A Fair Chance at Work: Employment Pathways for Excluded Individuals

A staggering 70 million Americans have a criminal record. Despite a tightening labor market, this forecloses for them - by rule or by discrimination - most employment opportunities, even though stable work is crucial to avoiding recidivism. Research from NELP suggests that removing barriers to employment for people with criminal records has been successful in numerous ways.To address this, several fair chance hiring initiatives have emerged, such as ban-the-box.

And previously incarcerated individuals are but one group that is traditionally excluded from employment opportunities: think of people experiencing homelessness or with language barriers.

An especially interesting model to counter exclusion is Open Hiring: the practice of filling jobs without judging applicants or asking any questions. Open Hiring creates mainstream work opportunities and supports individuals in succeeding at those jobs.

Exclusion from employment opportunities touches racial justice, criminal justice reform issues, and human capital management, and investors can play a role.

In this webinar Transform Finance Investor Network presents the Open Hiring model pioneered by Greyston (famous for supplying brownies to Unilever's Ben & Jerry's) over the last 35 years. We will hear from Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs; and Mike Brady, Greyston CEO. Greyston is now looking to fund a new initiative to make Open Hiring a universal practice and support other companies in its adoption

Authenticity is the business principle for 2018

Jonathan Halperin. Founder & President, Designing Our Future:

“As the political battle worsens in 2018 in the U.S., and as facts and reality come under further assault, authenticity is the business principle for 2018. Companies that view CSR as window-dressing or a short-term marketing campaign will lose customers and market share to companies authentically embedding purpose into culture, operations, products/services, KPIs and structure.”

(For full article, clink on image link below.)

The Leading Good Podcast: Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin

Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs for Greyston. Greyston has been changing lives for 35 years through radical inclusion. A pioneering social enterprise, Greyston practices Open Hiring™ – providing jobs to individuals who face barriers to employment – in its world-class bakery and supports its employees and community members with a range of community programs.

On Purpose and Profit

Much has been written since Peter Drucker observed that “profit is not the purpose of business, but rather the test of its validity.” Yet, many corporate leaders still wonder both what purpose looks like operationally and whether it really generates value.  Recently, a host of firms have sought to unpack this challenge: from E&Y(link is external) and Accenture to Sustainable Brands, Conscious Capitalism, Ogilvy, and the Arthur W. Page Society.

For some executives, the sustainability agenda and its cousin, corporate social responsibility, remain challenges.  For others, carbon disclosure remains problematic.  But if Unilever CEO Paul Polman is right that purpose-driven brands within Unilever’s $61 billion ecosystem are growing “50% faster than the rest,” then brand managers, board members, investors and executives all need to quickly get their heads around this next phase of corporate evolution.

To advance the conversation, let’s first take a quick look in the rear-view mirror to understand how we arrived where we are today.

• In 1602 the Dutch East India company was chartered and granted a trading monopoly across a vast area of the Indian Ocean and southern Africa.

• In 1811 New York State passed the first statute facilitating the formation of limited liability manufacturing operations, a landmark event in defining corporate form.

• In 1889 Andrew Carnegie published “Gospel of Wealth,” imploring his wealthiest peers to share their wealth to improve society – a precursor to the 2010 Giving Pledge launched by Bill Gates and others at the urging of Warren Buffett.

• Fast forward to 2012 and Greyston Social Enterprise becomes the first “benefit corporation” to be registered in New York State, identifying Open Hiring™ as the social mission that it would pursue on par with its fiduciary responsibilities.

While humans have been bartering and trading for a very long time, corporate form as we know it today is relatively new.  And the current way we practice philanthropy in the United States is also a modern construct.  The typical pattern involves, first, the accumulation of great wealth through commerce and then some of that wealth being returned to society to meet various social needs.

It is this fundamental sequencing – extraction of profits followed by giving back – that is challenged by purpose-driven corporations.  In the case of Greyston, the scale of profit-taking is moderated by balancing the necessity to not only generate profits but to also achieve a social purpose at the same time.  Benefit corporations bring purpose inside the corporation, thus fundamentally changing its culture.

Greyston’s two-part mission is to create thriving communities and produce delicious brownies. To this end, it operates a world-class bakery in Yonkers, NY, baking 35,000 lbs. of brownies a day for Ben & Jerry’s, and for sale in retail markets.  The kicker is that the Greyston bakery production line is staffed entirely of people brought into the mainstream economy through Open Hiring™.  Anyone who wants a job is offered the opportunity to experience the dignity of work at Greyston: no questions asked, no resumes, no references, no background checks. (Please see this link for more on our work with Greyston).

In codifying this duality of profit and purpose as equally important we enter an entirely new stage of corporate evolution.  Purpose is where self-interest and service meet.    Survival of the fittest, in the jungle, and profit maximization, in competitive markets, have in common what Chris Houston identifies as the fatal flaw of panarchy.   In his provocative book, For Goodness Sake (with Jordan Pinches), Houston extrapolates from systems analysis and ecology to set forth the panarchy principle: any system designed exclusively to optimize just one variable is self-limiting precisely because single variable optimization eventually destabilizes the system.

BCorps are among a few new forms of corporate structure designed to transform business from the inside, rather than through external regulation. These new corporate forms are early efforts to rewrite the rules and codify the opportunities and obligations for corporations to create value for everyone, beyond returns for shareholders. Tempering short-term profit maximizing behavior with the creation of long-term social value benefits may enable capitalism to avoid panarchy.

Such mission-drive corporations now operate in the US across virtually all sectors of the economy – from brownies to banking.  The Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank, Kat Taylor captured the importance of this evolution in her remarks congratulating Greyston on its 35-year history as a purpose-driven commercial bakery: “I know there’s this popular notion that somehow the capital markets were put here by some cosmic force, and they’re perfect and universal and they always produce the right outcomes.  But they’re actually just a series of rules that we human beings wrote….”

While legal license to operate is still granted through government agencies (as it was in 1602), the more important and broader issue for companies today is around social license to operate.  When the purpose and behavior of a corporation is fundamentally extraction – mining the environment, harvesting time and talent from employees, maximizing profit over all else, squeezing suppliers and vendors – then it is not surprising that over time discontent bubbles forth.  When the richest 10% of the population own 88% of global assets (according to Credit Suisse), the system spawns the seeds of its own destruction.

Minimal licensing requirements, social and regulatory, will not going to forestall short-term profit taking or panarchy.  Licensing is, after all, the low bar of corporate behavior.  Rules requiring placards in elevators, anti-discrimination posters in break rooms, safety codes on wet floors are the absolute minimum.  “Do no harm” may be a useful guide for doctors, but does not take a business very far forward in pursuit of higher social purpose.

Beyond licensing and compliance, and recognizing that competition is fierce, how then are corporations finding competitive advantage in purpose – and simultaneously redefining what it means to be a business? Watch this space.

Our Work with Greyston...

