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The mission of the Yale School of Management is to educate leaders for business and society. Throughout its history, Yale SOM has been known for its social and environmental commitments and its focus on ethical leadership.
Social, environmental, and ethical considerations are included in the overwhelming majority of courses in SOM’s innovative integrated MBA curriculum. In core classes, students have created proposals for redeveloping Governors Island near Manhattan, analyzed South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment program, and studied General Electric’s Ecomagination initiative. Advanced electives, both at SOM and elsewhere at Yale, allow in-depth study of social and environmental topics. A student-managed elective on Global Social Enterprise pairs student consulting teams with nonprofit organizations in the developing world. The Global Social Entrepreneurship elective facilitates education and interaction between social entrepreneurs and SOM students both at Yale and in the entrepreneurs’ home countries.
Social and environmental scholarship is a hallmark of Yale SOM. Our faculty includes world-renowned experts in fields such as nonprofit management, development economics and microfinance, and environmental management. The school has also pioneered new multimedia “raw” cases, many of which include social and environmental considerations. SOM has created such cases for use by the Aspen Institute Center for Business Education’s Business Leadership Case Competition in 2008 and 2011. Yale SOM also partnered with the Aspen Institute in developing the “Giving Voice to Values” curriculum. Recent guest speakers at the school include Robin Chase, founder of ZipCar; Ezekiel Emanuel, former special health advisor to the director of the Office and Management and Budget; and Alex Counts, president and CEO of the Grameen Foundation.
The school’s Program on Social Enterprise supports scholars, students, alumni, and practitioners interested in exploring the ways in which business skills can be harnessed to achieve social objectives, facilitating work on nonprofit and public sector social entrepreneurship as well as initiatives in private sector social enterprise, including courses, research, publications and working with SOM students to sponsor conferences. The school’s Center for Business and the Environment at Yale, a partnership with the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, provides a focal point for research, education, and outreach to advance business solutions to global environmental problems. The Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance aims to be the leading research, teaching, and policy center for effective corporate governance, focusing on issues of corporate and shareholder accountability.
Students also pursue social aims through extracurricular and professional activities. Through SOM Outreach, students consult pro bono for nonprofit, public, and private organizations in the New Haven community. Yale SOM’s NetImpact Chapter is consistently one of the most active in the country. Every year, students plan, organize, and run conferences that promote discussion and action around social, ethical, and environmental themes. Three of the largest annual conferences at the school, each drawing hundreds of participants, are the Healthcare, Philanthropy, and Education conferences.
SOM provides unsurpassed resources for students and graduates pursuing careers in socially beneficial fields. The SOM Internship Fund unites the community in financial support for students who take summer internships with nonprofit organizations. In 1986, the school pioneered its Loan Forgiveness Program for graduates pursuing public or nonprofit careers, a model subsequently adopted by many business schools across the country.
In spring 2010, students led the Yale SOM Sustainability Project, an initiative to reduce the consumption of resources and the waste produced at the school. The project, which included sifting through the contents of dumpsters to survey how much waste is thrown out at SOM, was undertaken as a for-credit independent study class with support by a grant from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the Yale Office of Sustainability. The project helped launch a school-wide program to address improved practices in four areas - energy, transportation, procurement, and waste – and, in January 2011, SOM was awarded Yale University’s highest certification level for developing green practices in the workplace.
Since 1986, the school has underscored its mission of educating leaders for business and society by providing support to qualified alumni working in the public or nonprofit sectors through a generous educational loan forgiveness program. The first program of its kind, it has provided a model for similar programs at business schools around the country since its establishment. Beginning with the Class of 2009, the program expanded to include qualified graduates who work in L3C organizations and certified B Corporations.
The Center for Business and the Environment supports student and faculty efforts to start environmentally oriented for-profit businesses with cash prizes totaling $25,000 awarded through the Sabin Environmental Venture Prize. The Sabin prize has been awarded annually since 2009 to the best Yale student and/or faculty ideas for a product, service, project, or program that advances a more environmentally sustainable way of life.
Yale SOM’s new 4.25 acre campus designed by Foster + Partners is currently under construction, slated to open in 2013. The new campus will incorporate the latest in “green construction” materials and practices. The school will pursue LEED certification for the new building.
