Over 100 scholars from a variety of disciplines will convene for three days to discuss research on corporate sustainability at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
The conference will review academic papers and pedagogical techniques on sustainable business practices from May 16 to 18. It is sponsored by the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability, a consortium of universities that encourages research on corporate sustainability, and hosted by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment.
“Leading corporations realize now that sustainable business practices are not only good for brand recognition, but can reduce costs, increase profits and provide for the long-term,” said Marian Chertow, the conference chair and associate professor of industrial environmental management at F&ES. “This conference will feature the latest in the business sustainability literature.”
On Wednesday, May 16, Jim Rogers, chair, president and CEO of Duke Energy, will deliver the keynote speech, discussing how to build shareholder value by using environmental strategy. Under his leadership, Duke has invested $7 billion to generate clean energy and is the only utility named on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index.
Educators and business leaders will also discuss how to make corporate sustainability a meaningful topic in the classroom in an all-day session titled “From Classrooms to Boardrooms: Embedding Sustainability Research in Curriculum and Corporate Strategy” in Burke Auditorium. The principal activity of the conference will be to review 23 working papers in corporate sustainability on May 17 and 18.
On May 17, Ma Jun, executive director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and a leading expert on supply chains in China, will speak by video from Beijing. He was a Yale World Fellow and in April received a Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest prize honoring grassroots environmentalists. In 2006 he was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Also on May 17, Dan Esty, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, will discuss what every executive must know to manage the environmental challenges facing society and business. And on May 18, Mark Vachon, vice president of ecomagination at GE, will discuss his company’s investment of $5 billion in clean-tech research and development.
Sessions are open to registrants only. To register for the conference, visit
www.corporate-sustainability.org/conferences/fourth-annual-research-conference/registration.html.
