2009 Magill Business Symposium

Leadership Challenges: Living in the Grey and the Green

March 6, 2009

**Please note that all students must sign in during the morning and afternoon sessions.

Program Details:

9:00 – 10:15                If It Could Happen To Me, It Could Happen To You
                                    Geoff Infeld, Vice President, Media and Publishing, CallSource

With no formal business training and a degree in Theater from USC, I found myself as a salesman in my early 20's to make ends meet.  In 1996, I was lucky enough to get involved with a fast moving internet company that had a successful IPO within 3 years.  I moved on to a larger more successful

dot com in August of 2000, only to find myself in a very aggressive revenue environment that pushed every envelope it could with its "Creative

Deal Making." Eager to fit in and succeed, I let my moral compass go awry, choosing instead to take the easy road of "going with the flow" in what seemed like an extension of my earlier dot com business environment.  While I only worked at this dot com for 8 months...A few years later, I found myself facing up to 5 years in prison and fines of hundred of thousands of dollars, due to the poor choices I made.

My story is one of the "Average Worker", not the big time Senior Executive who made millions by committing fraudulent acts.  My story is not even one

of the opportunistic greedy white collar thief, who looks for the right place and time to embezzle...it is rather a personal, powerful, and extremely relatable story that resonates with Business School students who are about to begin their business careers.

10:15 – 10:30             Break

10:30 – 11:45              Breakout sessions       

            Option 1          Business Can Do Amazing Things: Opportunities &                                                        Challenges for Business Professionals in Developing Countries
                                    Tal Dehtiar, Co-Founder & President, MBAs Without Borders

MBAs Without Borders is an international organization that empowers local entrepreneurs in developing countries by matching them with top MBA leaders around the world. We believe that business can do amazing things and when channeled appropriately, it can have an incredible lasting impact in communities. Learn more about the work our MBAs have done, along with the challenges we have faced along the way.

Option 2          From Awareness to Advocacy - User Created Marketing

                        Tom Feegel, Founder, Brand Neutral

The success of the Obama campaign was due in large part to a sense of ownership voters experienced through the process of co-creating the Obama brand.  Using the Five A's Framework, we will track the progression of how a consumer becomes aware of a socially/environmentally sound brand, gets motivated to action by a need to contribute to the social good of others and in doing so, assumes a sense of ownership that leads to long term advocacy.

Option 3          Challenges and Opportunities in Greening the Architecture and Building Engineering Industry

David Magarian, Independent Building Scientist and Community Planner

With half of the US electricity being consumed by heating and cooling our built environment, greening through intelligent architecture and engineering practices are crucial to the mitigation of global warming.  Because addressing climate change requires a significant shift away from business as usual, challenges ranging from the development of alternative business and economic models to the reinterpretation of the built environment will be necessary.  In this discussion we will examine these critical issues as well as the emerging technologies that will help move the A&E industry forward.

Option 4          The Reality of Going Green: Why We Need to Do it, and Why Going Green Will Not be a Moral Issue, But a Financial One.

                                    Robert Mechielsen, founder, Studio RMA

Greening the development of our built environment can have more of a positive impact on our natural environment than any other industry. Much of the developed world is further advanced in this process than the US is – through different incentives and ordinances, some countries see up to 20% of new projects be sustainable ones. Many experts believe that the revolution this industry needs will come one of these countries, like Germany or China. In this session, we will discuss why these experts are wrong, and why the US is in the best position to lead the way in the Green revolution.

Option 5          Environmental Governance – Accessing new capital through sustainability

                        Michael Wallace, President, Wallace Partners

As more and more companies realize “green” is the new “black”, corporations are faced with a need to address the markets’ growing demand for environmental information.  CEO, CFO, IR, EH&S, HR, PA and GA are just a few of the internal departments being asked about environmental and social issues.  These intangibles or non-financial metrics are typically captured in phrases like sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and/or corporate citizenship (CC), or the latest phrase from Wall Street “ESG” – standing for environmental, social and governance performance. In this session we will discuss the challenges associated with a declining economy in an era of environmental governance.

12:00 – 1 pm             Lunch

1 – 2:00 pm                 Case Competition