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John F. Kennedy University Honors World-Class Entrepreneurial Leaders – Virtual

April 21, 2012 By

John F. Kennedy University’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership (IEL) is honoring two leading California entrepreneurs that exemplify business entrepreneurship with a social conscience with the first annual John F. Kennedy University Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. In addition, two entrepreneurial leaders will be recognized with a Lifetime Leadership Award named after Chuck H. Smith, the former CEO and President of ATT West. The awards are being presented at a luncheon on Friday, April 20, at the Contra Costa Country Club in Pleasant Hill.

Pleasant Hill, CA (PRWEB) April 20, 2012

John F. Kennedy University’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership (IEL) is honoring two leading California entrepreneurs that exemplify business entrepreneurship with a social conscience with the first annual John F. Kennedy University Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. In addition, two entrepreneurial leaders will be recognized with a Lifetime Leadership Award named after Chuck H. Smith, the former CEO and President of ATT West and a long-time Concord resident. The awards are being presented at a luncheon on Friday, April 20, at the Contra Costa Country Club in Pleasant Hill.

The John F. Kennedy Entrepreneur of the Year Award will recognize two honorees:

Wahid Tadros is the President of California Engineering Contractors Inc., a heavy construction contractor that performs major infrastructure construction projects. He has been involved in numerous bridge construction, repair, retrofit projects as well as demolition and removal of a number of various structures including bridges. Simultaneously, Tadros is the managing partner in Half-Price Drapes, a top retailer of online customized drapes with more than 50,000 customers. Wahid, a member of the Keiretsu Forum, is both a tireless entrepreneur as well as a contributor to a broad range of charitable endeavors in the Bay Area.

Jeff Gray is a Sacramento based cutting-edge professional in the field of next-generation cloud based networking and the Chief Executive Officer of Glue Networks. He works closely with Cisco Systems, VMware, HP, and Panduit on data center and cloud computing initiatives. Previously, he was VP Business Development of Yelofin Networks, a hybrid virtual network operator. Jeff is a leader in a field that is revolutionizing the way employees work and communicate but still has time for being involved supporting the not-for-profit world.

The University’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership is also awarding the Chuck H. Smith Lifetime Leadership Award to Tapan Munroe and Mark Thompson in recognition of their lifelong dedication to entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership.

Tapan Munroe is a well known author, speaker, consultant and advisor in economics. His expertise includes innovation economics, energy economics, regional economics and high-tech industry analysis. His current research and writings have focused on the economics of innovation. Most importantly Tapan, a resident of Moraga has been a long-term writer of newspaper columns that have provided a continuous stream of thought-provoking information on business leadership.

Mark Thompson serves as the CEO of Virgin-Unite Entrepreneurship Ventures. He is also a Stanford Scholar and Chairman of the American Express Leadership Series on Facebook for Peter Drucker’s Leader to Leader Institute. The series features Jim Collins, Bill Gates, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, and Zappos founder Tony Hsieh. Formerly he served as Charles Schwab’s Chief Customer Experience Officer, Chief Communications Officer and Executive Producer of Schwab.com. During his tenure, Schwab’s client assets grew ten-fold to more than $800 billion dollars in five million accounts. Mark is involved as a leader in a breadth of activities creating through entrepreneurship opportunities for those least able to afford a good life. He is truly a leader in the business and arts communities.

At the April 20 luncheon, JFK University’s IEL also will be celebrating receipt of a charter membership in Sigma Nu Tau Entrepreneurship Honor Society. Dr. Nancy Church, Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York in Plattsburg and Executive Director of Sigma Nu Tau, will make the presentation. Qualifying entrepreneurship students and JFK University faculty will also be inducted into Sigma Nu Tau.

Bill Wiersma, author of The Power of Professionalism, Randy Williams, founder and CEO of Keiretsu Forum, the world’s largest group of angel investors, and Chuck H. Smith, former CEO of ATT West will co-host the event together with IEL Director Dr. Raul Deju.

