{"id":389,"date":"2013-02-27T20:01:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T20:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/?p=389"},"modified":"2013-02-27T20:02:20","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T20:02:20","slug":"bard-mba-in-sustainability-launches-net-impact-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/2013\/02\/27\/bard-mba-in-sustainability-launches-net-impact-chapter\/","title":{"rendered":"Bard MBA in Sustainability Launches Net Impact Chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bard College\u2019s MBA in Sustainability program is launching a Net Impact chapter, the Bard Sustainable Business Club, and recently hosted Net Impact clubs from Baruch, Columbia and Fordham, as well as the New York City Professional chapter, in NYC for a round-table discussion on the state of NYC Net Impact and the challenges and future plans that regional members face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Members of NYC based Net Impact Chapters meet for a roundtable discussion of the future of Net Impact.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Net Impact is an organization working to inspire a new generation of students and professionals to use their careers to tackle the world’s toughest social and environmental problems. Net Impact mobilizes these efforts through it’s local chapters in colleges, universities, and professional networks around the world where members learn about sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and social entrepreneurship, work on projects addressing these issues and build professional networks to impact change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of tonight is to find a common ground [among Net Impact chapters],\u201d said Eban Goodstein, director of the Bard MBA in Sustainability. Goodstein talked about the ever-increasing need for undergraduate and graduate institutions to develop Net Impact chapters to help effect change on their campuses, one of the organization\u2019s primary goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cNet Impact is designed to engage all kinds of people, not just MBA in Sustainability students but all MBA students and encourage them to lobby for more sustainability courses,\u201d said Goodstein.<\/p>\n

Paul Campbell, Net Impact Director of Community Growth and Engagement, as well as Marie Casabonne, Net Impact Community Associate, conference called in to discuss the national engagement of Net Impact. Campbell noted that there are currently 311 Net Impact chapters and that \u2018growth happens organically\u2019 among undergraduate and graduate institutions. He highlighted the online career center and job board as well as the online member networking features that Net Impact offers its members.<\/p>\n

Each chapter representative was given an opportunity to discuss their chapter\u2019s strengths and challenges in recruiting members, hosting events, and creating a wider Net Impact reach among young professionals in the area.<\/p>\n

The digital and social media aspect to Net Impact is something that all the NYC chapter representatives spoke positively about in engaging members and creating visibility not only about chapter events, but the goals of the organization.<\/p>\n

Once a community is established, Sam Verrill of the NYC Professionals chapter recommended creating standing Net Impact meetings like a monthly happy hour for members to discuss upcoming events and projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing that something else is coming up [each month] is helpful for members to plan around,\u201d said Verrill, \u201cThe NYC Professionals chapter is about 1500 members. There is a lot of turnover and people are at different stages of their careers. To that end, we have lots of programs and have to figure out ways for members to be heavily involved in the chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sense of community and outreach is crucial to success of new Net Impact chapters. Steven Lictin MBA ’14, the co-president of the new Bard Sustainable Business Club, said that the goal of the Bard chapter is to have 40 members (both undergraduate and graduate students) by next year. To do so, the Bard chapter is holding a series of lunchtime conference call conversations with national sustainability leaders. Series such as these create a open dialogue around the topic of sustainability and allows for more people outside of the immediate Bard community to learn more about Net Impact and what their local chapter is doing.<\/p>\n

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Nick Wejchert, president of the Fordham Net Impact chapter, talks about his clubs plans for the future as Jenny Tolan, Columbia Social Enterprise Club, listens in.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fordham Net Impact president, Nick Wejchert, believes that in involving each chapter\u2019s college community in the case for sustainability will greatly increase Net Impact visibility. Creating urban agriculture projects, sustainable business plans competitions, and, again, monthly meet-ups to share ideas and success stories can all contribute to the goal of a more sustainable future.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting companies that are focused in sustainability [is important]. New companies can move into the [sustainability] space easily now and be innovative from the get-go,\u201d said Wejchert.<\/p>\n

Hosting regional Net Impact conferences are an opportunity to engage not only other NYC chapters, but also community members, businesses and local professionals, which often are harder to reach out to because they are not directly involved with the college community.<\/p>\n

Columbia University\u2019s Net Impact, which is housed under the college\u2019s School of International and Public Affairs\u2019 Social Enterprise Club, holds the annual Social Enterprise Conference<\/a>, a Net Impact event. Even though over 600 people attend, it still is a challenge to bring outside members to the conference.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Bringing in] interesting topics and speakers helps. For this year, we are thinking about using social media and special app to help engage [conference attendees],\u201d said Jenny Tolan from the Columbia Social Enterprise Club, \u201cWe need to harness the Net Impact power of other schools, but also not just in one place, but the community as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chapter leaders agreed that concerted efforts to create citywide Net Impact events and competitions could increase visibility and effect of New York City\u2019s Net Impact efforts and expand professional opportunities for all of their members. The desire collaborations between the Net Impact chapters help reinforce the organizations commitment to motivating young professionals to move toward a just and sustainable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bard College\u2019s MBA in Sustainability program is launching a Net Impact chapter, the Bard Sustainable Business Club, and recently hosted Net Impact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,43,38,10,30,80,32,60,33,57,7,81,31],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","tag-business","tag-corporate-responsibility","tag-eban-goodstein","tag-events-2","tag-mba","tag-net-impact","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-starting-a-sustainable-enterprise","tag-students","tag-sustainability","tag-sustainable-business-club","tag-sustainable-business-series"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}