The school prints all of it publications on at least 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper. The school’s magazine, Qn, is mailed in a corrugated cardboard mailer that is fully recyclable and made with 70% post-consumer waste recycled paper, and the greenhouse gas emission associated with its printing are offset through the purchase of renewable energy certificates.
Examination of capitalism as it functions in practice, with extensive use of business cases. The role of capitalism in generating wealth & innovation unprecedented in history. Negative consequences of capitalist development such as radical inequality, disruption of the natural environment, & intermittent social crises. This course will be held at the Yale Graduate School.
The Careers course is designed to deepen students' understanding of the forces and dynamics that shape careers. The goal of the course is to help students focus on the long-term decisions and actions they are taking toward realizing their own unique paths to becoming leaders. The course draws on a variety of resources to meet this goal, including original research, autobiographical and biographical accounts of others’ careers, interviews conducted with SOM alumni, interviews conducted by students during the course, and a broad set of individual assignments designed to develop and guide students’ thinking about their careers and the tools that will be necessary to realize them. Alumni interviews and class discussions raise issues of how career choices interact with social and ethical considerations and passions. Readings include "Mentor functions and outcomes: A comparison of men and women in formal and informal mentoring;" "The truth about mentoring minorities: Race matters;" and chapters from The Time Bind addressing issues of resilience and work-life balance.
Most MBAs face a range of complex choices during the decade after they graduate. For example, at what point do you take a stand counter to your supervisor? At what point do you terminate an employee you like but who is unlikely to fit into your organization’s "up or out" philosophy? What kind of sacrifices to make to advance your career? People often make choices like these without much preparation or forethought. This course will give students the opportunity to “practice” this thinking. The course uses disguised case studies of real situations to illustrate different kinds of choices. The cases present the ambiguity that usually accompanies the toughest choices when reasonable arguments are possible on different sides of the question. These choices are often ethical. Examples include the case of a teacher who feels the school administration may not be acting in the students' best interest; a decision whether to fire someone for actions that present borderline ethical questions; and a consultant considering whether to accept a client assignment whose industry poses an issue to him personally. In the last couple of weeks, each student will write a case based on a situation with which he/she is familiar and then assess a classmate’s case.
This course uses microeconomic and game theoretic concepts to analyze strategic decisions facing an organization. Although the primary emphasis is on strategy at the individual business level, and the primary source of analytical methods is economics, other application areas and other analytical perspectives are considered. The course provides the tools to balance the objectives, characteristics, and resources of the organization on the one hand, and the opportunities presented by the environment on the other. The course considers both competition and "coopetition," or opportunities to cooperate with competitors to increase the size of the overall market. Public policy is also discussed: for example, the 2009-2010 session included a guest lecturer, Jack Hidary, who discussed his role in the innovative Cash for Clunkers program. The course also touches on ethics and the law, as two sessions are devoted to antitrust issues.
This course uses microeconomic concepts to analyze strategic decisions facing an organization. Although the primary emphasis is on strategy at the individual business level, and the primary source of analytical methods is economics, other application areas and other analytical perspectives are considered. The course provides the tools to balance the objectives, characteristics, and resources of the organization on the one hand, and the external opportunities presented on the other. It will also focus on understanding competitive interaction between firms, both in theory and in a variety of industry settings. The range of organizations studied includes nonprofits as well as for-profits. Cases address anti-trust laws, application of strategy in the nonprofit context of Brigham & Women's Hospital, and pricing strategy for Medicaid rebates.
This course focuses on the connections between the competitive strategy of a firm and its internal structure and organization. It discusses how to think strategically about an organization’s human resources and how to align a firm’s human resource structure with its strategic choices in the product marketplace. Specific topics include human resources policies, diversity, discrimination, as well as a discussion of social and legal issues in managing human resources. The 2009-2010 course included a case and guest lecture from an executive at Deloitte about the company's efforts to reduce turnover among women.
An important premise of this course is that the environment within which organizations compete is multi-layered, encompassing not only the market but political, cultural, and legal dimensions. The course draws from the disciplines of economics, marketing, organizational behavior, and politics. Social impact topics covered in this course include antitrust laws, market impacts of collusion, business ethics, co-opetition, governance of non-profit organizations, impacts generated from low-cost producers, and corporate social responsibility as a competitive advantage. Relevant cases include an analysis of the European Union’s imposed permits on carbon dioxide emissions and of General Electric’s environmental responsibility efforts, as examined through its Ecomagination campaign.