JFK University’s IEL is a leading center in the East Bay aiming to provide educational opportunities and mentoring to entrepreneurs and small businesses in the area. The Institute, based in downtown Concord, offers certificate classes and start-up offices for its student entrepreneurs. It also works with the University’s College of Graduate and Professional Studies in offering an Entrepreneurial Leadership specialization as part of the Master in Business Administration (MBA) degree program.

Chevron Corporation is a lead funding partner for the Institute and serves as a catalyst for the success of our local entrepreneurs. Other IEL major business sector supporters include Heritage Bank of Commerce, Wells Fargo, and ATT.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebJFKUniversity/EntrepreneurAward/prweb9418185.htm

Article source: http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/04/20/john-f-kennedy-university-honors-world-class-entrepreneurial-leaders

Filed Under: Education

David Brooks, Politics and Social Entrepreneurs

April 21, 2012 By

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In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks takes note of the increasing popularity of social entrepreneurship – but unfortunately frames it as a kind of naïve idealism, a path by which young people will avoid political participation and fail to confront the “corruption, veniality, and disorder head-on.”  I could not disagree more. #


I have worked with and studied social entrepreneurs for three decades. They are far from naïve idealists who avoid harsh political realities. They are driven by ideals, yes, but at heart they are hard-nosed pragmatists. Far from ignoring “corruption, veniality, and disorder,” where these are issues, they tackle them directly. Karen Tse at International Bridges to Justice works to reform corrupt criminal justice systems across China. Witness, an organization built up mainly by the social entrepreneur Gillian Caldwell, provides video cameras, trainings and technology platforms so people can document human rights abuses and effectively pressure governments to reform. Transparency International, founded by Peter Eigen, monitors, ranks and publicizes corruption in business, politics and international development – and has created the most widely referenced indices of global corruption. And these are just a few examples of how social entrepreneurs are taking on difficult governance issues.  The list could go on. These are functions that obviously could not be left to government alone — things that would take long periods of time to achieve through the ballot box, if they could be achieved that way at all. #


In the US, many social entrepreneurs are actively engaged in civic life, too. The Corporation for National Service exists today largely because of the example, actions, and engagement of social entrepreneurs. One of the leaders of that movement, Alan Khazie, co-founder of City Year, and a figure of inspiration to many young world-changers, not only took a run at the US senate seat from Massachusetts, but recently published a book called Big Citizenship, in which he argues for greater engagement of citizens in political and institution-building processes. The ServiceNation event and campaign that Khazie spearheaded engaged many politicians in the effort to expand national service – including Barack Obama and John McCain. Khazie is just one example of many politically engaged social entrepreneurs. #


Social entrepreneurs do not discourage political participation – they invent new mechanisms for achieving the public good. Quite often solutions to problems require not just mobilizing political support but actually demonstrating how to solve problems that have confounded others. It doesn’t matter how much pressure you put on the government to fix a problem if the existing agencies don’t actually know how to fix it. In this regard, social entrepreneurship is an essential complement to the political process – not just where there is disorder, but even in well-governed societies. Everyone knows we need innovation in this time of strained government budgets. How else do we achieve better results with fewer resources? Social entrepreneurs serve as society’s “learning laboratory,” developing, testing, and refining new approaches to problems in ways that government agencies, with all their budgetary, bureaucratic, legislative, jurisdictional, and political constraints cannot do. These innovators represent the kind of decentralized problem solving that Nobel Lauriat Douglass North identifies as essential for any society to achieve what he calls “adaptive efficiency,” the ability to adjust and thrive in the face of new challenges and shifting problems.  Now, more than ever, we need innovative, adaptive societies. #


