Wharton prepares for its largest conference in the school’s 127 year history: the 2008 Net Impact North America Conference. Net Impact is “an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to make a positive impact on society by growing and strengthening a community of leaders who use business to improve the world.” The organization has a member base of approximately 10,000 professionals and graduate students who use their business acumen to solve complex environmental and social challenges.

Wharton Social Impact (WSI) is the school’s local chapter of Net Impact with 200+ members.

In spring 2007, Wharton won the competitive bid to host the Net Impact North America Conference. With this honor comes the opportunity to demonstrate Wharton’s thought leadership in social impact issues and strengthen the brand in an otherwise overlooked category.  A team of 80+ students have been working tirelessly to organize the three-day conference whose theme is, “The Sustainable Advantage: Creating Social and Environmental Value”.  Below are a few things you can expect: 

90+ Panels:

A ‘curriculum team’, led by Katie Mullen (WG09), has organized 90+ unique panels to span the three day conference.  Panels are organized into six themes: Finance (led by Lenore Kistinger, WG09), International Development (Suma Reddy), Corporate Leadership (Lisa Nager), Energy and Environment (Chau Tong), Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Anna Mohrman), and Community Development (Katherine Foo). For more information on these panels, visit www.netimpact.org

Philadelphia Green Economy Case Competition:

Case team participants will be asked to develop strategies to grow ‘triple bottom line’ businesses in Philadelphia which may not be appropriate for traditional venture capital or other lending.  The strategies developed will be used and considered by the Funding subcommittee on the Philadelphia Green Economy Task Force. First Prize: $5000, Second price: $1000. Teams of six are encouraged to apply. Further details of the case can be found here.

Social Stock Market:

The Wharton Social Stock Exchange is a simulation game that aims to create the experience of Muhammad Yunus’ (Noble Peace Prize recipient, 2006) proposed stock market where investments will be valued on their social as well as financial performance.  Built on a dynamic real-time platform this game creates an authentic trading experience by simulating the tools used by traders while incorporating environmental and social indicators.  The Social Stock Market is an example of how the conference organizers are using Wharton’s strength in finance to advance social impact innovation. A special thanks goes to Saket Saurabh (WG09) for making this happen.

Career Expo:

More than 70 companies will be recruiting at the Net Impact Career Expo on Friday, November 14th thanks to the work of the Careers Team led by Chhavi Ghuliani (WG09). Attending companies will receive a resume book of conference participants and Wharton Social Impact members. For a list of confirmed companies, visit www.netimpact.org/conference. 

Keynote Speakers:

In addition to the 250+ panelists, the Wharton team has attracted some notable keynote speakers, including John F. Brock, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.; Carter Roberts, President and Chief Executive Officer of World Wildlife Fund (WWF); Matt Kistler, Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; Kate Roberts, Founder of YouthAIDS and more! Dean Robertson, a strong supporter of social impact at Wharton, will also be giving the welcoming remarks.

Fun:

A three day conference would not be complete without ample networking opportunities and a wide array of social events that have been planned for students, visiting professionals and Wharton alumni.

The Conference is SOLD OUT and has been since mid-October.   Volunteering for 4+ hours is the only way to have access to the conference and hear some of the amazing content we have lined up.  Please e-mail dwissel@wharton.upenn.edu to express interest in volunteering. 

Beginning Mon. Oct. 27th from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. and continuing every Monday until December.

Participants will tune into a live video broadcast lecture series on Microfinance hosted by the Haas School at Berkeley. Each week, a prominent industry leader will facilitate the seminar and discuss a “hot topic.”

Confirmed speakers for the series include:
• Elizabeth Funk, Chairman of Unitus
• Jessica Jackie Flannery – Founder, Kiva
• Monica Brand – Vice President, ACCION International
• Kendall Mau – CFO and COO, Prisma Microfinance
• Chris Dunford – President, Freedom from Hunger

Students from Columbia, Kellogg, Yale, Michigan, Chicago, Dartmouth, Case Western, Colorado State, UNM, Denver University, UC Davis will also participate. Throughout the seminar, participating students will skype questions to Haas so we can better engage as a community.

Oliver Ardery, WG’10 writes in the September 22nd edition of the Daily Pennsylvanian about community service during pre-term: “This belief in Wharton’s potential for “brotherly love” is not some ephemeral attitude. During the dean’s lunch in August, Dean Thomas Robertson told us pre-termers that making Wharton a force for good in the world is one of his top priorities. I think there are many in the Wharton and larger Penn community who share this view.”  To read more, click here.

The first session of this year’s Social Impact Salon will be held on Tuesday, August 5th, from 8 – 10 PM at the MBA Cafe in Huntsman.

