Huffington Post L. Hunter Lovins September 2017 With Jorge Fontanez, Professor of Marketing, Bard MBA in Sustainable Management These are turbulent, uncertain times. As climate change drives catastrophic weather events, political discourse creates a “new normal.” Rules are broken. Which means some rules no longer apply. This creates challenges but also opportunities for marketers, and the business leaders who rely on communication experts to protect brand reputation. Living at the intersection of technology, sustainability and marketing, we must enlist our customers, and more broadly all stakeholders to ensure that business becomes a force for social and environmental benefit. Let’s start...
Business Stepping Up: Impact Investing: Moving Money From Harm to Healing
Huffington Post L. Hunter Lovins October 2017 With Kathy Hipple, Partner, Noosphere Marketing Finance is the mother of all human systems. In order to meet the challenge facing us, from shifting to renewable energy and implementing regenerative agriculture, we have to change finance. Kathy Hipple, Professor of Finance and Accounting at Bard MBA, believes we can play a role in this. But we have to learn how. Kathy, who once sold bonds to Japanese institutions at Merrill Lynch and founded and ran Ambassador, a large media company in New York City, stresses that all her students in the rigorous two-semester Bard MBA Finance sequence...
Consumer Awareness Creates Brand Accountability in the Fashion Industry
Huffington Post L. Hunter Lovins November 2017 With Catherine Tedrow and Lauren Hill, Bard MBA students Remember how you felt after hearing about the collapse of the Rana Plaza? More than 1,100 garment workers died and thousands more were injured. As searchers clawed through the rubble looking for survivors, they found clothing tags from large international apparel brands. These wholesalers and retailers clearly had a hand in this tragedy. But how? And what can we, the buyers of clothes, do to ensure that what is on our backs come from a responsibly managed factory? Do you really know where your clothes come from or how...
Business Stepping Up: Consulting for Change
Huffington Post L. Hunter Lovins November 2017 With Laura Gitman, Senior Vice President at BSR Laura Gitman has been a consultant her whole working life. Working with a variety of companies, helping them to solve big problems, she specializes in helping companies solve sustainability challenges and develop and implement strategies that enable them to create both business and societal value. She leads the New York team and global membership of BSR, a global nonprofit business network and consultancy dedicated to sustainability. Laura feels privileged to work with large and influential companies to create positive change, a feeling that has strengthened over the...
The Battle for Boulder’s Future
Huffington Post L. Hunter Lovins October 2017 In the placid university town of Boulder, Colorado, a battle rages that will shape the future of the city and its citizens. On November 7th, Boulder voters will choose to keep the City on a course to more affordable energy, renewable energy and municipal sovereignty. Or they will compromise themselves and remain in energy serfdom to Colorado’s large investor-owned utility, Xcel Energy. The battle focuses on three ballot options: 2L, 2O and 2P. But at issue is a community’s right to choose how to meet its energy needs. It’s a local struggle...
Elon: Puerto Rico Needs You
Huffington Post L. Hunter Lovins September 2017 Puerto Rico is a mess. Or if it’s not, as Tommy Lee Jones observed in the movie No Place for Old Men, “It’ll do til the mess arrives.” That was a dark movie, and this is a dark time for 3.5 million American citizens. While Puerto Rico is not a state, its residents ARE Americans. They pay taxes. They vote for the President, although not this one. Now they are citizens in crisis, largely abandoned by therest of us. They will struggle without power and basic life support services for months to come; far...