Extracurriculars

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

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

Sponsored by the Heller Career Services Office, featuring Heller alumnus (MBA '08) Nick Addinivola. Nick is currently working as an associate with TD Bank Project Finance, a group focused on green technology. He led a discussion with students interested in learning more about the renewable energy field, including his own experience getting into this sector, recommendations for how best to position yourself for this field and emerging trends for the future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With keynote speakers Dr. Judy Bradford, Ph.D., Co-Chair, The Fenway Institute, Boston; and Director, Center for Population Research in LGBT Health, including the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research; and Dr. Valerie Fein-Zachary, M.D., Board Member, Fenway Community Health; Radiologist, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Board Member, MassEquality; and Co-Founder, Freedom to Marry. Moderated by Professor Susan P. Curnan. This lecture is part of the Heller School’s new course (HS320f) taught by Professor Susan P. Curnan, which focuses on the last forty years (1969-2010) of social justice and social policy in the American Gay Rights Movement.

Sponsored by the Heller Career Services Office