Join your new classmates to reflect on the role social impact issues might play in your Wharton experience.  You can meet classmates with similar interests, discuss substantive current issues in the field, and have some fun!  Ben & Jerry’s ice cream will be provided.  There will be two more Salon sessions during Pre-Term, but the format of each session will be quite different and the three sessions are intended to build upon one another. 

To register, email Josh Densen by Monday, August 4th at 5pm at: jdensen@wharton.upenn.edu.  Feel free to contact Josh with any questions or for more information.

Salon dates, locations and Information:
All sessions will take place from 8 – 10 PM and be followed by a social gathering in Center City
Light, after-dinner snacks will be provided

First Session: Getting to Know You
Date: Tuesday, August 5th,
Location: JMHH MBA Café

Second Session: Social Impact Opportunities at Wharton
Date: Tuesday, August 12th
Location: JMHH F 85 or F 90 (depending on group size)

Third Session: Net Impact North America Conference Information and Preparation
Date: Tuesday, August 19th
Location: 1500 Locust, top floor, PC Deck

The Wharton team of Ashish Mehta, Xiao Chen, Xiaoying (Alice) Zhang, Hui (Vicki) Yan, and Xiaoming (Vivien) Zuo recently won the National Sustainable Venture Capital Competition.  A big congratulations is in order as the team bested competitors from UC-Berkeley, Columbia, University of Michigan, NYU, UNC, Duke, and Northwestern to take the title.  It is a testament to Wharton’s emerging strength in developing students with a keen sense for identifying business opportunities that combine financial and social return.  According to the official conference press release:

“The SVCIC is the only MBA competition in which students evaluate business plans that incorporate financial profitability, environmental integrity and social equity from entrepreneurs actively seeking venture capital funding.”

Some of us may dream of a day when this is not a specialized competition, but rather simply the way that all businesses are evaluated, but in the meantime, we’re quite happy to be at the forefront of an emerging field!

Congratulations to Pay It Forward, the new Wharton Graduate Association (WGA) Executive Board.  The slate claimed victory in last week’s WGA election and has an ambitious agenda with numerous social impact related initiatives:

• Replacing the core curriculum TAP project (a leadership project which for many students has become a source of humorous derision) with a community service project.
• Instituting an “adopt a non-profit” program whereby each cohort commits to working with a local non-profit over the course of the 2 year MBA program.
• Creating a “Business 101″ seminar during pre-term for students with non-traditional backgrounds.
• Expanding the Legal Aspects of Business & Ethics portion of the core curriculum.

Given the extent of Pay It Forward’s social impact focus, it was actually quite (pleasantly) surprising, at least to this second year observer, that they won.  I suppose the general lesson of the “pay it forward” philosophy is that there is a great deal of untapped goodness to humanity.  Apparently there is a nascent well of goodness in the Wharton community that showed up at the ballot box last week.

With any luck, this will be the start of a groundswell of change that will indeed begin to reshape the Wharton brand around educating socially responsible business leaders.  By initiating change now, we will all ”pay it forward” to future generations of students creating an institution committed to the idea that business for global good (as new Dean Robertson would say) is not just a catch phrase, but a professional commitment.

According to this month’s “Wharton Update”, a monthly email publication circulated on behalf of Dean Robertson, Wharton undergrads are pioneers on the social impact front.

“The newly formed Social Impact Consulting Group is one of the first pilot chapters in Net Impact’s new undergraduate initiative. The partnership will raise interest and awareness among Wharton undergraduates in how to make a social impact through business.”

The Social Impact Consulting Group is sending young business students out to work on non-profit consulting issues and to develop a sense of the importance of social responsibility in the context of business.  For many in this newest generation of business leaders, the need to balance social good and profit is an important component of how they will choose employers and how they will choose to manage.  It is nice to see Wharton’s undergrads acknowledged as one of the first groups admitted to this pilot program - with any luck, their pioneering enthusiasm will carry through the halls and influence their older (yet not always wiser) classmates! 

Dean Thomas Robertson published a great piece in the Financial Times earlier this week about the importance of social responsibility to the business school curriculum and Wharton’s efforts to be a center of innovation on these critical issues:

“Today we use terms such as “social impact” and “social responsibility” when discussing the ways in which businesses need to take into account not only their shareholders, but other stakeholders as well. Social responsibility is no longer relegated to the relatively small percentage of students who seek to work in the nonprofit sector. It has become integrated into our way of thinking in business education and in the coming years needs to be further developed…

…We would like to graduate students who are capable of generating financial returns, but at the same time who are concerned with social good, as this is part of the original mission of our school…

…We want them to be ethical and sensitive to corporate social responsibility issues. We hope they take a broader view and think about how their business decisions can contribute to the overall social good.”

Robertson had previously told the Associated Press that he intends to make Wharton “a force for good in the world.” The article also features comments from Net Impact’s Director, Liz Maw, who mentions that Wharton is hosting the conference next year.