Contemporary approaches to business emphasize the importance of adopting a customer focus. Marketing, in particular, begins and ends with the consumer — from determining consumer needs to providing customer satisfaction. The primary goal of this course is to enhance your understanding of consumer behavior. This course covers ethics in the context of a case about a company that promotes benefits of a product when the product may not bestow such benefits on the consumer.
This course focuses on financial management from the perspective of inside the corporation or operating entity. It builds upon the concepts from the core finance courses, using lectures to develop the theory, and cases and problem sets to provide applications. Topics covered include capital budgeting, valuation of companies, the cost of capital, initial public offerings, mergers and takeovers, dividend policy, optimal capital structure, leveraged buyouts, and applications of option pricing to corporate finance. Students also discuss how decisions on key metrics and policies are made in financial markets and how those choices interplay with issues of reality versus perception, governance, and ethics.
The goal of this course is to understand how to create value by determining corporate governance arrangements. The focus is that of an investor who wants to make sure that the firm creates value. Questions that the course will address are the following: What do investors want and worry about related to corporate board decisions? What governance arrangements are helpful in creating value and making sure the value accrues to the investors? What about corporate social responsibility? What ownership structures are conducive to value creation (private equity / hedge funds / family ownership)? What countries provide better governance arrangements that allow entrepreneurs and firms to raise more money to realize profitable projects? How should managers be incentivized and compensated? Should an investor sell his shares if unhappy with the company (‘Wall Street Walk’) or become an activist? The course also highlights recent failures of corporate governance and what we can learn from them, specifically using Enron in the final case as an example.
Net Impact’s Speed Networking Night provides an opportunity for first year students to learn about a variety of 2nd years’ summer internship experiences in the social sector. First year students have the opportunity to rotate through different tables of second years to learn about as many experiences as possible in one evening.
Yale SOM’s mission is to educate leaders for business and society. The Leadership Development Program (LDP) is an important component of that education, designed to help students actively reflect on leadership as it pertains to their own personal and career aspirations, attitudes, and plans. A new series of occasional Dean’s Teas, loosely connected to LDP but open to the whole SOM community, will provide another venue to help such reflection. To take advantage of being at Yale, we have asked eminent Yale scholars in the humanities to share with us their visions, ideas, and perspectives. Attending these events offers an opportunity to develop a deeper sense of culture, values, and that special brand of education Yale offers to the world.
John Hare, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology, “Morality and Religion.”
Jon Butler, Howard R. Lamar Professor of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies at Yale University, “Religion in Modern American Life,”
Norma Thompson, Professor Norma Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Humanities at Yale College, “Evidence in Humanistic Inquiry: Freud and the Business of Dreaming”, a course she co-taught last year.
A global group of leaders, who have been working to shape tomorrow’s Forests and Climate Change policies, will share their challenges in developing a globally viable REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries) framework and propose actions we can all take to “get REDD right”!
This weekly seminar series is devoted to exploring the management of non-profit and non-governmental organizations, especially the factors that underlie effective organizational performance. Both students and outside speakers present at this lively exchange over lunch on Wednesdays. For example, Margot Brandenburg, Associate Director at the Rockefeller Foundation, joined SOM’s weekly Organizational Effectiveness seminar to speak about the growing field of impact investing. Margot spoke broadly about the Foundation’s role in nurturing the expansion of social impact investing as an important complement to government and philanthropy, as well as her own observations about recent trends in the field. The Foundation’s “Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing Initiative” seeks to grow the sector by creation of an industry-wide infrastructure that promotes the placement of private capital into companies or funds that not only provide financial returns, but that also have a positive social or environmental impact.
The Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association, in conjunction with the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA), the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association, and the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale, present the CAIA Green Investing Symposium hosted by Bloomberg.
