On April 30th, UNC Kenan-Flagler and the Center for Sustainable Enterprise recognized the outstanding achievements of the 95 students in the MBA Class of 2013 (33% of the class) who completed the Enrichment Concentration in Sustainable Enterprise. At the concentration ceremony, Dean James Dean and MBA Net Impact President Liz Love presented the 2013 Core Faculty Champion in Sustainability Award to Chris Bingham, Associate Professor and Phillip Hettleman Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship. The Core Faculty Champion in Sustainability Award was created by the MBA Net Impact chapter as a way to recognize UNC Kenan-Flagler core faculty members who are excelling at incorporating sustainability into the content and delivery of their core classes. According to Liz Love (MBA ’14), the Read More
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Kenan-Flagler MBA Students Selected as Investors’ Circle Venture Fellows
Congratulations to UNC Kenan-Flagler MBA students, Wes Melville (’12) and Sid Padgaonkar (’13) for being selected as 2 of this years’ Investor Circle Venture Fellows. Investors’ Circle is a network of 150 angel investors, venture capitalists, foundations and family offices that are using private capital to promote the transition to a sustainable economy. Wes and Sid join last years’ UNC Kenan-Flagler Fellows Rupa Pereira, Michael Chasnow, and Ben Blackburn in pursuit of evaluating around 30 sustainable ventures for their readiness to participate in a venture capital conference in one of six areas: Sustainable Consumer Products; Education; Health, Biotech, and Wellness; Social Media & Software; Community & Economic Development; and Cleantech. UNC Kenan-Flagler students are joined by MBA’s from Columbia, Darden Read More
UNC Kenan-Flager Center for Sustainable Enterprise Spearheads Shared Tables
The Center for Sustainable Enterprise is excited to announce details of a large UNC – Duke collaboration: Shared Tables – A Triangle Symposium on Global and Local Food Studies scheduled for Tuesday February 28th at UNC and Wednesday February 29th at Duke. This came about when a group of UNC-based Centers lead by the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and European Studies and CSE learned of a cross campus group called TUFS, Triangle University Food Studies. Both groups were planning conferences around food and decided to join forces. The line up for the two days in impressive with the UNC keynote at the Global FedEx Center featuring Tom Philpott co-founder of Maverick Farms and writer on all things food and agriculture for Read More
MBA Social Features Ashok Jayaram’s (MBA ’11) Belaku Eye Hospitals
By Milana Khodorkovskaya, NYU Stern MBA 2011 Ashok Jayaram was a software engineer in India, but has always done the best he could to offer his knowledge and a helping hand to those in need. Indeed his involvement with a charitable eye hospital and b-school training led him change his path and become an entrepreneur. He and his partner have founded a hospital chain that provides quality eye care in many rural parts of India. He sat down with MBAsocial to talk about his venture – Belaku Eye Hospitals – which he launched in 2010, a year prior to graduating with his MBA from UNC Kenan-Flager Business School. Ashok also shared his path to entrepreneurship, tips for aspiring social entrepreneurs, Read More
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Dr. McElhaney’s Specialty
By Valerie Minor, MBA 2012 Class begins with a video. It is an unusual video. Employees of Kentucky Fried Chicken are wearing pink boas and dancing the Charleston with the iconic KFC bucket—a bright pink one. They wear buckets on their feet, buckets on their heads–a chorus line of KFC employees with pink buckets. The camera movement is jerky and uncoordinated, the dancers are unrehearsed, the music is cheerful, but the whole production is awkward, very awkward. “What do you think?” Prof. McElhaney queries the class, “What is this about?” Our responses are tentative; we are concerned, but hesitant to criticize. After all, we are here to learn about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and this is one example. Is this Read More
Building a Smarter Grid with Entrepreneurship
I recently attended a session on the Smart Grid at the Net Impact Sustainability Forum at UNC Kenan-Flagler. The forum consisted of representatives from multiple great companies, including Elster Solutions, O-Power, IBM and ENERNOC. A few salient points emerged from the session. One student asked about the greatest challenges facing each company. O-Power mentioned that its greatest challenge is recruiting and maintaining talent. Given O-Power’s recent $50 million infusion, this makes perfect sense. It is also a good problem for those looking for jobs in energy efficiency! It was exciting to see another example of a young entrepreneurial company driving such rapid growth in the green economy. Elster Solutions responded to the question differently, mentioning the issue over a lack Read More
In conversation with Dr. Al Hammond of Ashoka
On October 13th 2010 two students from UNC Kenan-Flagler’s full-time MBA program, Ashok Jayaram and Mario Prohasky, had the unique opportunity to meet Dr. Al Hammond, one of the leading global practitioners and scholars of social entrepreneurship. He provided tremendous insights into some of his current work within Ashoka, his current venture – Healthpoint Services Global, Inc, and also shared his vision for the development of the social enterprise field in general along with some of the challenges that social entrepreneurs will continue to face in the future. Social Enterprises – Challenges and Getting to scale Looking at the current state of social enterprises across the world, Dr. Hammond identified a number of key challenges that will need to be Read More
Kenan-Flagler Selected for Renewable Energy Case Competition
The Ross School at the University of Michigan has selected UNC Kenan-Flagler to be one of sixteen universities to compete in the second annual Renewable Energy Case Competition. Five students will be selected to compete on the team. Last year’s case was focused on energy storage. The competition organizers recently announced that this year’s case topic is around developing a strategy to implement renewable energy generation in light of RPS requirements and coal plant retirement in the near term. This is a relevant issue that faces the energy industry today and we look forward to seeing what each school creates for the competition.
Remanufacturing to Increase Profits and Reduce Waste
from the Fall 2010 Issue of CSE’s Sustainable Enterprise Quarterly by Dr. Carol A. Seagle, Director of Research at the Center for Sustainable Enterprise and Adjunct Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship Reduce – Reuse – Recycle. These “three Rs” represent approaches to reducing environmental impact. Recycling reprocesses waste materials into the production process. Remanufacturing facilitates reuse by disassembling a product, repairing and/or upgrading parts, and bringing the item back to “as good as new” while retaining a significant fraction of the value added during manufacturing. Cross-industry surveys show typical energy savings of 85 percent compared to the manufacture of new products.1 Xerox was early to implement a remanufacturing strategy in the 1980s with its asset recovery program that resulted in Read More
Feeling Like a Proud Parent: The Launch of Farmhand Foods
From Launching the Venture to a CSE Consulting project and continuing through BASE, Farmhand Foods has ‘grown up’ through the offerings of Kenan-Flagler Business Schools Center for Sustainable Enterprise and Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. “We started Farmhand Foods to dramatically increase local market access for North Carolina’s pasture-based livestock farmers,” says Jennifer Curtis, Co-Founder. “Farmhand Foods is the kind of business our state needs—entrepreneurs who can tap into the excitement about local food in metropolitan areas like Durham to support farmers and other businesses in rural communities,” says Henry McKoy, NC Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Community Development. Farmhand Foods’ network of pasture-based farm suppliers initially includes Parker Farm (Orange County), Triple B Farm (Granville County), Leigh Farm (Martin County), Read More