A video explanation of the Greyston story with colleagues Dion Drew and Sunitha Malieckal

When we first started working with Greyston a few years back, its history was rich and its story powerful. Greyston is New York's first registered benefit corporation, a hybrid social enterprise, and a world-class bakery. Pioneers of the Open Hiring™ practice invented in 1982, Greyston had taken this idea from Bernie Glassman, an engineer turned Buddhist Zen master, and developed a close relationship with Ben & Jerry’s. So close that Greyston now bakes 35,000 lbs. of brownies every day to go into iconic ice cream flavors like Chocolate Fudge Brownie.

The idea was radical and simple. Everyone who wants a job should have the opportunity to experience the dignity of work, no questions asked.

I take great pride and pleasure in helping lead the transformation of Greyston from being a fabulous but niche brownie company in Yonkers to a global thought leader in human capital management.  We now describe Open Hiring™ as “investing to bring people in rather than spending to keep people out.”  Around that core brand proposition, we’ve helped design the Center for Open Hiring at Greyston, a collaborative and experiential learning space for early adopters, and recently framed the Greyston 35th Anniversary Gala as a celebration of “business innovation and social inclusion,” honoring Ben and Jerry.  Mental frameworks are not enough to change the world, but how we think often expands or narrows our sense of what is possible – and contributes enormously to brand value and marketing power.

As captured in “Greyston Social Enterprise--Using Inclusion to Generate Profits and Social Justice,” the case for Open Hiring™ is now more compelling than ever. My year-end podcast with Leading Good, in collaboration with the Social Enterprise Alliance, also captures the essence of Open Hiring and its scalability.

Embedded links and images on this page provide some examples of the external facing work we have done in collaboration with Greyston to help envision, shape, design and set in motion its next 35-years. In addition to myriad presentations on Open Hiring™ and purpose-driven companies, our work also includes:

• Designing strategic partnerships with Conscious Capitalism, Beneficial State Bank(link is external), Conscious Company Media, NYU Center for Sustainable Business at The Stern School, CleanCraft, and The Impact Finance Center;

• Securing, planning, conducting and post-production of video interviews with Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, Jostein Solheim, CEO of Ben & Jerry’s and Kat Taylor, Co-CEO of Beneficial State Bank; and

• Crafting a first-person narrative video of baker Dion Drew's story, using existing footage.

For more information please see Greyston’s new website or contact Jonathan J. Halperin either at Greyston (914-376-3900 x-224) or at Designing Our Future (301-951-0229).

Selected Presentations and Events

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Jonathan J. Halperin keynotes at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit
Leaders, change agents and entrepreneurs from the business, academic, nonprofit and government sectors gather at the Fourth Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit

Hosted by the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit
and the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University
(Cleveland, Ohio,  June 14-16, 2017)
Selected Media Coverage: Global Forum Wrap-Up by Chris Laszlo (Humanity's Team, July 19, 2017)

"Smart on Crime" Innovations Conference at John Jay College
(New York, NY, October 10-11, 2017)

Plenary Presentation: Greyston Bakery and Open Hiring
Jonathan J. Halperin gives Plenary Presentation at PRME Regional Meeting Agenda
College of Business and Economics, University of Guelph
(Guelph, Ontario October 19, 2017)

Business Doing Good--Jonathan Halperin "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond"
Conference Call sponsored by Good Cities
(October 19, 2017)

The Impact of Diversity, Inclusion & Equity in the Workplace
Jonathan J. Halperin joins a panel to offer insights on what being an inclusive company means, why it matters and what you can do to bring diversity to your organization.
(Washington, DC, May 15, 2017)

Selected Articles and Interviews

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Rod Arnold hosts Jonathan Halperin, Head of External Affairs for Greyston. Greyston has been changing lives for 35 years through radical inclusion. A pioneering social enterprise, Greyston practices Open Hiring™ – providing jobs to individuals who face barriers to employment – in its world-class bakery and supports its employees and community members with a range of community programs. (December 23, 2017)

Capitol Pressroom, WCNY, New York, NY
Jonathan J. Halperin
(August, 1, 2017)

Once convicted criminals served their time in prison, another kind of sentence starts when many can’t find work after their sentence. Governor Cuomo’s Work for Success Employer Pledge encourages employers to hire those once considered unhireable. According to the administration, “moving these individuals into the workforce helps keep New Yorkers safe.” If the Greyston bakery in Yonkers is any indication, the program works. Greyston provides all the brownies for the ice cream made by Ben & Jerry’s. They have employed something called “Open Hiring” for the last 30 years. Jonathan J. Halperin, the head of External Affairs at Greyston shared the story.

Greyston Social Enterprise--Using Inclusion to Generate Profits and Social Justice
The Successful and Achievable Open Hiring Model
Today is the day we each need to decide: Do we want a society that is more inclusive or more exclusive?
That is the question asked and answered by this small bakery with a great, big mission.
April 25, 2017, BtheChange
(Mike Brady, Chief Executive Officer & Jonathan J. Halperin, Head of External Affairs)

The Sustainability Trajectory
(Jonathan J. Halperin, May 13, 2014)
Transitioning to expanded role as “engine for change” in sustainability, environment, and energy funding,
The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation invites external thought leaders to blog on their website.

Selected Media Coverage

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Ben & Jerry's Supplier Greyston Bakery is Earning Brownie Points for Their Open-Hiring Policy
The Yonkers business plans to export its open-hiring practice across the US.
'Open Hiring has bottom line benefits'
Jonathan Halperin in Westchester Magazine, October 2017

How Hiring the Formerly Incarcerated Helps Rebuild Lives--and CommunitiesThe Crime Report, October 11, 2017

This New York Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.
Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in Entrepreneur (August 18, 2017)

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed
Urging leaders to take risks and think big at Weatherhead School
Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in beyond (June 21, 2017)

Ben & Jerry’s Supplier Greyston Bakery is Earning Brownie Points for Their Open-Hiring Policy

Westchester Magazine, October 2017

(Full text below.)

The Yonkers business plans to export its open-hiring practices across the US.

From decadent cheesecakes and creamy cannoli to rich almond tortes and buttery muffins, most bakeries are best known for their confections. But Greyston Bakery has more to offer the community than just the iconic brownies that go into every container of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream.

The Yonkers company has also earned a stellar reputation as a social enterprise, adopting an open-hiring policy in the establishment of its workforce. At Greyston, things like work history, criminal record, credit score, or homelessness just don’t matter.

“If someone wants a job [here], they put their name and cell number on a list,” explains Jonathan Halperin, head of External Affairs, about the policy, which has been in place for 35 years and accounts for 100 active positions at the company. “When they’re the next name on the list, they have a job. We hire people without asking any questions.”

But don’t think for a moment that Greyston’s sense of benevolence comes at the expense of either quality or good business. Open hiring has bottom-line benefits: “It drives brand value,” Halperin says, lowers onboarding costs, and leads to higher-than-average retention rates.