Think of the kinds of social problems we face today: how to get health care to the poor (and everyone else more efficiently), how to get clean water or energy to those with limited access, how to get quality education to at risk youth, how to protect children from abuse and bullying, how to get companies to reduce their environmental footprints. To solve them, we need to revitalize institutions across society – governments, businesses and nonprofits. This requires entrepreneurship. Today’s social entrepreneurs learn quickly how difficult it is to do this work well. As a result, they learn humility. They learn to think pragmatically and systemically. They balance the need to work outside governments to enjoy greater flexibility – and to work with government to achieve structural changes. They come to understand the competitive advantages and natural limitations of people working in different sectors. #


We should celebrate that so many young people are drawn to social entrepreneurship, not bemoan this trend. They will be smarter about their political choices as a result. It may not swell the ranks of the campus Democrat and Republican clubs in the short term, but it will lead to greater and more thoughtful political engagement in the longer term. #


Finally, one thing that social entrepreneurs tend not to be is staunchly ideological. People who are obsessed with solving problems at a significant scale learn quickly that success means making trade offs and compromises – advancing good-enough solutions that can spread and take root politically rather than idealized ones that appeal to the pure of heart. That’s why they tend not to be attracted to the kind of partisan bickering that fills the airwaves and the halls of Washington, D.C. Growing interest in social entrepreneurship is not causing the political malaise in this country; rather it is a reaction to it. In fact, if there is a cure to this malaise, it may come from a generation of people who are more interested in solving problems than winning arguments, who want to build politically inclusive structures, rather than out maneuver or deride their opponents. Today’s youth may seem to approach their social improvement work in a more upbeat, collegial, and optimistic way than the noir heroes (like Sam Spade) that Brooks celebrates in his critique, but that does not mean they lack seriousness, critical eyes or hard-boiled realism. Don’t underestimate them. #


J. Gregory Dees, a professor in The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, created the first course in social entrepreneurship in the United States. #


Image credit: David Bornstein
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Tags: Categories:  News and Ideas, Opinion

Article source: http://dowser.org/david-brooks-politics-and-social-entrepreneurs/

Filed Under: Education

Embrace social service as a business model – Louisville Courier

April 21, 2012 By

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Given these trends, Louisville is amazingly well placed to foster a culture of social entrepreneurship and innovation that will position it in the top tier of cities. Success will depend on three things:

• Companies allowing employees to use work time for meaningful volunteer opportunities. In an era when everyone is trying to do more with less, that seems counter-intuitive, but the return on invested time in terms of skills, exposure, and job satisfaction will be immense.

Louisville already has great organizations that can connect businesses to the right social sector groups for them, including the Young Professionals Association of Louisville, Metro United Way and the Center for Non-Profit Excellence.

• Schools, out-of-school programs, and universities actively fostering entrepreneurship and service-learning. At a time when one segment of our society is too focused on building a college resume and the other is not focused enough, very few students get the opportunity to start a lemonade stand, run a car wash or to meaningfully reflect on a service project. At the university level, not enough attention is paid to the social sector within business schools, which is a disservice to students and an opportunity wasted for social sector organizations.

Again, we have the resources in our community to change that. The Delphi Center at the University of Louisville has a wealth of resources about service learning. The city just received a $700,000 grant from the Wallace Foundation to support the YouthPrint coalition for out-of-school time, and at least part of that money should be allocated to support entrepreneurship and service-learning opportunities. Local business schools should take better advantage of the social sector for internship and consulting opportunities.

• Community groups need to expand what is recognized and celebrated within our business and intellectual communities.

Louisville has a great foundation for that recognition in Ideafest, the Vogt Awards, the National Association of Women Business Owner’s Celebration of Entrepreneurship and the Venture Connectors. All of these programs should expand their missions to encompass social enterprises.

The confluence of an economy in flux, a changing social sector, and a rising millennial generation mean that we have the opportunity to develop the sort of entrepreneurial and innovative culture we want as a city. But that requires us to move beyond service.

The writer is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He has worked for the World Bank and the Boston Consulting Group, and is CEO of the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association.