An event series that celebrates the diverse ideas, perspectives and identities that we all bring to the SOM community. SOMunity is a student-led initiative, launched in 2009 through the Dean’s Diversity Task Force. In 2009, students participated in the Chinese New Year, a networking event for international students, movie night, a Korean cooking class, and a Leaders Forum lecture with Indra Nooyi '80, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, which SOMunity cosponsored. The 2010 theme is “Live Diversity” which celebrates how we can support diversity in all aspects of our personal and professional lives. Opening the 2010 series is “Modern Workforce in Real Life: SOM Student Stories,” a student-led panel discussion about their experiences navigating complicated questions of diversity and inclusion in their workplace, co-sponsored by the Black Business Alliance. The keynote event for SOMunity in 2010 is a panel discussion with the chief diversity leaders from Goldman Sachs, Aetna, Teach for America and Major League Baseball. Professor Tori Brescoll will be moderating a discussion about how each of these organizations, leaders in their field, are approaching diversity and inclusiveness in their enterprises. Sponsored by Women In Management, the Business of Sports Group and SOMunity.
The Donaldson Fellows Program for Yale SOM Alumni is named to honor SOM’s founding dean, William H. Donaldson, who also founded an investment bank, served under secretary of state, and led a major insurance corporation, the New York Stock Exchange, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The program recognizes Yale SOM graduates whose personal and professional accomplishments embody the school’s mission to educate leaders for business and society. In selecting the Donaldson Fellows, the committee will seek a wide range of experience, and a variety of industries, sectors, and years since graduation. The objective is to select alumni who exemplify what it is to live the Yale School of Management mission as expressed through the following themes: Leading and Managing Across Boundaries; Transforming Positive Values into Personal; Professional and Institutional Commitments; and Bringing Creativity and Discipline to Complex Management Problems. Once selected, Donaldson Fellows take part in a seminar program at the school that will involve a series of presentations, student meetings, and other events. Participation in the on-campus program is a requirement for all Donaldson Fellows. The first residency was held in October 2008.
The 2010-2011 Donaldson Fellows come from different industries and have dramatically different life stories. Bradley Abelow '89 spent more than 15 years at Goldman Sachs before taking the job of New Jersey state treasurer and then eventually moving back into the private sector; Jennifer Niles '98 worked helping charter schools get started in Connecticut and helped run a foundation in Chicago before moving to Washington, D.C., to start a charter school; Ken Ofori-Atta '88 was an investment banker on Wall Street before returning to his home in Ghana and founding the country's leading investment banking firm; and Hilary Pennington '83 co-founded and ran the nonprofit Jobs for the Future for more than 20 years before leaving to lead post-secondary educational programs and special initiatives for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But while their experiences are different, all four alumni exemplify the spirit of Yale SOM and embody the school's mission to educate leaders for business and society.
The Orientation Program at the Yale School of Management is specifically designed to orient incoming students to the school's mission of educating leaders for business and society. Topics focus on what’s unique and special about the school, including intersection of sectors, SOM's professional code, and an opportunity for students to reflect on SOM’s mission before classwork and the job search. Initiated in 2008, an integral part of Orientation is a two-day exercise, called the Audubon Street Project, introducing first-year students to each other and to the SOM approach to solving business problems. The class is divided into groups of eight and provided a small list of instructions that boil down to a simple directive: create a business for a storefront on New Haven’s Audubon Street that is profitable, represents the mission of the Yale School of Management, and reflects the university’s desire to have a positive impact on the city. Students are then given a day to come up with a business and create a business plan, which they present to select faculty the following day. The exercise is intense, fast-paced, and highly competitive. Students present their proposals to groups of faculty on the first Friday of Orientation and five groups are picked as finalists. They have the weekend to hone their pitches, which they give the following Monday before a panel of judges and the entire incoming class. The faculty judges then choose the competition’s winner.
The Class of 2010 was the first to take part in the Audubon Street Project. The winner that year was the Hands-On Audubon Kitchen, a "make and take" facility that would work with local farmers to promote sustainable agriculture and give free workshops on healthy eating. Class of 2011’s winner was Dance Dance Institution, a dancewear store situated in the heart of the city’s arts district that would sell clothes and shoes, while providing free apparel to students on scholarship to local arts schools.
Net Impact helps coordinate a drive to offset the carbon emissions of each year’s International Experience trips. First-year students, who participate in the two-week International Experience in March, can opt to donate money to purchase carbon offsets or pledge to change their daily habits to reduce their carbon footprint.
The Dean and Faculty of Yale Law School and Yale School of Management present the Yale Symposium on Law and Management with Kevin R. Czinger ’82 BA, ’87 JD, Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor, CODA Automotive. The topic of his talk is "Lessons from Two Decades of New Business Creation—From Satellite Television to Electric Cars".
