Take an up close look at leadership, and the future of
global business and investment that is here today.
What do the leaders behind a multi-billion $ private
equity fund, the recipient of the globe’s most prestigious
social entrepreneurial leadership award, and a dot.com
millionaire-turned-carbon cowboy…have in common? They are
on the leading edge of unleashing the positive power of
business and capital to build a better world. During a
unique event at Stanford University on Tuesday, December
5th, they will share their personal stories, and challenge
each other, and all of us, to create a future better than
we had imagined possible.
Speakers:
Paul Fletcher
- Actis:
Paul Fletcher,
Sr. Managing Partner, is responsible for Actis’s business
activities worldwide and plays an active role in Actis’s
investment business. Paul joined CDC Capital Partners in
2000, prior to the creation of Actis in 2004, as Managing
Director of Africa and Global Sector Groups. He became CEO
of CDC in 2003. As a member of the Investment Committee
since 2000, Paul has played a lead role in the creation of
Actis’s track record. The creation of Globeleq, investment
in UTI Bank in India, and continued commitment to Actis
and Africa’s most successful investment Celtel are some of
Paul’s signature deals.
Nic Frances MBE
- Easy Being Green:
Nic
is Founder & Chairman of Easy Being Green. Nic Frances is
recognized for his passionate leadership in showing that
Social Enterprise can lead the new global market agenda.
Originally from the UK, Nic left a successful private
sector career to found the Furniture Resource Center (FRC).
Nic grew FRC from a public charity focused into a leading
profit generating social enterprise. FRC is recognized as
the blue print for the “Mutual State” model proposed by
the New Economics Foundation, a leading UK think tank. Nic
moved to Australia, and from 1999-2004 headed the 40mm
Brotherhood of St. Lawrence (BSL), one of Australia's
leading welfare and social policy organizations. Nic left
BSL to launch Easy Being Green in 2004, and in 2006 was
joined in an equal partnership by Paul Gelding. Paul is a
former Global Leader of Tomorrow (GLT) and head of
Greenpeace International, and for the last ten years has
lead Ecos Corporation. Easy Being Green has in 12 months
saved its customers $30 million ($AUD) off their
electricity bills, while reducing individual energy
consumption sufficient to power a gas fired power plant.
Nic holds an MBE from the British Government, and is a
frequent international speaker on the convergence of
business, personal ethics and social innovation. Nic
currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, has two children,
Charlie and Holly, and spends many of his weekends
building a second home in the Victorian Alps. He was
ordained an Anglican priest in 1996..
John Goldstein
-
Medley Partners:
Mr. Goldstein
is a General Partner of Medley Partners. Prior to Medley
Partners, he served as Senior Managing Director of Medley
Global Advisors. During this time, Mr. Goldstein was also
co-founder and Executive Director of the Medley Institute,
an organization focused on assisting high impact, high
potential groups leveraging market mechanisms for
sustainable development. In that capacity, he worked with
a variety of development actors globally and worked
closely as a board member, senior advisor or team member
with a range of institutions including, among others,
Global Giving, the International Interfaith Investment
Group (3iG), Keystone/Access, Social Fusion, the
Sustainable Food Lab, Synergos/Generon/Monitor's Social
Capital Market Accelerator, the Global Exchange for Social
Investment (GEXSI) and the United Nations Capital
Development Fund. Prior to that, Mr. Goldstein was a
management consultant in the Strategy practice of Andersen
Consulting (now Accenture), working with senior executives
around the world in a number of industries on issues such
as brand strategy, "buyer values" market research, global
M&A, scenario planning, and new product development. Mr.
Goldstein was an honors graduate of Yale University where
he was awarded the Richter Fellowship and the Townsend
Prize.
Divesh Makan
-
Goldman
Sachs & Co:
Divesh Makan,
Vice President, at Goldman Sachs, has more than 10 years
of experience in the financial and private equity
industries. After joining the firm in New York, Divesh
moved to San Francisco to develop Goldman's relationships
with key families and companies in the Bay Area. Prior to
joining Goldman Sachs, Divesh was a senior manager at
Accenture in the Financial Services area, before moving to
the Private Equity area.
Brian Martel
-
Environmental Capital Group:
Bryan L.