Article source: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120421/OPINION02/304210048/Embrace-social-service-business-model?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CHome%7Cs

Filed Under: Education

Electronic Recyclers International CEO Addresses Ohio State University APTE …

April 21, 2012 By

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Apr 20, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
John Shegerian, Chairman and CEO of Electronic Recyclers International
(ERI), the nation’s leading recycler of electronic waste, will share his
personal experiences as a social entrepreneur tomorrow at the 2012
Alleviating Poverty Through Entrepreneurship (APTE) Summit at Ohio State
University this Saturday.

As part of the afternoon session on social entrepreneur opportunities,
Shegerian will be joined on stage by a panel of other entrepreneurial
experts, including representatives from the Gates Foundation, Endeavor,
ReWork, and g.maarifa.

Shegerian plans to share with the Ohio State audience the story of his
business and social mission. With ERI, for example, Shegerian is
realizing the dream of not only leading a green business, but a business
that makes dramatic strides in helping the community. By hiring our
returning military heroes and others in need of good job opportunities,
Shegerian and ERI don’t just lead the nation in recycling electronics —
they lead the effort in recycling lives!

ERI is just the latest of Shegerian’s 30-year track record of quickly
converting start-ups into large, highly successful business enterprises,
while enabling those businesses to in some way serve the community at
large — often providing a career kick-start to those in need such as
troubled youth, and people struggling with poverty or homelessness. One
of his most successful businesses was FinancialAid.com — a site that
enabled college bound students an increased opportunity to achieve
scholarships to help fund tuition. In 1993, he co-founded Homeboy
Tortillas and Homeboy
Industries, which continues to serve as a paradigm for urban renewal
in America and was awarded the New York Stock Exchange “Building for the
Future” Award for creating new jobs and opportunities for gang-impacted
youth in post-riot Los Angeles. Shegerian is also the recipient of the
prestigious “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award,” presented by the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Committee to businessmen working to
provide compassionate solutions for society’s problems.

The 2012 Alleviating Poverty Through Entrepreneurship Summit at Ohio
State University seeks to educate, impassion and empower individuals to
alleviate poverty through market-based solutions on a local and global
scale. From creative conception to successful execution, APTE is an
entirely student-organized and student-run undertaking that is free to
attend, accessible, and community wide. By connecting students,
academics, practitioners, policy makers, and community members, the
Summit spreads the spark of social entrepreneurship and gives attendees
concrete channels of action to create positive social change.

“It’s a very humbling experience and an honor to have been asked to
speak at this important event before so many of our current and future
business leaders,” said Shegerian. “It’s rewarding to see fellow
business leaders that are willing to take the time to share and learn
about the tremendous promise of profitable, sustainable, socially
beneficial business practices that can help resolve so many of society’s
challenges, including poverty and joblessness. We are very grateful to
the APTE organizers and Ohio State for taking a leadership role in
helping us promote these important business and nonprofit paradigms.”

For more information on recycling needs, visit
www.electronicrecyclers.com ,

http://1800recycling.com

or
www.urbanmining.org .

Now the largest recycler of electronic waste in the US, and the
world’s first dual-certified electronic waste recycler,
Fresno-headquartered Electronic Recyclers International is licensed to
de-manufacture and recycle televisions, computer monitors, computers and
other types of electronic equipment. ERI serves public sector
clients via GSA contract GS-10F-0051Y and processes more than 120
million pounds of electronic waste annually at eight locations in seven
states, including California, Washington, Colorado, Indiana,
Massachusetts, Texas and North Carolina. For more information
about e-waste recycling and ERI, call 1-800-884-8466 or visit
http://www.electronicrecyclers.com .

SOURCE: Electronic Recyclers International



        
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Copyright Business Wire 2012

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/electronic-recyclers-international-ceo-addresses-ohio-state-university-apte-summit-on-subject-of-social-entrepreneurship-2012-04-20

Filed Under: Education

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