Community Updates

Sustainable Brands® Community to Showcase New Business Performance Metrics

Sustainable Brands® recently announced the program and conversation leaders for its annual Sustainable Brands New Metrics’14 conference, scheduled for September 24-26 in Boston, MA. In partnership with MIT Sloan School of Management Sustainability Initiative, this event is a gathering point for sustainability executives, business strategists and financial leaders who are focused on the forefront of corporate practices and performance indicators that quantify environmental and social impacts and tie them to financial value.

Published 10 years ago | About a 3 minute read

Latest advances in capturing traditionally underestimated social and environmental risks throughout the value chain have been identified and are currently being implemented by various organizations across the globe. Business leaders from many of these companies will be sharing breakthrough research methods, provocative case studies and innovative measurement tools that identify new approaches to valuing risk and impact, quantify employee engagement and interpret performance and data. Over 60 conversation leaders from companies such as L’Oréal, Ben & Jerry’s, TripAdvisor, SAP, The Clorox Company, BASF and Autodesk will join executives from GISR, Fair Trade USA, Nielsen, World Resources Institute, GlobeScan and others to share corporate initiatives that are driving improved business as well as social and environmental value.

Key discussion topics and featured speakers include:

Terry Garcia, Chief Exploration Officer at National Geographic, along with Eric Whan>, Sustainability Director at GlobeScan, will announce results of the fifth edition of the Greendex, an expansive research program tracking sustainable consumer behavior across 18 countries.
Kyle Peterson, Managing Director at FSG, along with Veronica Nyhan Jones, Strategic Community Investment Lead, Infrastructure & Natural Resources at IFC, and a discussion panel of other key partners, will debut new insights from a field guide on measuring shared value and addressing unmet health needs of low-resourced populations.
João Fontes, Social Footprinting Expert at PRé Sustainability> and Charles Duclaux, Head of Corporate Responsibility Reporting and Environmental Innovation at L’Oréal will discuss quantifying a company's social footprint – a first-of-its-kind methodology that aims to make social impact assessment more accessible and meaningful.
Roya Kazemi, Director of GreeNYC at the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability of New York City, will share research that NYC has done on the potential for engaging residents on a number of sustainability issues, as well as resulting insights into appealing messaging, media strategies and corporate partnerships.
Jenny Rushmore, Director of Responsible Travel, TripAdvisor, and Alexander Gillett, CEO, How Good, will unveil rigorous innovative analyses of customer perception of sustainability product attributes, helpful in making the respective business case on an executive level.

“A significant percentage of market valuation today is driven by factors that are not accurately captured and valued on financial statements,” states KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz, Founder of Sustainable Brands. “Current business metrics leave out the ‘true costs’ of doing business associated with our ecosystem services. First convened in 2011, our goal in hosting the ‘New Metrics’ dialogue is to expand the methods for measuring these risks, costs and new forms of value and celebrate the most progressive work that is currently capturing and managing these critical business variables.”

This year’s conference will be held at the Royal Sonesta Hotel on September 25– 26th with MIT Sloan hosting the pre-conference workshops Wednesday, September 24th on their campus. The conference is expected to draw over 200 senior sustainability and financial executives from the world’s leading companies.

In addition to MIT Sloan School of Management Sustainability Initiative as the Co-Presenting Sponsor, support is provided by: HP, Carbon Offsetters, CFO Magazine, Bonneville Environmental Foundation and several media and affiliate partners. Further information about the conference can be found on www.NewMetrics14.com. Registration is open, but capacity is limited. Sponsorship opportunities are still available for companies with innovative solutions to share in sustainability metrics.