About Kevin Czinger:
Kevin Czinger is the co-Founder and Strategic Advisor of CODA Automotive, an electric car and battery company headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Previously, he was the President and CEO of CODA, where he oversaw the management and strategic direction of the company. Throughout his career, Kevin has maintained a proven track record of performance operating start-up and growth companies.
Prior to CODA, Kevin was a Partner and Managing Director at Fortress Private Equity, an alternative asset management firm, and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital. From 1999 – 2000, Kevin served as Senior Vice President, Operations and Finance, and Chief Financial Officer of Webvan Group.
Prior to Webvan, Kevin was a Managing Director in the media and telecommunications group at Merrill Lynch, and also served as the CEO of Volcano Entertainment, a record and music publishing company he founded. In the early 1990’s, Kevin was Executive Director and head of the media-banking group at Goldman Sachs International in London.
A talented football player, Kevin was recruited to play football for Yale University where he earned a B.A. from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Outside of his responsibilities for CODA, Kevin is a passionate advocate for renewable energy, sustainable transportation and the environment, and is a member of the board of the Electrification Coalition. He is also a leader in the charter school initiative for inner cities through his sponsorship of Achievement First. Kevin served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves for nine years.
Net Impact collaborates with SOM’s Career Development Office to coordinate a career networking night for students interested in the social sector. The 2010 event included major non-profits and social enterprises, including Kiva, Cone, and E+Co, and offered first and second year students an opportunity to meet with representatives from each organization.
The Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance Center’s call for papers, “Origins of Shareholder Advocacy,” was posted on SSRN on January 24, 2009 and selected papers received from the call were presented at an academic conference at Yale on November 6-7, 2009. This “Project 400” event was framed to mark the first recorded dissident shareowner petition, filed by investor Isaac Le Maire on January 24, 1609 as a bill of complaints involving the Dutch East India Company. The Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management sponsors research and discussions to explore how corporate governance can better enable the corporation to be competitive in its markets and to enhance society.
From the Gold Coast to the Green Coast – Developing a Clean Energy Economy through Environmental Finance focuses on the potential of establishing a global hub for environmental markets and finance from New York City to Hartford.
Growing out of the School’s 30 year tradition of exploring the complex relationships among the public, private and non-profit sectors, Yale SOM’s Program on Social Enterprise has been exploring the intersections between development finance and sustainable energy, both within the US and in developing countries. In particular, to examine whether the intentional linking of development finance with sustainable energy services can create collaborations that are more effective and efficient than separately pursued efforts in each field.
The aim for the conference was to bring together leading practitioners and researchers exploring the array of interfaces between development finance and sustainable energy. Speakers and panels explored emerging trends at the service delivery, intermediary, and policy levels. A report, “Making the Connection: Partnerships in Development Finance and Sustainable Energy,” can be downloaded.
Presenters included: Dipal Barua (Bright Green Energy Foundation, formerly with Grameen Shakti), John Berdes (ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia), Roger Clark (The Reinvestment Fund), James Dailey (MicroEnergy Credits), Joel Freehling (ShoreBank Corporation), Harish Hande (SELCO Solar Lighting), Richard Hansen (Soluz, Inc.), Noara Kebir (MicroEnergy International), Philip LaRocco (E & Co.), Ellen Morris (Arc Finance), Silverio T. Navarro, Jr. (Asian Development Bank ), Binu Parthan (Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Partnership – REEEP), Paul Rippey (Center for Financial Inclusion, Energy Links Project), Joel Rogers (University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Center for State Innovation), Katherine Steel (World Bank, Africa Energy Unit), Corey Stone (Verdigris Ventures), Robert Stoner (MIT Energy Initiative), Mark Thurber (Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Stanford University), Richenda Van Leeuwen (formerly with Good Energies Foundation), and Jayshree Vyas (SEWA Bank).
The Center for Business & Environment organizes the Carbon Finance Webinar Series, events include:
Helping Utilities and Their Customers Solve Energy Challenges Together. Cameron Brooks, Senior Director of Market Development and Policy Strategy for Tendril Inc. discusses a unique business solution that enables consumers to better understand their energy consumption patterns and empowers them with the ability to make a difference.