Now, Greyston is looking to export their open-hiring model nationwide. “We can’t change the world at the pace we want, even by quadrupling brownie production,” Halperin explains.

So, in 2018, the Greyston team is launching The Center for Open Hiring at Greyston in Yonkers, which will provide consulting, research, education, and toolkits to other companies. “[It’s] designed to refine, promote, and share open hiring with businesses across the country,” Halperin says, adding that the best-suited companies are “those with entry-level manual-labor jobs where skills can be reasonably, quickly acquired.”

He also cautions that interested companies must be patient and open-minded. “Change can be unsettling,” Halperin says. “Because it is a new idea for many, [open hiring] requires commitment and persistence.”

Marsha Gordon, president and CEO of the Business Council of Westchester, says she’s not aware of any other organizations in Westchester practicing open hiring. Still, she’s intrigued. “We do see a lot of interest in exploring new ways to access talent, especially in today’s economy, which is facing a labor shortage,” Gordon notes.

At the end of the day, says Halperin, “People increasingly want to work at a place that is accomplishing something other than making a product.”

By Kevin Zawacki

"Bottom line, fair chance hiring is about the dignity of work."

Plenary Presentation: Greyston Bakery and Open Hiring

Businesses Doing Good (Online Registration)

Businesses Doing Good -- Jonathan Halperin "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond"

Make it stand out

Event to be held at the following time and date:

Thursday, October 19, 2017 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM (CDT)

From Sustainable to Flourishing Businesses and Communities

Today businesses are going beyond "sustainability" which reduces the ecological footprint, to "doing good" in the communities where they are based and in places where they offer their products or services. This is a movement toward flourishing businesses and communities.

This series of conference calls on the third Thursday of each month at 10 a.m. Central Time lifts up examples of business as an agent of community benefit. Dr. Glenn Barth, our host, will interview the guest in the first half of each conference call and then open the lines for callers to ask questions in the second half of these highly interactive one hour calls. 

Conference Call Number and PIN will be provided in Registration Confirmation.

Our guest on the October 19 Conference Call is Jonathan Halperin of Greyston Bakery. The interview topic is "Open Hiring at Greyston Bakery and Beyond". 

Greyston Bakery has been working at the intersection of social inclusion and business innovation for 35 years. Open Hiring is its proven and transformative business practice now being adopted by small as well as multinational companies.Today, Greyston produces 35,000 lbs. of brownies every day for Ben & Jerry’s.

JONATHAN HALPERIN

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Jonathan Halperin serves as the Head of External Affairs at Greyston—with responsibility for communications, development and digital assets. He is founder and President of Designing Sustainability, a strategy consultancy.  He has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit and commercial organizations such as SustainAbility, Ltd., Resources for the Future, and FYI Resources for a Changing World.

In collaboration with international executives, nonprofit leaders, public officials and creative media producers he designs and executes projects to drive systemic changes in thinking and behavior.  Recent projects include research and design of communications on agricultural risk with The World Bank, creation of SNAPAlumni.org with Participant Media to dispel myths about hunger in America, and design of TeachFood! at Mundo Verde PCS which brings celebrity chefs to an inner city school in Washington, DC.

He serves as a trusted source for journalists, a regular public speaker, meeting facilitator, panel moderator, writer and diplomatically disruptive provocateur.  He is a graduate of Duke University and lives with his two young children near Washington, DC.

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Upcoming Interviews in the Businesses Doing Good series:

November 16: Pablo Guevara of Epoch Pi in Cleveland on the topic of "Purposeful Investing."

December 21: Guest in process of responding.

January 18: Paul Turek and Brett Struwe of Caribou Coffee on the topic of "Rainforest Alliance Certification."

Share this event on Facebook and Twitter

We hope you can make it! Glenn Barth, GoodCities GoodCities

The Capitol Pressroom: A WCNY Radio Production

This New York Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.

Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in Entrepreneur (August 18, 2017)

Bakery Thrives by Hiring Anyone Who Wants to Work, No Questions Asked.

Full-text of the article appears below.
Kira Halevy - Guest Writer

Dion Drew was reluctantly but seriously considering returning to the drug trade -- a life that had landed him in prison for four years in New York. Nine months had passed since his release, and despite his best efforts, he couldn’t find honest work. At every turn, employers, leery of his felony record and criminal past, had turned him down for job opportunities.

Then the phone rang. It was Greyston Bakery.

A few days earlier, Drew had put his name on a list at the small, Yonkers, N.Y.-based company, which embraces a unique “open hiring” model. Anyone of legal working age can get a job at the bakery, regardless of his or her experience or background. No questions asked. No resume needed. Applicants simply have to put their name on a list and wait for a job to become available.

“After I applied, it took about three to four days for them to give me a call back, which was tremendous,” Drew says. “I was riding around with a friend and I was ready to start selling drugs again, to be honest with you. I got that beautiful call, and it’s been glorious ever since.”

One promotion after another, Drew has worked his way up into a management role at Greyston. He’s able to provide for his family without ever again flirting with the wrong side of the law.

“Now I’m able to take care and provide for myself on my own,” said Drew, who has since become a father, as well. “I have a beautiful daughter, I have started a family since I’ve been at Greyston, and I’m able to take care of them -- legally,” he says.

Located just outside New York City, Greyston is best known for its delicious brownies, 35,000 fragrant pounds of which its workers bake, cool, cut and package every day. The sweet, fudgy treats are sold online and at Whole Foods Market grocery stores throughout the country.

You may have even tried them without knowing it, as Greyston’s delicious brownies can also be found crushed up and folded into Ben & Jerry’s popular Half-Baked and Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream flavors.

Beyond Greyston’s superb baked goods, the for-profit B Corporation heralds a larger mission through its groundbreaking open hiring model. Core to its social stewardship values, the community-focused company affords eager, would-be workers from all walks of life -- including ex-cons like Drew, the homeless, the long-term unemployed and veterans -- jobs, paychecks and hope for a better future.

“You don’t need no resumes. You don’t get asked questions. You don’t need to know anything about working,” Drew says. “You just need to come here and show that you want to work.”

Like the chocolaty confections that abound at Greyston (4 million pounds of them are baked there annually), Drew’s story has a sweet ending. With gratitude and tears in his eyes, he’s unafraid to express his emotion as he shares his story, something he often does at conferences and other events, including during a recent TED Talk.

Imbued with the independence his position at the bakery has provided, Drew speaks with joy about his young daughter and the ability to properly care for her after leaving behind a life of crime in favor of honest work and a reliable income at Greyston. He beams with pride at having the opportunity to support himself and his loved ones legally.

Inspiring stories like Drew’s -- and Greyston’s unique approach to hiring that make them possible -- show how business owners, community leaders and local officials can work together to everyone’s benefit, potentially reversing generations of unemployment and poverty.

That sweeping social impact shines through in the bakery’s mission.

