CEO Imperative 21; Cofounder B Lab (nonprofit behind the global B Corporation movement
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Articles by Jay Coen Gilbert
Ron DeSantis is Speaking to You
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, seemingly the favorite candidate of Philadelphia’s Union League leadership, announced his candidacy for president this week. Whether you’re for him or against him and whether you vote Republican, independent, or Democrat, one of the keys for those of us in this all-important swing state is to understand when a candidate is trying to win our vote fairly based on principled policy positions or manipulatively based on divisive dog whistle politics.
Emmaus releases Vision 2030 as the borough looks to the future
Emmaus releases Vision 2030 as the borough looks to the future By Jay Gilbert September 26, 2022 EMMAUS, Pa – Emmaus is looking forward to the next decade, releasing a presentation and website to outline the borough’s new strategic plan. Emmaus United for Progress: Vision 2030 arose from a visioning committee of various borough stakeholders that met monthly starting in 2018.
Patagonia Asks All Business Leaders to Look at Themselves in the Mirror
By Andrew Kassoy, Bart Houlahan, and Jay Coen Gilbert, B Lab Co-Founders This is the animating question that has inspired the B Corp movement since its beginnings. The original inspiration for the B Corp movement was a brand called Newman's Own that gives 100% of its profits to charity.
A message from the Co-Founders of B Lab on the growth of the global B Corp movement and the transition to new executive leadership
Friends, Sixteen years ago this week, B Lab was formally launched by three college friends committing themselves to a Declaration of Interdependence. The three of us — Andrew, Bart, and Jay — shared a hope for a better way to do business: better for workers, better for communities, better for the planet.
Business With Purpose: The Future Is Here, and Here Are Its Leaders
Best for the World 2018 Honorees Build Better Communities—and the Bottom Line The 2018 Best For The World honorees include, clockwise from top left, Sunrise Banks, Animal Experience International, Mascoma Bank, and CORE Kitchen. 21st century business leaders see assets everywhere and in everyone. They create value and competitive advantage by competing not just to be best in the world, but best for the world.
10 Ways for Individuals to Take Action During the COVID-19 Crisis
How People in the B Corp Community and Others Can Contribute to Those in Need Life has been a whirlwind since we first heard the term COVID-19. Over a few short weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has posed profound health concerns and an array of challenges and disruptions, from canceled events and school closures to supply shortages and financial uncertainty.
Richelieu Dennis’ Blueprint For Community Conscious Capitalism
Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash The Deal — The Blueprint To business owners who endeavor to do better or the socially conscious wealthy who want to help close the wealth gap, you should study Unilever’s acquisition of Sundial. The $240 million dollar deal crafted by Sundial’s co-founder and CEO, Richelieu Dennis included an initial $50 million dollar investment to the New Voices Fund for women of color entrepreneurs in 2017. He could have quietly walked away with his fortune.
Solving a Global Crisis with Unused Airline Miles
How the Miles4Migrants Team Uses Donated Frequent Flyer Miles to Reunite Displaced Families Around the World To find the podcast on iTunes, click here. Andy Freedman is the co-founder and managing director of Miles4Migrants, a nonprofit that uses donated frequent flyer miles to unite separated refugees and immigrant families. Andy Freedman, co-founder and managing director of Miles4Migrants.
Black History Never Dies: Responding to the B Corp Community’s Call for Racial Equity
B Lab’s Director of Inclusive Economies Shares Ongoing Changes and Funding Opportunities at the Nonprofit B Lab’s Director of Inclusive Economies, Dr. Kathryn Buford, speaks at the 2019 Champions Retreat, a gathering of B Corps hosted by B Lab. This article is a personal perspective from an employee at B Lab, the nonprofit behind Certified B Corporations.
Top 10 Ideas That Show Business Roundtable CEOs How To Create Value For All Stakeholders
Here are 10 ways that Certified B Corporations show Business Roundtable CEOs how to create value for all stakeholders. B Lab We are in the process of putting into practice a new social contract between business and society.
New Business Trend: An Authentic Commitment To Purpose
“Ding dong, AVON calling!” was a catchphrase in the ’60s that represented more than door-to-door direct selling of cosmetics; it represented financial independence for women and a culture shift. More than 50 years later, the iconic brand is signaling a new business trend about putting purpose first by agreeing to an all-stock sale to Brazil-based beauty brand Natura valued at $2 billion, effectively creating the world’s fourth-largest beauty brand with roughly $10 billion in global revenue.
