This January, Greenleaf Advisors and DePaul University held the third annual DePaul Sustainable Business Conference at the LEED silver certified DePaul Art Museum. This year’s conference brought together leaders in sustainability with both global and local perspectives and included finance and design topics. Download the event agenda and speaker biographies.
Since 2011, Greenleaf Advisors and DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business have co-organized the DePaul Sustainable Business Conference. Using our extensive network, we identify sustainability issues and engage business leaders to present on innovative business practices to inform students, industry and the community on sustainable solutions. The conference began as a forum for students in the Sustainable Value Creation class at DePaul’s business school to get ideas for a hands-on class project by providing real world examples of sustainable business development. The conference is followed by another event in March in which the students present their own plans for advancing sustainable solutions at their place of work or in a new endeavor. They compete for a financial award, generously underwritten by Bob Render of A Greener Solution, to implement their sustainable business idea. In 2013 an award was given to Sean O’Farrell to implement his plan for a start-up business that advises enterprises with the installation and management of sustainable gardens to serve their communities. A second award was given to Monika Mlynek to advance a sustainable business plan for her current employer, Aramark, for opening operations in her native Poland to serve higher educational institutions.