United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Mason leads the way on sustainable business education

Colleen Rich — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 19:12:28 +0000

Mason leads the way on sustainable business education Colleen Rich Wed, 10/05/2022 - 15:12

Since 2019, ��ӽ紫ý’s Business for a Better World Center (B4BW) has led the university’s contribution to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) North America chapter.

B4BW academic co-director Lisa Gring-Pemble (standing) with student panelists. Photo provided

"As educators, we have a moral imperative to educate our students about sustainable business,” said B4BW academic co-director Lisa Gring-Pemble. “Our future is dependent upon young global leaders solving our complex problems with creativity, persistence, and a commitment to people, planet, and prosperity."

As part of the UN Global Compact, PRME’s purpose is to foster greater commitment to sustainability, as defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), across pedagogy, research and community engagement at business schools.

Earlier this year, Mason hosted a three-day meeting of North American chapter at Mason Square, bringing in 70 representatives from 25 U.S. and Canadian business schools.

Mason’s hosting of this meeting was a milestone in its close association with UN PRME, which dates all the way back to the initiative’s inception in 2007. Former Mason president Angel Cabrera was the lead author of the initiative’s founding document.

“We’re recognized as leaders, and that’s why we were chosen to do this,” said B4BW academic co-director Anne Magro.

B4BW academic co-director Anne Magro (at podium) moderates a panel on “Partnerships to Effect Change.” Photo provided

In 2018, Mason was inducted as a member of PRME Champions, a leadership group composed of about 40 academic institutions. All told, UN PRME has more than 880 signatory members.

The April 2022 meeting had a special atmosphere. For many attendees, it marked a return to work-related travel after a protracted, pandemic-mandated pause. In addition to an even greater-than-usual gratitude for being together, there was a heightened feeling of urgency to resume the collective mission.

The meeting’s agenda was constructed around the key strategic questions, Magro said, such as “How can we get more recognition for the work that is done? And how can we prepare people to do this work?”

The three levels on which PRME’s signatory schools can make a difference—pedagogy, research and community/societal engagement—were balanced on the agenda.

A few highlights:

A panel on experiential learning, featuring the work of B4BW Impact Fellows, showcased the sustainability-focused activities of Mason students, including volunteering, a summer “wicked problems bootcamp” and participating in mental health outreach to Afghan refugee communities.

The SDG 17 Rooms working session. Photo provided

Reflecting on her panel appearance, Impact Fellow Ashanti Martin said, “The most gratifying take away from PRME was being able to express my newfound passion on zero hunger and food insecurity from a student perspective.”

Panelist Oishee Mukhopadhyaya stated, “Professionals from NYU-Stern, University of Quebec and others referred to our panel and even spoke with me to learn more about our initiatives. It felt like people were hearing us.”

A working session for junior scholars gave advice on accomplishing—and attaining institutional support for—impactful research aligned with the SDGs. A separate panel featured a group of professors working to integrate sustainability criteria based on the SDGs into the research standards used to rank business schools.

In a fireside chat, Paula Sorrell, Mason’s associate vice president for innovation and economic development, and B4BW director of research Toyah Miller discussed how the entrepreneurship ecosystem could break down barriers to inclusivity.

Also, Maury Peiperl, then dean of Mason’s School of Business, and Alp Özerdem, dean of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, led a talk about how business can contribute to international conflict resolution, with a focus on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

In addition, the event was intended to provide a platform for initiating real-world change, starting with the UN PRME North America signatory institutions and hopefully radiating outward from there.

“How do we take our ideas and come up with some actionable plans?” said Magro. “It’s supposed to be a creative process that then leads to actionable steps, by thinking about how we might work together across different universities.”

Top future goals for the North America chapter include growing the membership—already the largest within U.N. PRME—and expanding its diversity to include more HBCUs and Hispanic-serving universities.

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Mason researcher contributes to UN global housing report

Colleen Rich — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 20:54:10 +0000

Mason researcher contributes to UN global housing report Colleen Rich Fri, 01/21/2022 - 15:54

Kat Grimsley. Photo provided

Obtaining quality housing at an affordable cost is a major challenge in wealthy and developing countries alike. In the United States, nearly half of renter households and one-quarter of homeowners spend more than 30% of their total income on housing, which makes them officially housing cost overburdened. In Europe, an estimated 82 million citizens are similarly overburdened by housing costs. This deepening crisis is made even worse by climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and other “wicked problems” affecting the world.

Though the crisis is global, effective solutions can only be developed at the local level, said Kat Grimsley at ��ӽ紫ý's School of Business. “The legal and policy frameworks of every country and jurisdiction are unique, which is why there are no universal solutions.”

Grimsley is an expert on the evolving toolkit with which governments around the world are combating the affordable housing crisis.

“Despite the fact that each jurisdiction has its own policy framework and limitations at both national and local levels, jurisdictions willing to embrace innovation can learn from the experience of others and adapt ideas for their own context,” said Grimsley, who is director of the MS in Real Estate Development Program at Mason.

Recently, she was one of six main researchers and co-authors for the 188-page United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) #Housing2030 Report, a joint initiative of UNECE, UN Habitat and Housing Europe that compiles and analyses examples of successful affordable housing initiatives from Europe and elsewhere.