As longtime Greyston spokesperson Jonathan Halperin notes, “We don’t hire people to bake brownies; we bake brownies to hire people.”

“We create job opportunities for everyone who’s willing to work, regardless of their background, regardless of their prior criminal record,” he says. “That model creates an opportunity for people who have often been excluded to become a part of the mainstream fabric of economic and cultural life in this country.”

Beyond giving anyone who’s willing to work a job, Greyston bakes in the right infrastructure to make its distinctive open hiring model work in practice.

“I wouldn’t have been able to come back to work without the option of having daycare through Greyston,” says bakery account manager Sunitha Malieckal. “What is amazing about Greyston is that when they try to provide these add-on services, it becomes so much more than just a job.

“I have a lot of friends still in jail, I have a lot of friends that are still selling drugs, I have a lot of friends who died at a young age, and I’m tired of that,” he says, adding: “You’re changing a person’s life by helping them get a job.”

Watch the video above to get a glimpse inside the bustling Greyston Bakery facility in New York and to hear from the folks who’ve benefited from open hiring.

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed

Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in beyond (June 21, 2017)

Brownie-Makers Wanted, No Application Needed

Full-text of the article appears below.

There are no job applications at Greyston Bakery. No background screenings, no interviews, no reference checks. Instead, getting a job at this 35-year-old bakery in Yonkers, New York, requires nothing more than a name and a phone number on a no-frills list. When a job comes up, the next person in line gets a call. No questions asked. 

“We don’t hire people to make brownies,” said Jonathan Halperin, the bakery’s head of external affairs and founder of consulting firm Designing Sustainability. “We make brownies to hire people.”

It’s called open hiring, and it holds the promise of providing equal access to employment for all, including those often excluded from the job market like formerly incarcerated individuals, immigrants and refugees. Speaking to an audience at this month’s Fourth Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit, Halperin described how this “hybrid social enterprise” has operated an open hiring model since its 1982 founding by Bernie Glassman, a former aeronautical engineer who became a Buddhist monk. The company is currently led by CEO and president Mike Brady. 

“As businesspeople, that means that we are people doing business,” Halperin said. “But the people part does have to come first. Having a purpose is essential for us in so many ways. At a species level, we are wired to create, to make, to build.”

Greyston was the first certified Benefit Corporation (B Corp) in the state of New York in 2008, and in 2017 received 138 out of 200 on its impact assessment report, well above the average score of 80 and qualifying it as a “Best for the World” honoree. The company churns out 35,000 pounds of brownies a day that supply Ben & Jerry’s — where you’ll find Greyston’s brownies in the Chocolate Fudge Brownie and other ice cream blends — and Whole Foods. 

The next step in Greyston’s evolution, said Halperin, is “moving from a place-based company to a practice-based company.” It’s fostered a community around the business that includes low-income housing, an early learning center, workforce development programs, internships and a community garden. “It’s where business innovation and social inclusion come together,” he said. 

Now the company is creating a Center for Open Hiring, which it describes as a “collaborative learning space facilitating the widespread adoption of Open Hiring and supporting innovation in the delivery of community programs for employees and neighbors,” as well as an Association for Open Hiring to set standards and promote best practices in the field.

Halperin pointed to the example of Dion Drew, a Greyston Bakery trainer who regularly speaks about his experience there. Drew grew up in the projects, turning to the streets to make ends meet and spending his years in and out of prison from the age of 17. After his last release, he searched for a job, but he was constantly turned away because of his criminal record. Now six years into his employment at Greyston, Dion spreads the word whenever he has an opportunity that the job saved his life.

“If Dion can do what he has as a man,” Halperin challenged the audience, “think of what we can do as business leaders.”

- Jennifer Keirn

Jonathan J. Halperin Keynotes at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit

Leaders, change agents and entrepreneurs from the business, academic, nonprofit and government sectors gather June 14-16 at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.  (And artists who captured the presentations with creativity and accuracy.)

Greyston Social Enterprise — Using Inclusion to Generate Profits and Social Justice

The Successful and Achievable Open Hiring Model

Today is the day we each need to decide: Do we want a society that is more inclusive or more exclusive? That is the question asked and answered by this small bakery with a great, big mission. (By Mike Brady, Chief Executive Officer & Jonathan J. Halperin, Head of External Affairs)

April 25, 2017, BtheChange

Today is the day we each need to decide: Do we want a society that is more inclusive or more exclusive? That is the question. From Boston harbor to the Statue of Liberty, from the Gateway Arch to the Mexican border, we believe the arc of history bends toward inclusion, not exclusion. It is inclusion that has made our nation great.

Access and mobility, the freedom to chase a dream, the urge to innovate, the opportunity to take risks in order to succeed, the right to become part of the American tapestry; this is the America that we celebrate every single day at Greyston. At Greyston, inclusion is the core of our Open Hiring Model. Open Hiring creates opportunities for everyone: women, men, people of color, people of all faiths and sexual orientations, immigrants and refugees, the economically disadvantaged, the formerly incarcerated and all others who may have been excluded — blocked from contributing to the health and strength of our society. Because no one willing to work should be denied the dignity of a job.

Open Hiring is not a handout or give away. It is built on mutual respect, opportunity, a fair chance. It is about communities, jobs, families. It is about responsibility, hard work, commitment, achievement, and the intrinsic worth of every human being. And we’ve been doing it for 34 years. What began as a modest bakery on the edge of New York City with the moniker that “we don’t hire people to bake brownies, we bake brownies to hire people,” has emerged today as a globally recognized brand with an innovative business model and value proposition. We are proud to be a mission-driven social enterprise and certified B Corp, proud to be based in Yonkers, proud to be New York state’s first registered benefit corporation, and proud to be part of Unilever’s global business ecosystem. We are proud of what we have done with Open Hiring.

Open Hiring is not just a job, but a pathway forward — providing career training and life skills. Jobs are fundamental and yet insufficient. Open Hiring connects jobs to families and childcare — so parents can work to support their families. Open Hiring supports parks, gardens, and healthy eating. Open Hiring generates community housing and economic development. All from baking brownies — and a mission to use business as a force for god. What we do is first and foremost about people — and about systems, changing and creating new systems that meet social, environmental, and financial needs. It upends traditional hiring practices that focus on spending to screen people out and instead makes an investment to include people and support their success.

We envision a world where responsible businesses collaborate with communities to create inclusive economies. We envision a world where businesses compete to attract and retain citizens who have done their time and want to start a new life. We envision a world where business assets are deployed more effectively to generate a social return on investment that benefits the company, its employees and its community. We envision a world where tax benefits are extended to mission-driven companies that demonstrate consistent returns on mission that reduce government obligations. We envision a world where we recognize that everyone — from CEOs to day laborers — needs support to succeed on the job and also be a responsible family and community member.

