Barb Brown to speak at Conference Board and NIRI

Principal and Co-owner Barb Brown will be speaking at two conferences in the next two weeks; the Conference Board 2011 Conference: “Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability Conference: The Nexus of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility”, as well as the National Investor Relations Institute‘s 2011 Conference.

The Conference Board is June 9-10 at the Westin Georgetown Hotel (formerly the Westin Grand) in Washington, D.C. Presenting sponsors are DuPont, Altria, Best Buy and American Express. Some speakers include:

• Paul Pascalis, Director, Global Compliance and Ethics, American Express
• Heather Loebner, Executive Director, ArcelorMittal USA Foundation, Corporate Responsibility Governance Board and Manager, ArcelorMittal Americas
• Tessie Topol, Senior Director, Strategic Philanthropy and Community Affairs, Time Warner Cable, Inc.
• George Akiki, Senior Director, Corporate Affairs & Program Director, Partnership for Lebanon, Cisco Systems
• Tracey Noe, Senior Director, Global Citizenship and Policy, Abbott
• Mary Capozzi, Senior Director, Corporate Responsibility, Best Buy
• Paul Garrard, Director Corporate Affairs, Chairman Humana’s Corporate Social Responsibility Council, Humana, Inc.
• James R. Weigand, President, DuPont Sustainable Solutions
• Nancy Joy-Poignon, Environmental Health, Safety and Sustainability Leader, Owens Corning
• Katherine Brass, Ecomagination Energy Leader, GE 

Barb’s session, “Brand, Reputation and Sustainability Rankings”, is on June 10 from 8:45-9:45am.

For more information and to register (there’s still time!) please click here.

Barb is also speaking at the 2011 NIRI Conference June 12-15 at the JW Marriott Grande Lakes Resort in Orlando, FL. Sponsors include PR Newswire, NYSE Euronext, Dell, FedEx Office, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg and Wells Fargo. Some speakers include:

• Adam Bryant, Columnist, The New York Times
• Sam Levenson, SVP, Investor Relations, Sony
• George Barrett, Chairman & CEO, Cardinal Health, Inc.

Barb’s sessions include:

• “Credibility in the Hot Seat: IR Crisis, Reputation, and Risk” on June 13 from 4:15-5:30pm. Barb will be joined by Mike Conway (Sherwin-Williams), Jay Gould (Huntington Bancshares) and Jeff Linton (Forest City)
• “Sustainability, Strategy and Leadership” on June 15 from 1:30-3:30pm with Kristin Lewis of Fairmount Minerals

For more information and to register, please click here. Hope to see you there!

 

 

HP and Dell switch places atop Newsweek Green Rankings

The second annual Newsweek Green Rankings debuted today, announcing Dell (100 score) as taking over the top spot from HP (99.32 score). Rounding out the top five are IBM, Johnson & Johnson and Intel (same companies as last year, but in a different order).

Newsweek’s Kathy Deveny had this to say about the technology companies’ monopoly of the top five spots two years in a row:

“Tech companies dominated this year’s Green Rankings — in part because they make low-impact products, like software, that inevitably have a smaller environmental footprint than, say, a utility (though PG&E did hit No. 20 on the list, thanks to a commitment to renewable energy.) But bottom-line considerations are a big part of what’s driving tech companies in the green direction. In their quest to create products that are cheaper to manufacture and operate, tech firms are devising solutions that have the added benefit of saving energy or reducing waste.” (GreenBiz)

Newsweek also announced the Top 10 greenest companies in the world: IBM, HP, Johnson & Johnson, Sony, GSK, Novartis, Deutsche Telekom, Panasonic, HSBC Holdings and Toshiba. Newsweek ranks companies based on three specific categories: Environmental Impact Score, Green Policies Score and Reputation Survey Score. Newsweek introduced this year’s rankings as follows: “NEWSWEEK’s 2010 Green Rankings is a data-driven assessment of the largest companies in the U.S. and in the world. Our goal was to cut through the green chatter and quantify the actual environmental footprints, policies, and reputations of these big businesses. To do this, we teamed up with three leading environmental research organizations to create the most comprehensive rankings available.”

To read the full article and see the complete rankings, please click here. To read GreenBiz’s take on this year’s rankings, please click here.  
 

After reviewing the list and the methodologies, what do you think? Did Newsweek get it right this year? Do you believe they stayed true to their opening remarks of ‘cutting through the green chatter’ and quantifying the data? Discuss!