Events

Corporations have become more diverse and inclusive. There are more women on the customer and leadership ends. The end customer is not the male engineer he once was; she is a female CEO or sustainability manager. Her perspective changes business outcomes and rounds out discussions in powerful ways. It makes a difference in our orientation for customers and employees, and offers a rounded view of the problems they face. In encouraging progress at Schneider, we can now report that 42 percent of board members are female, 21 percent of global leadership is female and more than 40 percent of new hires are women.

Sustainability is integral to General Motors’ business strategy and core to the company’s global operations, as demonstrated in its latest Sustainability Report (gmsustainability.com) released today.

There’s hardly a more scrutinized stage to demonstrate Cisco’s best-of-breed network technology than at Cisco Live, our largest customer event of the year. Over 26,000 attendees will converge at the Orlando Convention Center from June 10-14 to check out Cisco’s latest solutions and meet with some of the best and brightest in the industry.

Single-use plastics (including straws, cutlery and containers) are contributing to the overall threat our oceans are facing. Every year, more than 8 million tons of plastic enter the seas. And no, this is not plastic that fell off a boat. It came from the land via river systems. It was carelessly littered, improperly disposed of, or escaped from our global waste management systems.

We’re just days away from the start of Cisco Live US 2018, with plenty planned for on-site attendees and those following along from home! This year’s event asks people to imagine the possibilities of a world with intuitive IT, where technology has the power to make anything possible.

GRI Impact Stories present companies that are using the GRI reporting framework to create tangible benefits for their business and stakeholders. Jubilant Life Sciences, an Indian pharmaceutical company, states that reporting has contributed in their overall improved sustainability performance. Read more about the benefits in this interview.

Friday, on World Oceans Day, the United Nations Global Compact launched the newly formed Sustainable Ocean Business Action Platform — a three-year global programme bringing together business, civil society, the UN and Governments to advance the ocean economy and sustainable development.

Here are all the ways your company can get involved in the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this September and contribute to a thriving, low-carbon economy.

“Society is now expecting more from businesses,” said Sara Soderstrom, assistant professor of Organizational Studies and Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan, in the session “Company-Community Partnerships for Purpose and Sustainable Impact.” She explained that tensions exist between aspirations and objectives, and she used President John F. Kennedy’s approach to putting a man on the moon as an example: The aspiration was to advance science, and putting a man on the moon was an objective that served to advance science.

May marked the final month of pilot stage testing for the top 9 George Barley Water Prize contestant teams. This international $10 million grand prize competition aims to find a lasting solution to the problem of harmful algal blooms fed by excess phosphorus. Begun in 2016 with more than 100 contestant teams, the competition’s latest stage challenged teams to test their innovations in real-world, cold-climate conditions. The winning team will demonstrate a cost-effective, scalable solution to remove and repurpose phosphorus from freshwater.