There’s all sorts of good news coming from Durham-based SJF. UNC Kenan-Flagler alumni are making news in the impact investing world as leaders of the organization. Whether it’s David Kirkpatrick (EMBA ’91), Executive Director and co-Founder of SJF Ventures raising a new $75M fund or Bonny Moellenbrock (MBA ’98), Executive Director overseeing the SJF Institute and it’s new merger partner, Investor’s Circle, these Kenan-Flagler alums leading the way as they connect, inspire and accelerate impact entrepreneurs as they change the world. For the better. Wall Street Journal: “The team at SJF Ventures had to undergo federal background checks, submit fingerprints and provide 20 references each in order to obtain a license from the Small Business Administration for its new nationally focused impact investment fund, SJF Ventures III Read More
Monthly Archives: March 2012
Kenan-Flagler Students Shine at Hult Global Case Challenge
This post is contributed by Genny King, MBA Class of 2013 This past February, I traveled with my teammates to Boston, MA to participate in the Hult Global Case Challenge. Here we are, left to right, in the accompanying photo: Emily Dorfman, Sid Padgaonkar, Elissavet Abdelnour, our ambassador from Hult, Genny King, and Peter Brinkerhoff. The mission of the Hult Global Case Challenge is to develop innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing social challenges and encourage breakthrough ideas from college and university students around the world. Our team was selected from a pool of more than 4,000 applications to participate in the competition. We were able to participate in the competition through support from the MBA Program Office and Center for Sustainable Read More
Managing Renewable Resources: Learning from a (Fishing!) Simulation Game
By Nimit Arora, MBA 2012 It’s been a standard practice at many business schools to teach marketing, operations, strategy and other business concepts through simulations and games. In many of my MBA classes, we played games such as the ‘Beer game’ in Operations, ‘MarkStrat’ in Marketing strategy, Selling simulation in sales class and ‘The Game of leadership’ on the leadership day. I thought I was done with all the games in the business school when I was introduced to the Fishing game in my Sustainable Operations class. I hadn’t thought one could learn sustainability concepts through a game. Sustainable Operations is offered for the first time this year at UNC Kenan-Flagler with Professor Deshpande and it’s proving to be an amazing addition Read More
From Shared Tables: “Can Industrial Agriculture Feed The World?”
This post written by Marcie Barnes for Greenetarians.com – live from the Shared Tables 2/28/12 keynote on UNC’s campus Tom Philpott is the cofounder of Maverick Farms, a center for sustainable food education in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. He was formerly a columnist and editor for the online environmental site Grist and his work on food politics has appeared in Newsweek, Gastronomica, and the Guardian. He currently writes about Food and Ag for Mother Jones. Typically the argument is framed around “can organic feed the world” and the conventional answer. can chemical-intensive, geographically concentrated/patented seeds feed the world? This kind of agriculture is promoted by the US government, foundations like the Gates Foundation, etc. People who promote it are so certain Read More
Local Food Systems – Clumsy, Yet Powerful Solutions to World Hunger
By Mia Farber, MBA 2012, written Thursday March 1st Last night Will Allen, Founder of Growing Power and the 2nd farmer ever to receive a MacArthur Genius Award, spoke at Duke University as the keynote of Shared Tables: A Triangle Symposium on Local and Global Food Studies. A native of North Carolina and the son of sharecroppers, Allen retuned to his agricultural roots to confront the challenges of developing healthy, local food systems that provide safe, unfettered access to nutritious affordable food for all. The evening was kicked off by Dean Laurie Patton of Duke University who painted a powerful portrait of academia in the 21st century, as a space for public scholarship, calling for the dismantling of the ivory Read More