Greyston is a community that celebrates the art of what is possible, that believes everyone can contribute, and that puts faith in the power of core American values: opportunity, fairness, respect, and equity. And, we measure success every day — and over the long term. Success for Greyston is not a trade-off where we short the next generation to make outsized profits today. We must not sacrifice our children’s future to satisfy our near-term desires. Greyston generates strong returns for all stakeholders, a hybrid enterprise with nonprofit operations alongside a commercial business.

Dion and Shay, two employees of Greyston Bakery. Photo courtesy Greyston.

Our signature initiatives weave together business innovation and social justice to create thriving and inclusive communities:

• The Center for Open Hiring at Greyston, a collaborative learning space facilitating the widespread adoption of Open Hiring and supporting innovation in the delivery of community programs for employees and neighbors;

• Development of new financial models to support mission-driven, hybrid organizations;

• Public policy engagement to create a level playing field for benefit corporations;

• Design of social return on investment (SROI) vehicles that bring transparency and rigor to measuring impact;

• Creation of the Association for Open Hiring to collaboratively set standards and best practices for Open Hiring;

• Leveraging the purchasing power of global supply chains to support Open Hiring;

• Alignment with business schools to prepare new leaders ready to manage for social, financial and environmental success; and

• Preparation of the Open Hiring toolkit and guidelines for innovative HR leaders.

We are a modest bakery with a great, big, disruptive idea. And we’ve been perfecting it for three decades. We are “Bakers on a Mission.” Work with us: Inclusion@Greyston.com

The Impact of Diversity, Inclusion & Equity in the Workplace

Jonathan J. Halperin joins a panel to offer iinsights on what being an inclusive company means, why it matters and what you can do to bring diversity to your organization. (Washington, DC; May 15,  2017)

Event to be held at the following time, date, and location:

Monday, May 15, 2017 from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)

Arabella Advisors
1201 Connecticut Avenue Northwest
Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036

Please join us for networking, some light refreshments from certified B Corporations and a lively panel discussion! Registration is free.  Please RSVP by Wednesday, May 10th.  

Are you a B Corporation, social impact business leader, or in your company’s HR department and thinking about how Diversity, Inclusion & Equity can positively impact your employees, the bottom line and your connection to your community? Are you implementing programs now that are bringing change?

If Yes is your answer to any or all of the above, B Local: Mid-Atlantic welcomes you to be a part of a provocative conversation on what it means to have a diverse workforce, how it can impact your organization and the community especially in today’s climate.

Our expert panel will offer insights on what being an inclusive company means, why it matters and what you can do to bring diversity to your organization

Meet the Panel

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Sampriti Ganguli
Chief Executive Officer
Arabella Advisors
Sampriti Ganguli is Arabella Advisors’ Chief Executive Officer. She oversees all aspects of the firm’s performance, including revenue, operations, strategic growth, marketing, and client services. Sampriti drives and executes Arabella’s business strategy, sets operational priorities, and manages senior staff. She is also responsible for enhancing systems and policies that enable Arabella to deliver on its mission—to help foundations, philanthropists, and investors who are serious about impact achieve the greatest good with their resources.  Prior to Arabella Advisors, Sampriti served in roles at Corporate Executive Board (CEB), JP Morgan Chase’s Emerging Markets Research division and as a consultant for the World Bank’s East Asia Environment and Social Development Unit. She has authored more than 25 major papers on topics ranging from risk and talent management to collaboration, benchmarking, and technology adoption.

Sampriti is the recipient of the Corporate Trailblazer Award from the National Black MBA Association in recognition of her focus on increasing diversity in the workplace, and she received a 2016 Brava Award from SmartCEO magazine for her focus on women and leadership in the charitable sector.

Jonathan J. Halperin
Head, External Affairs
Greyston

In addition to serving as the Head of External Affairs at Greyston—with responsibility for communications, development and digital assets—Jonathan Halperin is founder and President of Designing Sustainability, a strategy consultancy.  He has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit and commercial organizations such as SustainAbility, Ltd., Resources for the Future, and FYI Resources for a Changing World.

In collaboration with international executives, nonprofit leaders, public officials and creative media producers he designs and executes projects to drive systemic changes in thinking and behavior.  Recent projects include research and design of communications on agricultural risk with The World Bank, creation of SNAPAlumni.org with Participant Media to dispel myths about hunger in America, and design of TeachFood! at Mundo Verde PCS which brings celebrity chefs to an inner city school in Washington, DC.

John-Anthony C. Meza
Senior Director Human Resources & Office Administration
Raffa
John-Anthony Meza is a human resource authority in the areas of corporate social responsibility, diversity & inclusion, and employee relations. He leads the HR and Administration functions for the Washington, DC based Raffa Companies. Raffa is one of the top 100 accounting firms in the US. The purpose-driven workforce of Raffa works primarily with nonprofits and socially conscious organizations.

In addition to his traditional HR role, he ensures the CEO’s vision of attracting and retaining an intellectually bright, inclusive, and socially altruistic workforce remains intact and a priority. The firm has been widely recognized for its quality, culture, diversity and overall workforce progressiveness.

Prior to Raffa, John-Anthony served in several HR leadership roles for nonprofit and for-profit organizations. He also spent over ten years with KPMG, where he oversaw their CSR program and led work in diversity & inclusion as well as work-life balance.

John-Anthony is a published author and a frequent presenter on progressive HR topics. He studied Industrial/Organizational Psychology at California State University, Long Beach and holds his degree in Psychology from California State University, Northridge. He’s served on several boards and currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Universal Giving and the Work Life Advisory Council at World at Work.

Jimena Vallejos
Poverty Stoplight Methodology Department – Manager
Fundación Paraguaya
The Poverty Stoplight Methodology seeks to eliminate the multidimensional poverty that affects families. It allows families to trace their own poverty map and develop and then implement a clear plan to overcome it. In her role, Jimena works closely with international partners, including private businesses, participants of the Fundación Paraguaya Microfinance program, and with local governments in Paraguay, that implement the Poverty Stoplight tool in their organizations.  She also leads a team in charge of developing new tools and equity solution strategies to highlight different Poverty Stoplight indicators, specifically the creations of training materials for women in various aspects of poverty elimination such as business development, microfranchises, and violence prevention.  She is currently working with IMAGO Global Grassroots to create a global scale up for the Poverty Stoplight methodology now used in more than 15 countries. To support a more inclusive workplace, Jimena has shared the findings of Poverty Stoplight at international conferences.

Prior to managing Poverty Spotlight, Jimena worked with USAID and coordinated a program to increase economic opportunities for people with disabilities through microfinance in partnership with the Center for Financial Inclusion of the microfinance network ACCION International.  

George Chmael II - Moderator
Founder & CEO
Council Fire
George Chmael II is a world-renowned management consultant who has spent 25+ years working with clients on a full breadth of economic, environmental and social issues.  He has counseled leading U.S. and international organizations in the mechanics of transitioning to sustainable operations to accomplish economic growth while simultaneously creating environmental and social value.  These organizations include leading non-profits such as Environmental Defense Fund, World Wildlife Fund, and Marine Stewardship Council; governmental entities such as World Bank, U.S. Army, USEPA, and NOAA; philanthropic organizations including Walton Family Foundation, Oak Foundation, and Oceans 5, and multinational corporations such as China Light and Power, AES, NRG and many others.