It’s Time for the Business World to Declare a Climate Emergency
How B Corps Like Allbirds And Patagonia Are Leading on the Climate Crisis, But It’s Still Not Enough (Photo by Dan DeAlmeida on Unsplash) Following the lead of young people fomenting an Extinction Rebellion, the U.K. parliament just declared a climate emergency on May 1, and the governor of the Bank of England stated plainly that climate risk is an existential threat we can no longer ignore. And that was before the recent UN report warning of the likely imminent extinction of 1 million species.
The Hardest Thing To Change Is What Most Needs To Change: Expanding Our Duty Of Care
Donella Meadows, the scientist, systems thinker, and pioneering environmentalist best known for her prophetic 1972 book Limits to Growth, once shared this powerful truth: "The hardest things to change are the mindsets that create the systems that need to be changed." Our current economic system is broken because it is dominated by an ethic of hyper-individualism and profit maximization, which together represent an "exploiter mindset." Business models created and managed by leaders who are...
Small Businesses Taking Giant Leaps To Make A Big Difference
Dion and Shay, two employees of Greyston Bakery, which follows an open-hiring policy. Greyston is one of many small-but-mighty B Corps leading systemic change in business and capitalism.
Larry Fink, Tucker Carlson, David Brooks And The Call For A Capitalist Reformation
Larry Fink challenges. Tucker Carlson rants. David Brooks moralizes. Others wonder Can American Capitalism Survive? They all correctly diagnose the problem—a broken economic system that is not meeting the needs of the vast majority of people and that has embedded incentives that make it designed to fail in the more perilous times ahead—but they all fail to see clearly how long we’ve had this problem, what is its root cause, and what is required for its solution.
Larry Fink, Tucker Carlson, David Brooks And The Call For A Capitalist Reformation
Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the church door, catalyzing the Protestant Reformation. Ferdinand Pauwels/Wikimedia Commons Larry Fink challenges. Tucker Carlson rants. David Brooks moralizes. Others wonder Can American Capitalism Survive?
Business for Good: Choose to be Great
The co-founder of Wayne-based B Lab interviews Australian B Corps Small Giants on why empathy and understanding are vital to business success Jan. 24, 2019 Small Giants is the brainchild of Danny Almagor and Berry Liberman—partners in business as well as in life. Named after the Bo Burlingham book Small Giants, the company’s founding inspiration was the book’s central premise: that some companies choose to be great rather than big.
Allbirds' Reported Billion-Dollar Valuation: What Makes These Strange Birds Fly
Tim Brown, left, and Joey Zwillinger chose a direct-to-consumer business model for Allbirds so they could control distribution, better connect with the consumer and quickly incorporate product feedback. Photo courtesy Allbirds Allbirds was recently valued at a reported $1.4 billion. Incorporating sustainability into its shoe and company design from the beginning, Allbirds has attracted the attention of mainstream investors by breaking the mold—and doing it with style.
Become A Master Of Business: Why Empathy And Understanding Are Vital To Success
Danny Almagor and Berry Liberman founded Small Giants, an impact investment firm that empowers companies — including media brands, alternative-energy producers and business incubators — that have “a meaningful impact in the world.”Courtesy Small Giants Small Giants is the brainchild of Danny Almagor and Berry Liberman — partners in business as well as in life.
Let's Have a Kitchen Table Conversation About The World Business Leaders Vote For Every Day
Every dollar we spend and investment we make is a vote for the world we want to build and live in. Image by Shani Tucker On the day after the midterms, as we headed into the biggest shopping time of the year, the community of Certified B Corporations launched a new public engagement campaign called Vote Every Day. This campaign reminds all of us that we have voice and power beyond the ballot box.
How to Build and Protect Your Purpose-Driven Business
But even the noblest of businesses can fall prey to a diseased element in today’s financial sector. It’s called “short-termism,” and its pervasiveness in our capital markets is proving to be cancerous. Among the culprits driving short-termism is the practice of financial shareholder activism; specifically, the amassing of equity in a publicly traded company, often by a hedge fund or institutional investment firm, with the intent of forcing its sale to the highest bidder.
The Elections, The Politics of Division, And The Business of Inclusion
Inclusion is more than a business imperative. If we want to put out the fires of global populism and their all too predictable and dangerous political and social consequences, we need to fix our “broken economy,” and that begins with practicing the business of inclusion.
Managing Digital Change: Playing The Long Game For Participatory Democracy
Change.org is the world’s largest online civic-engagement platform, and as a result its founder, Ben Rattray, has earned spots on the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people and has been listed as one of Fortune's 40 Under 40 rising young business leaders.
Distracting Trade Wars: How To Really Help American Workers
The midterm election cycle is heating up—and so are the finger-pointing political ads and posturing that seek to divide us, resulting in an increasing distrust among Americans toward all politicians. We hear a deluge of coverage on trade wars that are a distraction, especially for the majority of Americans who struggle to get by. Money—not China—is the No. 1 cause of stress for Americans—higher than work stresses, family responsibilities and health concerns.
