Creating Social Value Blog / Corporate Social Relevance

Fifteen Shades of Green

By Vikram Sokkalingam, a graduate student at Babson College and Co-President for the Babson Energy & Environmental Club.E&E Logo

With a background in the business of coal based power plant construction, I saw first hand the need for a systemic shift in our approach to energy and the environment. I decided to get an MBA to better equip myself to join the action with thought leaders like Elon Musk. However, when I started discussing this my friends and colleagues, I found that most considered Energy & Environment to be a separate industry and that it didn’t have to do anything with the spaces they operated in. This was when the vision for this year’s 8th Annual Energy & Environmental Conference emerged. Dhruv Varma and I are the Co-Presidents of the Babson Energy & Environmental Club and are spearheading this year’s conference with support from The Lewis Institute. We decided it must showcase the underlying interdependency between industries as well as explore how existing models looking at energy and sustainability as a cost center must change.

The 8th Annual Babson Energy & Environmental Conference is scheduled for Thursday, March 27th, 2014 and looks at the intersection of interaction between people, nature and business. With the theme as Fifteen Shades of Green, this year’s conference explores how energy, efficiency and sustainability have evolved into an integral part of every industry, helping grow the top line and breaking the long held myth that sustainability is a cost center. Our goal is to provide a platform for connecting students and professionals with the current and emerging industry trends relating to how energy, environment and social innovation are set to transform traditional businesses. This event brings over 30 speakers and 300 attendees from around the country and internationally who are active and passionate in the industry to the Babson College campus in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Our speakers include Doug Foy, founder and CEO of Serrafix, Jigar Shah, CEO of Carbon War Room, and John Warner, Founder, President and CTO of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry. They’ll be speaking about everything from product design inspired by nature to how energy & environmental challenges link to social innovation and the opportunities for non-energy & environmental experts to drive socio-economic change in their respective fields. We hope that you’ll be among them on March 27th.

Please visit http://babsonenergy.com/2014conference for more information.