Bridging Public and Private Financing in Residential Energy Efficiency: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Claire Broido Johnson, the Acting Program Manager of the Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs at DOE, who will talk about the transition from public to private investment in residential energy efficiency.
Managing Phantom Load with the modlet® - A Modern Electrical Outlet. Erika Diamond, Vice President of Business Development for ThinkEco talks about the Modlet, a plug-in device that eliminates unnecessary electricity usage by your home and/or office appliances.
The Long Island Green Homes Initiative: How Local Policy Innovations are Driving the National Conversation on Energy Efficiency. Dorian Dale, Energy Director of Babylon, NY to learn about how someone can transform a municipality into a one-stop shop for retrofits that make it easy for a homeowner to have a more affordable, comfortable and efficient home.
Unlocking Energy Efficiency in the U.S. Economy. Hannah Choi Granade, a principal in McKinsey & Company’s Stamford, CT office, talks about how to bring energy efficiency to 100 million buildings and billions of devices.
Smart Buildings Meet the Smart Grid: Lessons from a Cleantech Entrepreneur. Alexis Ringwald, Co-founder and Director of Business Development at Valence Energy, talks about emerging trends in the convergence of IT and energy in buildings and about her Silicon Valley entrepreneurial experience.
From Shop Floor to Top Floor: Best Practices in Energy. Andre de Fontaine from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change talks about a recently released report that describes the leading corporate energy efficiency programs, identifies key lessons learned, and details energy efficiency strategy development and implementation through six in-depth case studies of exemplary corporate programs.
Recovery Through Retrofit - The Department of Energy's BetterBuildings Program. Danielle Sass Byrnett, Program Manager of the U.S. Department of Energy's BetterBuildings Program, discusses how this $486M Recovery Act program will support large-scale retrofits and make energy efficiency accessible to hundreds of thousands of homeowners and businesses around the U.S. Danielle discusses the goals of the program, the award process, metrics for success and other topics related to the program. This is the kick-off event for the Blueprint for Efficiency speaker series, which will feature the latest developments in energy efficiency policy, investment, technology, and community engagement, with a special focus on successes from DOE’s BetterBuildings Program.
Enabling the Smart Grid through Smart Software. Andy Frank, VP of Business Development at Efficiency 2.0, discusses the applications of advanced software to energy reduction and climate action goals. Efficiency 2.0 helps consumers reduce their energy consumption through best-practice behavioral strategies, including personalized savings recommendations, goal-setting & feedback, social comparisons, and rewards. Andy will discuss his vision of energy efficiency and the smart grid, and how Efficiency 2.0 is executing programs that deliver verified energy savings through advanced consumer engagement.
Innovations in Financing Energy Efficiency with NYSERDA. Jeff Pitkin, NYSERDA discusses how New York State is developing innovative methods of providing energy efficiency financing in residential dwellings (1-4 family), small commercial, not-for-profit, and multifamily buildings (5+ units) through the Green Jobs-Green New York program. NYSERDA is developing efforts to offer multiple forms of financing in each sector, including direct financing obligations, on-bill recovery financing, and property assessment-based financing. The webinar explores how the program leverages existing programs in each of the sectors, and also incorporates new approaches for consumer outreach and engagement through constituency-based organizations, supported by workforce development activities for participating contractors to create and increase the number of green jobs.
The Gordon Grand Fellowship at Yale promotes dialogue and understanding between today’s business leaders and students at Yale. The fellowship was established in 1973 to honor Gordon Grand, a graduate of the Yale College Class of 1938, and president and CEO of the Olin Corporation. During his lifetime, Grand endeavored to bridge the gap between business and academia by actively promoting the exchange of ideas and viewpoints between these sectors. Today, the Gordon Grand Fellowship continues this tradition by inviting prominent business leaders to Yale for one- to three-day visits.
- T. Boone Pickens (environmentalist), Founder and Chairman, BP Capital Management
- Jerry Speyer, Chairman and Co-CEO, Tishman Speyer
Each year, Yale SOM Net Impact hosts a first-year, socially responsible business case competition. In 2009, the case dealt with the launch of a bike-sharing program in Washington, DC; in 2010, the case dealt with Posada Amazonas, an eco-tourist lodge in Peru. Participation is strongly encouraged for the entire first-year class. In 2010, 92 students participated on the case competition. The event acts to introduce double bottom line concepts to the entire community in a fun way. Finalists compete before professional judges from leading consulting companies. In 2009 and 2010, Net Impact continued its partnership with SOM’s Consulting Club to encourage broader participation.
