the next big thing

This weekend IE Business School hosted it's annual Social Responsibility Forum. This year's theme was "Leading to the Next Big Thing," which alludes to the fact that social responsibility is the next big thing, but what it means to each of us individually, or to each company, organization, etc. is currently being designed and experimented with.  It's a two-day event put on by IE's Net Impact chapter. For those who don't know, Net Impact is an organization that promotes social responsibility in business. Nearly every business school, and many other types of university programs, have a local chapter. 

The event started with a great party/fundraiser Thursday night. I had a lot of fun, which made getting up for Friday's LAUNCH program starting at 8:45 a bit of a challenge. Friday the conference started, after brief introductions from the IE community, with guest speaker Reverend Karen Tse. For me, the most important thing she said was in the first two minutes of her 40 minute talk: "May we be reminded of our highest aspirations." I think it's really easy to forget our "highest aspirations" here in business school as we are introduced to new and fascinating topics, career choices, and lifestyles. It was a powerful event for me because it was another reminder to me of my passions, my desire to really make a difference in this world, however cliché that sounds. I did question one thing she said, that a lack of resources is no excuse to not fight for justice and so her organization was able to organize a lot of pro bono volunteers. In my experience, very few NGOs or non-profits manage to do that without dealing with high rates of "NGO burn out" and unreliability in their service provision. I think it's a topic that could be addressed at a future Net Impact event - working for an NGO is a great experience, but I think it would be useful to talk about the realities of day-to-day NGO work and how stressful, tiring, and non-glamorous it can be...

I'm just going to mention a few other bits of wisdom I liked from other speakers Friday and Saturday: Sir Robert Charles Swan, arctic explorer and environmental activist, presented via video from China. I liked his message to be positive and to look for solutions, not problems. Mr. Hanz Reitz, owner of a sustainable farm (my dream!) in India and advisor to Muhammad Yunus, said "don't be afraid to start small" and quoting Yunus, a "charity dollar has one life, a social business dollar is recycled over and over again." 

In one of the panels I attended, there was a social entrepreneur who works against human trafficking in Cambodia. We exchanged information. Hopefully we can get a useful partnership going between her organization and the anti-human trafficking NGO (the Tampep Association) I used to work for in Italy. 

In another panel, Bain and Accenture, two of the consulting firms I have researched for internships, talked about their social responsibility and sustainability initiatives. This was a great opportunity to see beyond their websites and meet the people actually working on these programs. It seems like about half the people I talk to here from notable consulting firms whose website's have "sustainability services" don't think that their offices actually do anything in this field. 

The last panel session I attended of the conference was on this year's BP oil spill. The discussion had an unexpected effect on me, it gave me a reason to go back to the U.S. While I think I'd like to experience Dubai, or China, or go back to Africa or the Middle East, or stay around in Europe for a bit longer, the oil spill talk made me think "I should go back and help get my country on the right track...." I think I should do that eventually, voting is not enough I'm afraid...