A panel discussion hosted by the Massachusetts Social Enterprising Networking Group and Net Impact

Featured panelists:

• Jim Cassetta, President & CEO of Work Inc .

Social Enterprise: Facilities Management and Maintenance Inc., Quincy, MA

• Suzanne Kenney, Executive Director, Project Place

Social Enterprises: Project Pepsi, Clean Corners…Bright Hopes, Home Plate

• Audrey Higbee, Vice President of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services, Center for Human Development and Director of Riverbend Furniture

Social Enterprise: Riverbend Furniture, Springfield, MA

• Jodi Rosenbaum, Founder and Director of More Than Words Social Enterprise: More Than Words used book store, Waltham, MA

Panelists include Mary Smith Fawzi, Partners in Health; Dr. Marc Prou, the Haitian Studies Association at University of Massachusetts Boston; Carline Desire, the Association of Haitian Women in Boston; Marion Howard, the Heller School; and Martha Thompson and Gretchen Alther, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Topics include historical and political context, health, poverty, gender, environment, and social justice. Sponsored by the Brandeis Haiti Relief Group, the Global Haiti Initiative, and the Heller Gender Working Group.

Featuring Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder of Seventh Generation, the world's most trusted brand of authentic, safe, and environmentally-responsible products for a healthy home.

Cosponsored by the Heller School, Net Impact, Brandeis International Business School and the Brandeis Campus Sustainability Initiative

Sponsored by the Heller Career Services Office featuring Executive Director of Building Impact, Lisa Guyon. Building Impact is a social impact organization created in 1998 as a tenant appreciation program in buildings owned and managed by Paradigm Properties. Then called "Community Connection", the building-wide volunteer events and donation drives were, at first, a simple gesture for tenants who leased space in the office buildings that Paradigm Properties managed.

Community Connection events, such as business attire drives and charity bake sales in the lobby, were meant to bring community involvement right to people's doorsteps--to harness the collective energy, resources, and goodwill of companies and individuals that spent so much time in these very office buildings. By connecting over 20 nonprofit organizations with the community of companies and individuals in the buildings, Paradigm successfully mobilized and empowered people who wanted to play a greater role in making their communities stronger.

By 2003, the annual impact of Community Connection was estimated at $300,000, prompting the company to found the nonprofit organization Building Impact. As its own independent nonprofit organization, Building Impact was able to expand the impact of Community Connection beyond the buildings owned or managed by Paradigm Properties.

Today, Building Impact partners with 13 real estate firms across greater Boston. They service 50 buildings, helping over 500 companies and 18,000 people volunteer, donate, and connect to the community, right in the buildings where they work and live. They channel 100% of this goodwill, volunteerism, donations, and interest in giving to their Nonprofit Partner Network, comprised of dozens of excellent organizations around Greater Boston addressing issues such as Youth & Education, Hunger & Housing, Environment, Job Training, Literacy, and Community Health.

From one office building in downtown Boston, to 50 buildings as far north as Lowell, as west as Southboro, and as far south as Norwood, Building Impact is creating a large-scale network of corporate citizens and civic participants...building by building.

What is a Mission Driven, For Profit Organization? Why create it? What are the major challenges in sustaining a mission driven, for profit organization? What does a business plan for this kind of growth look like? Marc Fenton, President, Public Partnerships, LLC, will present as the first speaker in the Inaugural Executive in Residence Program sponsored by Heller’s Office of Career Services.

The Schneider Institutes for Health Policy and the Institute for Global Health and Development presentDr. Unni Karunakara, president-elect for Doctors Without Borders, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Dr. Karunakara is assistant professor at the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. He went on his first humanitarian mission to Ethiopia with MSF in 1995. Dr. Karunakara worked in the medical department of MSF's Amsterdam office for several years and was the medical director for MSF's Access to Essential Medicines Campaign. He is currently vice president of the MSF's US Board of Directors and is president-elect of MSF's International Council.

Using the Master’s Tools to Create Social Change:

The Revolutionary Views of Mahatma Gandhi and Audre Lorde as they Apply to the Challenges Facing Low-Income Communities

Featuring Elyse Cherry, CEO of Boston Community Capital

As Wall Street begins to show signs of a recovery, families, small businesses and communities across America are still struggling to regain their footing in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Although some economists have declared that the worst of the recession is behind us, unemployment remains near double digits, housing prices remain low, and foreclosures continue to climb. Subprime lending excesses and the housing foreclosure crisis have had a devastating and disproportionate impact on low-income communities -- destabilizing families and neighborhoods and threatening to erode decades of hard-won economic gain. Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) are working to address these challenges, providing innovative financing to create and preserve housing, jobs and opportunities for communities underserved by mainstream financial markets.

Elyse Cherry will explain Boston Community Capital’s vision and strategies for

· helping to build healthy communities where low income people live and work,

· aligning capital with social, economic, and political justice, and

· creating an inclusive prosperity that ensures that low-income and low-wealth people and communities have access to affordable, responsible financial products and services.

She will describe the organization’s Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods (SUN) Initiative, a groundbreaking foreclosure relief effort that brings together Wall Street and Main Street – business experience and community values – to help families facing foreclosure-related evictions remain in their homes. And she will explain how effective use of “the master’s tools” is critical to solving today’s most pressing social and economic problems, and becoming the change we wish to see.

Sponsored by the Heller Gender Working Group to celebrate International Women's Day, an event that unites women and men of all backgrounds to honor women's hard-won accomplishments and to acknowledge the path left ahead of us to traverse towards equity. An open mic opportunity will be available to share poetry, dance or stories on particular women's struggles or accomplishments. Everyone who purchased an International Women's Day Celebration T-Shirt is asked to wear it to the celebration.

Sponsored by the Heller Career Services Office