Martel, Managing Partner, is the Environmental Investment
Advisor to CalPERS, in association with Pacific Corporate
Group LLC. In this role, he is fostering strategic
worldwide efforts to promote clean technology as an
economically viable market opportunity. He is also the
founder and former CEO of Mobius Technologies, a material
science/clean-technology company.
Robert Rubenstein -
Brooklyn Bridge-TBLI Group:
Robert Rubinstein is Founder and CEO of Brooklyn Bridge,
the Triple Bottom Line Investing Conference and the TBLI
Academy. Robert has been active in Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) for the past 20 years. During
this time he has worked mainly in publishing, creating 5
different magazines. His last publication, Source,
was a management magazine dealing exclusively with CSR. He
has always tried to integrate the basic concept of leaving
things in a better condition than when he started.
This relates to social, environmental, financial and
spiritual conditions. He has been influential in getting
CSR into the mainstream of business strategy, by focusing
on finance and personnel issues. As a teacher at the
Rotterdam School of Management, he teaches a course
on Sustainable Finance, to further raise awareness of
future business leaders. He is also one of the leading
international speakers on the subject of CSR and
Sustainable Finance, and has been recently asked to join
the prestigious Washington Speakers Bureau. Businesses
fully understand these two forces. Robert has been able
to make significant breakthrough with respect to
consciousness rising, by linking them to CSR.
Toni E. Symonds -
California State Legislature:
Toni Symonds currently serves as a senior policy advisor
to the California Legislature. Until December 2005, Ms.
Symonds served as the California State Deputy Controller
for investments and corporate governance. As Deputy
Controller, she acted as the California State Controller's
representative to the California State Employees
Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State
Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). Combined, CalPERS
and CalSTRS have an estimated asset value of more than
$300 billion. Key corporate governance issues during her
tenure as a representative to the CalPERS and CalSTRS
Boards included executive compensation, independence of
financial audits, emerging international and domestic
markets, climate change, and other sustainable investment
issues. Ms. Symonds has held a variety of senior-level
public policy positions in Washington, D.C. and California
during her 20-year career in government, including
appointments during the administrations of President Bill
Clinton and California Governor Gray Davis. In her current
position with the California State Legislature, she serves
as Chief Consultant to the policy committee charged with
reviewing legislation related to business development,
expansion of overseas markets for California products,
foreign investments in California, capital formation, and
California trade policy. In addition to her role with the
California Legislature, Ms. Symonds serves on the
Executive Board of the California Biomass Collaborative, a
non-profit coalition of academics, industry
representatives, and government officials dedicated to
furthering the use of biomass to meet the world’s energy
and product needs.
Dan Whaley -
Climos:
Dan Whaley is the Founder and CEO of Climos, a new San
Francisco based company which will commercialize an
oceanographic technique to stimulate large phytoplankton
blooms in the ocean as a way to reduce atmospheric CO2. In
1994, Dan built the web site for Waiters On Wheels' online
ordering system, which had the distinction of handling
perhaps the first e-commerce transactions ever made over
the web. In the fall of that year he founded
the Internet Travel Network (ITN)—later renamed
GetThere.com with a good friend, and in June of 1995, the
first travel reservation ever made over the web was booked
through a server running in his living room. Dan led
GetThere.com to an IPO in 1999, and its eventual sale in
2000 to The Sabre Group (NYSE: TSG) for $770 million,
which remains the largest all-cash deal for an Internet
company. In 1996, Dan was recognized by Business Travel
News as one of the industry's "Top 25 Most Influential
Executives". He has received numerous other awards and has
spoken and served in a variety of capacities within the
Internet and travel industries. He cycled solo
across the United States, lived with Tibetan refugees in
Nepal and sometime will manage to summit El Capitan.
Moderated
by Amber Nystrom, Social Fusion:
Amber Nystrom is Founding & Executive Director of
Social Fusion. Amber brings to Social Fusion 14 years
experience growing business and development in the U.S.
and internationally. She has worked in Silicon Valley,
Latin America, Africa and Europe, as an entrepreneur and
specialist in sustainable development and public-private
engagement. As a part of Social Fusion’s Advisory Services
on catalyzing innovative flow to social enterprise, Amber
has consulted to the World Bank, Ashoka and others, and is
currently leading a special capital project and case study
review for Actis, a UK based PE fund with over 3.2B under
management investing only in the world’s poorest
countries.