Trained as a lawyer and sustainability specialist, George possesses extensive expertise in a variety of areas including sustainable business, social entrepreneurism, community redevelopment, stakeholder engagement, and organizational assessment and improvement processes.  George is a leader and visionary in the global movement toward a more sustainable and inclusive economy. He is among a select group of business entrepreneurs chosen to grow the B Corporation movement worldwide as a B Ambassador, he leads a collaboration of private sector entities working to expand sustainable businesses in the Mid-Atlantic region, and he has guided his sustainability consultancy, Council Fire, to numerous designations as a “Best For The World” B Corporation.

A Peak Behind the Curtain

A Peak Behind the Curtain

Transitioning to an expanded role as “engine for change” in sustainability, environment, and energy funding, The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation invites external thought leaders to blog.

 (Full text below.)

When is it worth protecting a wetland or enacting a new safety regulation? Writ large, what is the role of government in promoting and protecting public welfare? Regardless of our political orientation in these divisive times, few would oppose basic government standards for electrical wiring in our homes or in the service of food safety, right?

But how much is enough or too much?

There is a nested suite of issues and assumptions that often go largely unexamined in the debate about the value of environmental protection and whether it supports or constrains economic growth. Let’s look at them one at a time.

On language

Since language both reflects and drives thinking, the words we use matter; they define the frameworks we apply to the world around us. And seemingly simple words such as “worth,” “value,” and “price” are often used interchangeably when they mean quite different things.

Price, an economic term, describes the numeric indicator of something for sale in the marketplace – a number that allows a buyer and seller to communicate. It is not, however, the same as value which brings into the equation ethical and moral considerations that might or might not be reflected in economic price.

And “worth” adds yet another layer of complexity. My view of what something is worth may be quite different from yours. The higher price a hotel might charge for a room with an ocean-view versus one with a view of the dumpster might be worth it for you because you are going to spend a lot of time in the room. For me (since I am only sleeping in the room), I don’t care about the view. We value the same things differently.

Core Assumptions

The current paradigm for evaluating environmental (and other) public policy proposals posits market failure as the driver for government intervention. We typically presume that the market, while imperfect, will nonetheless generally serve the public interest with modest government interventions. Over the long arc of history, however, that is very much a debatable proposition.

That the “free market” is the greatest mechanism for generating wealth and prosperity may well be true. But when we put either an equity, ecosystem, or time lens on this proposition it becomes very much a hypothesis rather than a statement of fact.

Leaving aside hard questions of morality and accountability, how well is public welfare served when 86% of all the wealth in the world is controlled by 10% of its people while the other 90% control only 14%?

How is the public welfare of future generations being served by the spread since World War II of persistent organic pollutants into every corner of the planet?

Whether long-term social welfare, globally, is best served by a loosely controlled marketplace or a more empowered government that truly creates a level-playing field for all actors in the marketplace is very much unclear.

And, at an even more fundamental level, the market/government duality obscures that prosperity and economic growth might not be the highest aspiration of a society. Entertain for just a moment the thought experiment that identifies equity or spiritual fulfillment as our highest social goal. Or, even more radically, what our world might look like if ending poverty was our core social goal around which policy, capital, and intellect were all united?

As a Practical Matter

Proponents of conventional thinking will assert that “as a practical matter” we need to price clean air, carbon emissions, fishing stocks, the value frogs contribute to ecosystem stability, and the agricultural value of pollinators like bees. While inarguably useful and important, the danger here is in how we assign value, who the “we” is that does the assigning, and whether we lose something that is invaluable in our efforts to monetize nature in order to protect her.

Before we become too attached to current practice, let’s remember that before Copernicus it was the practical consensus that the sun rotated around the earth; and it seemed crazy to consider renting your apartment to a total stranger before AirBnB’s business model. What seems impractical one day can become commonplace the next.

Our thinking is not sometimes but almost always limited by our imagination and the intellectual and operational tools we deploy are very much time-bound. Whether measuring particulate pollution, designing QA (quality assurance) protocols for process engineering, or marveling at the expanding storage capacity of a chip, today’s KPIs (key performance indicators) bear little resemblance to those of a mere decade ago.

Declarations of what we “know” should be tempered with a large dose of humility.

Benefit/Cost Analysis

One of the most powerful tools in our measurement arsenal, benefit/cost analysis, is mandated across the government; it is the means by which we assess the value of the previously discussed government intervention to address market failure. It is, thus, an immensely powerful tool. And while as a tool it may be seen as neutral, “as a practical matter” it is subject to manipulation and misuse.

What goes in the benefit and what goes in the cost column when trying to devise a policy to address climate change? Closing high emitting coal-fired power plants sounds great—unless you are a coal miner. The benefits of fracking once seemed to obviously outweigh the costs—but that was before we understood the extent of methane leakage, water contamination and possible fracking-induced earthquakes.

In addition to the accounting challenge of capturing all the costs and benefits, there is also the equity/distributional challenge when deploying this widely used tool. When we provide agricultural subsidies in the U.S. to grow corn for ethanol or high fructose corn syrup, do we need to account for what impact this will have on smallholder farmers across the globe?

Even more challenging is the issue of how we account for unintended consequences and the passage of time. While economists and investors have a suite of tools for this, what is a reasonable time frame over which to calculate costs and benefits? If we are talking about the habitability of our planet, how far out should we look: a decade, a generation, one-hundred years? In agriculture, for example, what looks like a terrific plan for increasing short-term yields to feed a hungry population today may be disastrous a few decades from now—if it is predicated on mining the soil of nutrients until there are none left to mine.

Value of a human life

As noted at the outset, it is and should be a sense of public welfare that drives consideration of policy. And public welfare is about people, but what I do, singly, as an individual, may seem benign until 300 million other people do the same thing. Think littering. The public consequence of personal choice is at the center of many critical debates today: sugary beverages and public health, antibiotics and food, for example.

How we value human life is another critical element of this debate which rarely makes its way into the public discourse—because it is complex and ethically awkward. But it has implications for everything from wrongful death settlements in hospitals to the height of guard rails on public roads.

As part of cost/benefit analysis policymakers routinely assess the value of a human life and factor that in to how much we spend on safety. When a lawyer guides a client in a suit against a hospital for wrongful death, they will assess how much money a court might award the surviving family members. Analysts will look at indicators like lost earnings, the value of companionship, past and potential social contributions. And they will tell the surviving family members what they think is a reasonable “value” of the life just lost. It in no way represents the worth of the person. As a practical matter, it is nothing more than a price in the marketplace.

Risk

As with cost/benefit analysis more broadly, who bears the costs and who enjoys the benefits are central to the calculus.