I'm Complicit To Institutional Bias, Here's What I'm Doing About It
The words hit me like a punch to the gut, but they shouldn’t have surprised me. "Only 57 percent of B Lab’s staff who are people of color feel they can bring their whole selves to work, compared with 96 percent of their white coworkers." B Lab, the organization I co-founded in 2006, is the nonprofit behind the global B Corporation movement.
203 Actual Changemakers: First-Movers Taking the Lead
Thoughtful critics are questioning whether the idea of market-based solutions to societal problems is an oxymoron. As I wrote last week, these critics force those of us working on such solutions to question our assumptions, and ultimately to offer proof that our work is making real change.
Are B Corps An Elite Charade For Changing The World?
This article is more than 4 years old. Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Anand Giridharadas speaks truth to power, calling elites to account for giving so much lip service... [+] to “changing the world,” while mostly upholding an unacceptable status quo.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Republicans, CEOs & BlackRock's Fink Unite Around 'Accountable Capitalism'
The benefit corporation is an opt-in corporate governance mechanism helping businesses be better stewards and uniting people from around the world and inside state legislatures and board rooms. Will this or federally mandated business requirements most effectively see business reach its highest potential of becoming a force for good?
Song For My Father: The Power Of Choice
My Dad often said that life is about choices. His job as my father, he said, was about creating the environment in which I had the maximum number of choices available to me. He also felt that life often required us to make choices, sometimes hard ones. And that the choices we make define who we are.
The Future Of Business Is Purpose: Here Are Its Leaders
21st century business leaders see assets everywhere and in everyone. They create value and competitive advantage by competing not just to be best in the world, but best for the world. As consumers, talent and investors increasingly seek values-aligned businesses to buy from, work for and invest in, entrepreneurs are seeking to create the greatest positive impact not just to be nice, but to be more successful. The supporting evidence is mounting and clear.
Faith Leader Jim Wallis Wants to Restore Our Faith In Business, Starting With Our Individual Choices
So says the prophetic voice of Jim Wallis, president and founder of Sojourners, a national faith-based organization that reaches more than 5 million Americans. A lifelong evangelical from the Midwest, Wallis launched Sojourners more than 40 years ago with other students at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, where they also established a community with a Christian commitment to social justice.
A Good Habit For Serial Entrepreneurs, And Everyone Else, To Become Our Best Selves
“This is just the speed at which I operate,” said serial entrepreneur Neil Grimmer in a recent interview with Inc. And as he’s charged from experience to experience, Grimmer’s personal passions have heavily influenced his professional life. Take, for example, the five years he spent as an artist and assistant to sculptor Alan Rath.
'Too Good To Fail': Big Ideas For A Big Bank With Values
People are distrustful of big banks, perhaps today more than ever before. It only takes a look at the financial crisis and subsequent trillion-dollar bailout of banks that were deemed “too big to fail,” or more recently the systemic fraud at Wells Fargo, to understand why. In a quest to scale a different kind of bank, in December 2017, New York’s Amalgamated Bank announced its plan to acquire San Francisco’s New Resource Bank.
How To Invest AND Exit With Impact AND Return
“The point of our investments was mission, not profit,” says Carol Newell, founding investor and principal of Renewal Partners, an early investor in B Corps Stonyfield Farm and Seventh Generation and the predecessor to Renewal Funds. “And part of the Renewal Funds mission is to prove that you can get a good return on it.” Renewal Funds, which evolved out of Renewal Partners in 2008, is a venture capital firm investing in early growth stage companies in Canada and the United States.
Every CFO Should Know This: 'The Future Of Banking' Ties Verified ESG Performance To Cheaper Capital
One typically does not expect innovation to be announced in an annual financial report. It seems Danone is not a typical company. Danone released its FY 2017 financial report on Friday and announced something important that, to my knowledge, has never been done before: Danone partnered with 12 leading global banks to lower their loan rates if Danone increases its verified positive impact in the world.
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway And JP Morgan Could Disrupt U.S. Health Care And Capitalism As We Know It
The biggest news since Obamacare about the failing U.S. health care system may be that three giants of technology, insurance and finance are forming a new health care company “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.” Assuming they are talking about forming a new for-profit business and not a nonprofit organization, it sounds like Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon—the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan, respectively—might be forming what would likely become...
Is BlackRock Seeing 'Cleary'-Eyed? A 'Watershed Moment' If Words Become Actions
Every CEO and every board member of every publicly traded company (and every thinking-about-being-publicly traded company) should drop whatever they are doing and read two short things right now: BlackRock is the largest investor in the world, managing $6 trillion in assets. Cleary is one of the largest and most prestigious international law firms in the world. These are two of the most influential institutions that drive the behavior of the corporations that shape our society and our lives.