The mission of the Yale SOM Education Business Plan Competition is to promote education entrepreneurship as a means of advancing education reform, specifically among graduate students who have a passion for education. The competition will focus on seed proposals rather than fully-developed businesses to encourage novel thought.
The first annual competition will be held in conjunction with the Yale SOM Education Leadership Conference (ELC), which will be held on March 25, 2011. Preliminary evaluation rounds will occur in advance of the spring conference. At the conference, finalists will present, a winning team will be announced, and $10,000 in prize money will be awarded.
Competition Goals are to encourage graduate students to conceive of new ventures – for profit and nonprofit – that work to close the achievement gap and raise student achievement, build a foundation of future entrepreneurs in education, and promote innovation and enterprise as a means of advancing education reform.
Net Impact offers a Nonprofit Finance Boot Camp to familiarize students with the terminology and procedures specific to the nonprofit sector. The sessions were led by Renée Jacob, Associate Director of the Nonprofit Finance Fund and an SOM alum. The session reviewed the major differences between nonprofit and for-profit finance and explained how to identify key information from financial statements. Students also used a case study to learn how to use financial information in nonprofit organizational planning and decision-making.
This annual conference explores how real change can occur when stakeholders unite within and across sectors to address today’s most pressing challenges. The theme of the 2010 event was "Fostering Innovative Ideas for Social Change." Leaders in the field discussed how philanthropy is going beyond supporting causes to shape and drive social innovation by leveraging tools such as open grant making, prize philanthropy, social media, and cross-sector partnerships.
Mark Kramer, managing director of FSG Social Impact Advisors, delivered the opening keynote. Kramer oversees FSG’s consulting practice and action initiatives, which encompass a diverse range of areas including environment, global health, and community-based philanthropy.
Antony Bugg-Levine, managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation, gave the afternoon keynote. Bugg-Levine leads the Rockefeller Foundation’s initiatives on Impact Investing and Innovation and oversees the Program-Related Investment portfolio.
The conference featured three panel discussions. "Cross Sector Partnerships to Promote Social Innovation" explored ways in which private, public, and hybrid organizations can collaborate to identify and promote social innovations. "Philanthropy 2.0: The Role of Digital Media, Technology, and Networks" examined how social media and technology are facilitating greater efficiencies and creating new markets in philanthropy to better support innovation and social entrepreneurship. The final panel, "Effective Philanthropic Models for Driving Innovation," outlined philanthropic and investing models that are effective for funding and scaling social innovation, such as prize philanthropy, venture philanthropy, and social investing.
Panelists included Ken Berger, president and executive director, Charity Navigator; Howard W. Buffett, former policy advisor, White House Office of Social Innovation; Marlene Ibsen, president, Travelers Foundation; Claire Lyons, global grant portfolio manager, PepsiCo Foundation; and Michael Smith, vice president, social innovation, the Case Foundation.