The death of a patient is, for a hospital, a cost of doing business; it happens. It is handled by folks from “patient safety” who are tasked with “risk management.” For a family member, the patient and the risk are profoundly personal.

So too with climate change, sustainability, energy, water, and all environmental-related issues. Risk and the perception of risk is another critical element in this suite of issues that are submerged beneath so much of our public discussion.

Risk is the intersection of probability and consequence. Risk is where they meet. If you think you don’t make risk calculations, have you ever crossed the street against the light? You made a calculation at that practical and metaphorical intersection. Low probability and low consequence decisions are easy; not likely to happen and if it does, low consequence. No big deal. High probability and high consequence, like jumping into the ocean without knowing how to swim, also pretty easy. Bad idea.

The tougher challenges are obviously around situations where there is some probability and some consequence. And around those decisions, the underlying question of who bears the risk and who is protected from them is again central if overall public welfare is the goal.

As we continue to address the wicked complex challenges of our time, how we think about them may well determine the extent to which we can or cannot successfully address them. We are, like all civilizations before us, constrained by the tools and mindsets we have at our disposal. We are not, for example, well practiced systems thinkers; we have trouble envisioning alternative futures and pathways.

If we want different outcomes, we need to change the systems we have created. And that begins with expanding our thinking to embrace new paradigms and challenging our own most basic assumptions.

Teach Food!

From an idea in a living room six years ago, Mundo Verde PCS has grown into a nurturing environment for 538 students in Washington, DC, with two buildings, cisterns, raised vegetable beds, and nearly 100 full-time staff.  It is a school, yet so much more.  Serving students from PreK – 4th grade, Mundo Verde is an Ashoka Changemaker School and recipient of the Secretary of Education’s Green Ribbon School award.  I am honored to have been involved as a founding board member and now as designer and champion of the TeachFood! program.

Mundo Verde is developing leaders for the next generation – supporting stewards of our common future with a foundation of knowledge that comes from bilingual immersion, expeditionary learning and sustainability. With wellness of self and empathy for others at the core of that educational experience, enabling a love of learning and intellectual engagement, Mundo Verde is cultivating deep emotional, educational, and environmental intelligence.  So much more than a school, with dedicated parents and community partners, Mundo Verde is emerging as a national model for what it means to be a 21st century community school – and then some.

With TeachFood! we have inverted the traditional model of a kitchen as simply part of the school infrastructure and are redefining it as a classroom where students and celebrity chefs collaborate to learn – and teach -- through cooking.   The program concept and expansion is described elsewhere on this page as are the gifted chefs participating in TeachFood!

We are proud to be pioneering this new program, building on the work of food and school innovators from across the country.    We expect this program to continue evolving as we balance the core needs of our students and their families with our commitment to both community and excellence is education. 

If you believe food matters; 

if you believe great teachers change lives;

if you believe that teaching personal wellness is as important as teaching grammar;

if you want to sponsor part of our food, cooking, learning ecosystem; then please contact us (email: jonathan [at] jonathanjhalperin.com).

Join us.  Create with us.

Let’s serve up a whole new world.

Merging tradition with innovation, the MV campus at P Street and North Capitol
includes the renovated JF Cook school building as well as our brand new building.  

La Casita was designed specifically for our youngest students.

Raised beds engage students in the hands-on experience of learning
what it means to plant, tend, and harvest our food.

Trust and Risk: A Key Challenge for Today’s Leaders

Five years ago today, as the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown were still emerging, The New York Times published my letter observing that “trust comes not from repeated and paternalistic proclamations of success, but rather from the humble admission of mistakes followed by demonstrable changes in behavior and attitude.”

Trust remains at the core of business success. For leaders it is essential - but elusive. Frustratingly, it is often easier to see trust as it slips out under the closed doors of of the executive suite amidst a swirl of headlines about food safety, burst pipelines, boycotts, shareholder resolutions, or the defensive cover-up of what might have been a manageable error.

Trust is hard to measure; it doesn’t sit on anyone’s dashboard next to sales and safety data. Yet it is interwoven with brand value, organizational culture, recruitment and retention, license to operate, regulatory challenges, risk management, public affairs and so forth. Needed throughout an organization and across key relationships, it is rarely owned by a singular leader or department.

Part of the challenge of trust is that it cannot just be created and distributed at will. A “trust initiative” is a bit like the suggestion box that appears in the midst of controversy; too little, too late. I cannot create trust by myself. It is bestowed on me and my organization by others. Trust rests in the attitudes and actions of other people. I can build muscle mass by working out alone; to garner trust, on the other hand, I need other people working with me. The trust a business enjoys is essentially on-loan from vendors, colleagues, customers, investors and other stakeholders.

• Greyston Bakery, for example, has a huge cache of trust among critical stakeholders who believe in the mission of this pioneering benefit corporation that is the sole supplier of brownies to Ben & Jerry’s – and is widely recognized for its open-hiring program. Monetizing that trust is a welcome but tricky challenge for its top leaders.

• ExxonMobil, on the other hand, suffers from a huge deficit of trust and hauls that liability around as burden in every aspect of its business despite engineering prowess and cash-on-hand beyond compare. Long a target for members of its founder’s heirs, for its unwillingness to disclose information related to climate, the company now faces not only the Rockefellers as disgruntled investors but also a suit filed by Attorneys General from sixteen states.

How leaders and organizations behave clearly influences trust. Take food, beyond brownies, for example. No one would willingly eat food from a person or organization they did not trust. Chefs, thus, enjoy tremendous trust. Many have thus emerged as not just magnificently trained cooks, but as leaders in the efforts to improve the quality, access, and nutritional value of the food we eat – whether in restaurants, schools, corporate cafeterias, or airports. But as Chipotle has had to learn repeatedly, once trust is breached repair can be very costly.

When we trust fully, we put risk aside. But when we trust less than fully, risk re-enters our thinking and takes center-stage. Even if we don’t fully realize it, the questions we pose to ourselves in an instant are a form of risk assessment:

• Does that vendor seem reliable?

• How long has that food been sitting in the display?

• I am buying that line of argument; do I know enough?

In the developed world, we don’t want to think about eating as a risky activity – which it has been for most of the course of human civilization and still is for many with limited financial resources. When consumers call for “local” food, when shoppers search for food labelled “organic”, when survey respondents state a preference for “natural” products, and when millennials read labels to see if a product contains ingredients they cannot even pronounce; all of this is, at root, a search for trust.

If risk is the intersection of probability and consequence, then trust is a traffic circle that needs to be navigated with a clear realization that the views and actions of other players may be more important to our success than how we alone steer. To navigate this space, a few guidelines:

• Find the people who trust you least. Don’t try to change their views. Let them be scouts to help you identify vulnerabilities. Listen actively.

• Transparency is only half the story. Before looking for kudos, take responsibility and fix problems – and make sure the fixes are full rather than partial patches.