For-Profit Higher Education: Yes, Like This Please
Less than one-third of the global student-aged population is enrolled in higher education. I’m not an education expert, but that makes me think about two things: First, it makes me think we have an equity problem. Too many young people around the world are not being given what they need to succeed; they are not on an educational path that leads to higher education.
Panera Bread CEO And Cofounder Ron Shaich Resigns To Join The Conscious Capitalism Movement
Ron Shaich, long-time CEO of Panera Bread Company, recently announced his resignation from the company he helped co-found. Shaich had led Panera through successful growth as a public company since 1991 and recently closed on a $7.5 billion sale of the now 2,000-storefront chain to JAB.
The Coolest Deal Term Ever: Sundial Pays It Forward
Just after Thanksgiving, Unilever announced its acquisition of Sundial Brands, a $240 million dollar portfolio of personal care brands serving the growing new majority market. SheaMoisture, Sundial’s best-known brand, burst out of the “ethnic aisle” years ago and has found its soaps, lotions and shampoos in bathrooms of every shade, including mine.
Why A Delaware Corporate Lawyer Went From Business-With-Purpose Skeptic to Full-Time Legal Advocate
Rick Alexander almost seems to have been directed by fate to practice — and ultimately rethink — corporate law. “In 1985, coincidentally the same year I entered law school, the Delaware Supreme Court declared in the Revlon rule that the job of the directors was to maximize financial returns for shareholders. That was the first time they had said it,” Alexander says. Thus, Alexander’s successful 23-year-career as a Delaware corporate lawyer was set in motion.
Putting The Impact In Impact Investing: 28 Funds Building A Credible, Transparent Marketplace
This week, thousands will gather in San Francisco for SOCAP17, the world’s largest gathering for the growing marketplace of impact investing. If this marketplace grows as some predict (hope?), impact investing could be one of the most important social innovations in our lifetimes, leveraging the massive power of the capital markets to a higher purpose than maximizing returns for shareholders.
Business That Works For Everyone: A Declaration Of Interdependence
Ten years ago, a small group of business leaders stood together to make a “declaration of interdependence.” They declared the simple truth that business should work for everyone. They weren’t leaders of big businesses. Few, if any, of these businesses were—or are—household names. They were leaders of the kinds of small businesses that make up the vast majority of businesses in the world. What these business leaders declared wasn’t especially controversial.
The most important list of businesses in the world – ImpactAlpha
Fast growth is one measure of a business’s success, but it is no longer enough. The world needs businesses that are both high growth and high impact. The world needs businesses that make “yes/and” the norm, and leave the old thinking of “either/or” behind. The world needs social unicorns who, instead of aiming to hit $1 billion, reach to touch one billion lives. With the rise of populist anger at a system that feels rigged, people are hungry for businesses that are changing the system.
The Most Important List Of Businesses In The World
Inc. 500/5000 tells us who’s growing the fastest. This list, the Best for the World list, tells us who’s the best. Best for workers, best for communities, best for the environment. Fast growth is one measure of a business’s success, but it is no longer enough. The world needs businesses that are both high growth and high impact. The world needs businesses that make “yes/and” the norm, and leave the old thinking of “either/or” behind.
How To Play The Long Game Amid Rising Short-Termism
This article is more than 6 years old. Emmanuel Faber, the CEO of Danone, may be onto something. And what he’s onto might be useful to any CEO of a public company — or pre-IPO unicorn — who wants to build long-term value amid the rising storm of short-termism.
Can Conscious Capitalism Survive Amazon? Or The Public Capital Markets?
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey is a co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism Movement, which believes that the heroic spirit of capitalism is unleashed when capitalists pursue the creation of value for all stakeholders, not only shareholders.
Best Gift From My Mom Ever - Learning to Be Vulnerable
A Lesson for Living With Cancer, or Perhaps Just for Living Learning to be vulnerable is perhaps the most powerful gift my mother left to the grandkids she never knew. Not because doing so may be the secret to a graceful death, but because it may be the secret to living a good life.
Your Business Should be a Force for Good: An Open Letter to Business Leaders
By Andrew Kassoy, Bart Houlahan, and Jay Coen Gilbert, Founders of B Lab B Lab has spent the past ten years serving a community of credible leaders who are using business as a force for good.
Your Business Should be a Force for Good: An Open Letter to Business Leaders
By Andrew Kassoy, Bart Houlahan, and Jay Coen Gilbert, Founders of B Lab B Lab has spent the past ten years serving a community of credible leaders who are using business as a force for good.
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