The conference was organized by Yale SOM Net Impact, a student organization committed to integrating business success and social impact. The conference was sponsored by Newman’s Own Foundation, Charter Oak Challenge Foundation, and the Yale SOM Program on Social Enterprise.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has mandated new disclosure requirements in Form 8-K, which became effective on August 23, 2004. The SEC expanded the list of items that have to be reported and accelerated the timeliness of these reports. This study examines the market reactions to 8-Ks filed under the new SEC regime and investigates whether periodic reports (10-K/Qs) became less informative under the new 8-K disclosure rules. We observe that the newly required 8-K items constitute over half of all filings and that most firms disclose the required items within the new shortened period (four business days). We find that all disclosed items (old and new) are associated with abnormal volume and return volatility around both the event and the SEC filing dates, and some items have significant return drifts after the SEC filings. Surprisingly, we find that the information content of periodic reports has not diminished by the more expansive and timely 8-K disclosures under the new guidance, possibly indicating that investors may use periodic filings to interpret the effects of material events that had been disclosed earlier.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
This article explores the roles of reputation, efficient capital markets, and capital market regulation in preserving and creating economic value. Each of these three mechanisms serves as a substitute for the other two, with each playing a role in maintaining the credibility and reliability of markets. While efficient markets and effective regulation are market-wide phenomena that affect all firms, reputation is a firm-specific corporate asset. Companies develop reputational capital by treating customers and counterparties fairly (while forgoing the temptation to achieve short-term profits at their expense). At the same time, companies seeking access to the capital markets but lacking a reputation must typically employ reputational intermediaries. Investment banks, credit rating agencies, accounting firm s, law firms, and organized stock exchanges have all served as reputational intermediaries at various times during the last 200 years. One contributor to the recent financial crisis was a kind of experimentation by some reputational intermediaries with an opportunistic and two-tiered 'customer differentiation' strategy in which some customers were treated very well, while others were treated with little or no regard for their legitimate expectations as to how they would be treated. This strategy has proved to be a failure, imposing significant costs on those organizations as well as their customers. The available substitutes for reputation, capital market effciency and effective regulation, did not provide sufcient offsetting protection for investors. While the two-tiered 'customer differentiation' strategy has failed, the central message of the economic theory of reputation remains intact. This message is that a company's reputation is a valuable asset that must be preserved to ensure the future of the organization. For all financial intermediaries that rely heavily on their reputations when selling their products and services, the author recommends large and continuous investment in maintaining those reputations. For investment banks in particular-a group whose reputations have held up reasonably well-the author suggests that they continue to view their role as reputational intermediaries as a core part of their businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Home to the capital city and nearly a million people, the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii, USA, is highly dependent on external resources. Over the past decade, large-scale agricultural production has diminished dramatically, leaving the island greatly reliant on imports for food and most other basic goods. A strong tourism sector and high levels of affluence contribute to per capita municipal waste generation rates exceeding all other US states. The only municipal landfill requires immediate expansion if it is to remain in operation, and it has proven extremely difficult to find additional disposal sites. An island-wide material flow analysis (MFA) was performed as an innovative means of considering issues of import, export, consumption, and substitution, resulting in long-term strategies for diminishing the generation of waste that could complement current local conservation and recycling efforts. The findings indicate several opportunities for using domestic waste resources to substitute for imports and simultaneously reduce waste generation, particularly for construction materials. Legislative constraints and possible changes in this regard are also considered. Although past efforts by both the city and state governments to encourage on-island recycling and reuse have not achieved set goals, the MFA results suggest numerous opportunities that could be pursued to increase material self-sufficiency and/or reduce waste disposal by several hundred thousand short tons, enhancing the long-term sustainability of the island. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
The global financial crisis and policy responses to it have led many to question their fundamental belief in market-based capitalism. In the U.S., the epicenter of the crisis and poster child of capitalism, signs of creeping nationalization of the financial system have raised fears that the basic model is being turned inside out. In this essay, the author argues that, with more than 90% of the U.S. private sector still operating “largely as a free-enterprise system,” concerns about nationalization and government involvement in the marketplace are greatly exaggerated. More troubling are the diminishing prospects for a prompt post-crisis normalization of fiscal and monetary policy, and for a decisive and transparent exit strategy from the present “policies of crisis containment.” In the absence of such decisiveness and transparency, the debate over the efficacy of market-based capitalism will continue. The longer-run challenge is to learn from the crisis and take measures designed to limit risk-taking to acceptable levels in today's global financial environment, with its continuous cross-border flow of information, trade, and human as well as financial capital. Making Wall Street the villain is the path of least resistance in a politically charged environment, but any fix must be grounded in shared responsibility. As the author says in closing, “Governance, or the lack thereof—both within the private sector as well as by those charged with regulation and oversight—proved to be the weak link in the chain. Fix that, and capitalism will be just fine.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
We evaluate why individuals invest in high-fee index funds. In our experiments, subjects each allocate $10,000 across four S&P 500 index funds and are rewarded for their portfolio's subsequent return. Subjects overwhelmingly fail to minimize fees. We reject the hypothesis that subjects buy high-fee index funds because of bundled nonportfolio services. Search costs for fees matter, but even when we eliminate these costs, fees are not minimized. Instead, subjects place high weight on annualized returns since inception. Fees paid decrease with financial literacy. Interestingly, subjects who choose high-fee funds sense they are making a mistake. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
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