• If a problem is hard to fix or will take a long-time, be forthright and explain the situation.

• Be authentic when a partial fix is just that; don’t position a bandage as if its brain surgery.

• Manage trust like any other asset, but remember you don’t own it outright; it is a joint venture with stakeholders.

What Does Change Look Like?

Across the American presidential campaign landscape, change might look like a neo-fascist with a toupee, a scrappy septuagenarian democratic socialist, or the familiar face of a woman who might become our first female president.  Quite a spectacle we present to the world.

Off the campaign trail and within the US government, change is both afoot and being cemented as fast as possible. As the game-clock winds down, officials are working both to drive change quickly and to solidify progress already made. As discussed by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at a recent White House gathering, Tomorrow’s Table, revitalizing local and regional agricultural systems is not just about food and farming but about the American way of life: core values, tradition, and community.

Part of America’s greatness surely stems from what Alexis de Tocqueville described in 1840 as an American propensity to “seek each other out and unite together to … found seminaries, build inns, construct churches, distribute books, dispatch missionaries … [and] establish hospitals, prisons, schools by the same method.” How we fund these quintessentially American activities, now understood as philanthropic endeavors designed to enhance the public interest, has changed dramatically. For example, Mark and Chan Zuckerberg recently announced that their charitable work would be funded and carried out through the “donation” of $45 billion to a limited liability corporation rather than a nonprofit.

As a trustee of the comparatively microscopic Marcus Foundation, I am very pleased that we will be joining forces with dynamic philanthropic leaders within the Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders group. While grants of necessity often go to discrete projects at specific organizations, foundations do have the leverage to advance collaboration around systemic problems and opportunities.

Whether in food or water or the search for climate stability, business too is adapting to and in some cases leading change. At the 2016 Investor Summit on Climate Risk, business leaders did not gather at the UN to hear Michael Bloomberg talk about philanthropy but rather about business opportunities in the transition to a low-carbon economy – which also explains why the event was sponsored by JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, KKR, and Deutsche Bank (among others).

Participating at the United Nations in the Investor Summit on Climate Risk
as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addresses
the audience of business and public policy leaders.

We will continue that discussion next week at a meeting in Washington, DC, of corporate EHS and sustainability directors, exploring the extent to which the Paris climate agreement portends fundamental shifts not just in policy but also for business. A coalition of global business leaders led by CERES was key to the ambitious agenda that came out of the Paris talks.

If energy – whether measured as kilowatts or calories – has always been central to the human condition it may be premature to declare the end of the fossil fuel era; but clearly we are at the beginning of the end of that era. Fundamental chemical and geologic forces at work behind the climate instability we are now experiencing will continue to unravel life as we have come to know it in recent times.

If our canine friends can sense physical earthquakes before they happen and detect explosives in suitcases, surely we should be astute enough at the pinnacle of the food chain to detect the tectonic shifts taking place within the ecosystems on which all life depends. Colony Collapse Disorder has decimated honeybees, a critical natural pollinator of everything from cucumbers to watermelons. And while they have inhabited the earth for some 300 millions years, the decline in frog and other amphibians has accelerated at alarming rates, with more than 150 species extinguished in the last 20 years and declining populations among nearly 2,500 species of amphibians.

Reaching “across the aisle” in Washington to get things done has been a truism of American politics for many a generation. Today the aisle has become a chasm.

While American history may be rich with acts of independence, our future is more likely to be effectively secured through outrageous acts of interdependence – be they within bio-diverse regions where stakeholders compete and species are threatened, along global supply chains, in partnerships between incumbent actors and entrepreneurial start-ups in the food sector, or among philanthropists and investors.

A Tough Year Is Ahead For Chipotle

Jonathan J. Halperin quoted in Forbes  (January 6, 2016).

A Tough Year is Ahead For Chipotle

Full-text of the article appears below.

The fallout from Chipotle Mexican Grill’s food safety woes continues to grow. On Wednesday the company revealed in an SEC filing that it had been served with a subpoena by a federal grand jury looking into a norovirus outbreak at a restaurant in Simi Valley, Calif. The number of people infected at the location was discovered by county investigators to be larger than initially reported, as Food Safety News reported last month.

The news of the subpoena, which is in connection with an investigation being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations, comes as Chipotle warned investors that it expects to report a same-store sales decline of 14.6% for the last quarter.

Chipotle shares plunged 5% on Wednesday to close at $426.67. While the consensus opinion on Wall Street is guarded – 18 analysts have a hold on the stock, according to Reuters — five still rate it a buy, including Credit Suisse’s Jason West.

Morningstar MORN +0.00%’s R.J. Hottovy believes the shares are undervalued, but warns, “I certainly would be cautious heading into 2016.”

Communication is one part of Chipotle’s current problem as executives have struggled to get their arms around this issue, working with the Centers for Disease Control and the Food & Drug Administration. According to a December 20 report by the CDC,  53 food poisoning cases in 9 states have been linked to 2 strains of the bacteria E. coli spread at Chipotle restaurants. Compounding the company’s woes were reports of illnesses in the California and Boston areas linked to norovirus (Forbes food safety contributor David Acheson deconstructed the issues back in December).  Management closed and sanitized restaurants in states affected after the outbreaks, followed by the company announcing it was implementing new food safety practices. Founder and co-CEO Steve Ellis apologized to consumers and proclaimed that Chipotle would be “the safest restaurant to eat at.”  The FDA or CDC has yet to pinpoint the source of the E.coli outbreaks.

In mid-December, though, customers still appeared to have faith:

A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 829 adults found that 62% would continue to eat at company restaurants, while 23% said they had visited the chain less often. Yet if more reports pop up, how long they will continue to choose Chipotle is questionable. But industry is turning out to be less forgiving: a recent cover story in Bloomberg News took a tone that typically hasn’t been used when covering the company many credit with creating the new restaurant model for sating the current (and next) generation’s cravings while disrupting the overall fast food landscape.

So what are the company’s best next steps? Says Morningstar’s Hottovy, “Certainly both CEOs could be doing more. The biggest issue they are facing is there still isn’t clarity on what is happening. … I think they could be doing things better, but at this point the options are limited.”

Going forward, Jonathan J. Halperin, President of Designing Sustainability notes that one step Chipotle can take to troubleshoot future problems involves aligning its core operational and safety practices with its current (and innovative) business model.

If you look at its 2014 annual report, the company acknowledges they are doing things differently by stating: ‘We may be at a higher risk for food-borne illness outbreaks than some competitors due to our use of fresh produce and meats rather than frozen and our reliance on employees cooking with traditional methods rather than automation.’ If Chipotle is going to continue to provide an alternative model to processed, industrial food, it needs to also be at the forefront of creating systems to support that new approach, such as offering its employees paid sick days.”

He concludes: “Chipotle and its customers are now paying the price for leadership not having made that connection for 20-years before offering paid sick-leave in 2015.”

- Nancy Gagliardi