies. So some investors have been doing these things already but they just
don’t call it by sustainability term.
I think that’s part of what we are seeing, a blurring of the difference between a well-run company and those that are
going to be successful from a sustainability standpoint.
We may never fully mainstream Sustainable Investing but I think that there is a blurring that is going to go on and that is
probably a good thing.
CSVC: Are you currently working on any new research or projects that you could tell me about?
CK: Sure I’m doing a short e-book as we speak it’s going to be called the “Short Guide to SRI”, for those who found my
existing books too long (laughing). I also have a bunch of other things in the works.
CSVC: What do you enjoy most about teaching at Smith?
CK: Well in general its great to meet students and have a chance to learn from them and see them eventually get good
jobs and thrive and that’s personally very rewarding.
CSVC: Any plans to come and teach a class this year at Smith?
CK: Yes! My Sustainability and Investing class is currently scheduled for this spring.
connect with us:
R obe rt H. Sm ith School of Busine ss - The Unive rsity of Maryland Suite 2410 Van Munching Hall | C olle ge Park , MD 20742 US
This e m ail was se nt to [email protected]. To e nsure that you continue re ce iving our e m ails, ple ase add us to your
addre ss book or safe list.
manage your pre fe re nce s | opt out using TrueRemove®.
Got this as a forward? Sign up to re ce ive our future e m ails.