“The research to develop the report was a herculean effort by a great international team led by Dr. Julie Larson from the [Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology] that brought together case studies, best practices and innovative thinking from around the world,” said Grimsley.

Grimsley’s contribution to the report follows on from her involvement as vice chair of the UNECE’s Housing and Land Management Advisory Group. Her previous work for the UN includes heading up a working group tasked with updating guidance and reference documents about condominium housing.

The ideas and suggestions in the #Housing2030 Report are broken into four categories: governance, finance and investment, land policy and climate neutrality, with this last issue being key to providing affordable housing at scale without significant impact to the natural environment.

“These four categories align with the broader mission goals of the partner entities, as well as many of the UN’s global Sustainable Development Goals, and are obviously critically important to the lives of millions of people in Europe and elsewhere,” she said.

Each category contains a panoply of examples. Under governance, the report lists such initiatives as Slovakia’s State Housing Policy, a system of five-year plans that bridges several policy silos as well as action by Parliament.

Finance and investment includes Albania’s unique National Housing Agency, which has grown into a financially self-sustaining entity that acts more like an independent real-estate developer than a conventional government body.

Land policies covers critical incentives such as the city of Vienna, Austria’s requirement that at least two-thirds of floor space be given over to subsidized housing anytime greenfield land is recaptured for residential use.

Finally, carbon-neutral housing solutions often combine various funding vehicles alongside, or in place of, regulatory approaches. For example, Estonia hoped to boost the energy efficiency of its older housing stock through a 2018 law meant to hold landlords accountable. But the new regulations proved too difficult to enforce, prompting the state government to instead deploy a mix of loans, guarantees, grants and technological initiatives.

For Grimsley, the report underscores that “affordable housing issues are increasingly receiving the attention they deserve, and there is a robust, growing global community of people trying to find solutions.”

At the same time, she said having an array of proven options to choose from does not necessarily mean that policymakers will be able to enact any or all of the solutions within their jurisdictional authority. No single report can deliver the political will to pursue the dramatic change that would be required to rein in the crisis.

“We have the ability to construct the housing that we need,” Grimsley said. “Unfortunately, a range of complex, interrelated factors often stymie our progress. If we don’t address the very real underlying policy issues, the problem will likely still be here in ten years’ time.”

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Tackling the world’s grand challenges

Colleen Rich — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 09:00:20 +0000

Tackling the world’s grand challenges Colleen Rich Wed, 10/21/2020 - 05:00

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Business as a force for good—not just profits

Damian Cristodero — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 10:30:00 +0000

Business as a force for good—not just profits Damian Cristodero Tue, 11/12/2019 - 05:30

Lisa Gring-Pemble is always amazed by the transformation her students undergo when they see the effects grassroots entrepreneurship can have on a community.

The associate professor in ��ӽ紫ý’s School of Business annually helps lead a class to Colombia to witness how Mason’s Honey Bee Initiative helps local populations set up hives, harvest honey and increase their earning power.

“It’s eye-opening for them,” Gring-Pemble said of her students. “They come with this perception that business is about making a profit. But when they see an avenue where profit and purpose align, they say, ‘Wow, I can really make an impact.’ ”

That sensibility is exactly what Mason’s School of Business wants to export on a grand scale through its new Business for a Better World Center, which launched on Nov. 11 with a talk by sustainability consultant Jeff Foote.

The timing of the center couldn’t be more appropriate, said Gring-Pemble, who leads the center with co-executive director Anne Magro, the School of Business’ deputy dean.

“We are in a time of extraordinary crisis,” Gring-Pemble said. “When you hear what’s happening with climate change and poverty, disease and health care, we really need to make some significant and serious changes. Business can be one of the leaders in that space.”

The center will take that challenge by embracing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, which focus on 17 sustainable development goals in three main areas: people, planet and prosperity.

The center plans to educate the next generation of leaders ready to take on these complex challenges, Gring-Pemble said. It will convene leaders across sectors to exchange ideas and generate new ways of doing things, and effect positive change by actively engaging in action-oriented partnerships with organizations and communities.

The Honey Bee Initiative, which Gring-Pemble leads with Germán Perilla as a collaboration between Mason’s School of Business and College of Science, is a prime example of how business can be profitable while doing good.

The initiative, with funding from Spain’s BBVA Bank, has set up 500 hives in the Santander region of Colombia and has 160 beekeepers helping provide stable incomes to their families.

Additionally, the Business for a Better World Center is co-designing and piloting an interdisciplinary curriculum toolkit in partnership with the Moxie Foundation, Conservation X Labs, the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation, and other institutions around the country to transform how universities contribute to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly around conservation and climate change.

The center is also working with international organizations like AshokaU, United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education, and the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative to create a blueprint that can be used by schools across the globe to embed sustainable development goals in courses.

“The fundamental question,” Gring-Pemble said, “is how do we reshape higher education so that we are educating students, regardless of their major, to be the next generation of leaders who can create business models that allow profit and purpose to go hand-in-hand? I really think it’s that important.”

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