This Speaker's Corner is hosted by Monica Touesnard of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, Kristin O'Planick, Tayo Akinyemi, Mark Milstein, Daniela Ochoa and Michael Goldman.
Monica TouesnardMonica Touesnard is the Associate Director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. She is responsible for conceptualizing, designing, launching, and championing new programmatic enhancements for the Center as well as managing and cultivating existing ones such as the BoP Learning Lab Global Network and the BoP Narrative Competition. Furthermore, she fosters and maintains collaborative relationships domestically and internationally with companies, non-profits, alumni, entrepreneurs, executives, academic institutions, and others. In addition, Monica advises current and prospective Cornell students interested in sustainable global enterprise.
Recently, Monica co-authored a report with Dr. Stuart Hart entitled, “Back to the Future: Integrating Sustainability into Credit Union Strategy.” The report provides a sustainability framework that offers credit unions the opportunity to use their unique historical and organizational characteristics to offer a set of products and services that differentiate them from banks and other financial services providers.
Prior to her current position, Monica was the founding Executive Director for the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School from 2001-2004, an internationally recognized program that was ranked by World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute as global leader among business schools in sustainability education in their Beyond Grey Pinstripes Report 2003.
Monica has additional experience in project management, teaching and consulting work both locally and internationally. She earned her MBA from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School with focus on Sustainable Enterprise and has a B.A. from McGill University in Canada.
Kristin O'Planick
Kristin O’Planick has a professional background in international development with experience in both Africa and the Middle East across a variety of technical areas including food security, agribusiness, rural finance, and sustainable tourism. She managed USAID projects for Chemonics International where she built expertise in gender integration, and later she was posted in Egypt as an Operations Manager. She also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea.
Kristin is focused on the intersections of business and development and hopes to work with the private sector to engage the BoP in a mutually beneficial and sustainable way. Kristin has a special interest in agribusiness and tourism as drivers of economic development.
Tayo Akinyemi
Tayo Akinyemi started her career at Catalyst, a New York-based research and advisory organization working with businesses to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women at work. After nearly four years with Catalyst, she accepted a Princeton in Africa Fellowship to do democracy and governance work with an international NGO in Abuja, Nigeria. At the conclusion of her fellowship, she joined the marketing department of an emerging telecommunications company in Nigeria, Suburban Telecom.
Tayo is interested in the organizational and behavioral change efforts employed by companies to foster greater awareness of the needs and issues faced by BoP consumers. She recently graduated from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell.
Mark Milstein
Dr. Mark Milstein is Director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and Lecturer of Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He oversees the center's work on sustainable innovation and low-income – or base of the pyramid – enterprise development. Professor Milstein teaches and conducts research on strategy, decision making, technology management, and innovation.
Dr. Milstein's own research is focused on how and why firms generate new business growth opportunities by treating social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs. His work includes private sector approaches to poverty alleviation and technology commercialization strategies to catalyze sustainable innovation.
Professor Milstein's writings have appeared in the Academy of Management Executive, Sloan Management Review, Environmental Finance, and Value, as well as various edited books. He is an award-winning author of several popular teaching cases. Dr. Milstein has taught strategy, innovation, and sustainable enterprise to undergraduates, MBAs, and executives in the U.S., Latin America, and Asia.
He is a frequent speaker on the topics of strategy, organizational change, and innovation related to business and sustainability. He also consults with a number of multinational firms, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and NGOs, including Caterpillar, Suncor, the U.S. Army, and Schering-Plough.
Milstein earned a B.A. in economics and Japanese from the University of Michigan. He later earned both an MBA in general management and an M.S. in natural resource policy from the University of Michigan's dual-degree Corporate Environmental Management (now Erb) Program. He received his PhD in strategic management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Daniela Ochoa
Daniela Ochoa Gonzalez is pursuing her MPA with a concentration in Environmental Policy and a minor in Latin American Studies at Cornell University. She is committed to Sustainable Development, predominantly through environmental policies and incentives related to food security, recycling, alternative energies and biodiversity in U.S., Mexico, Puerto Rico and Brazil, where she has conducted field research. Recently she and her partner earned the Clinton Global Initiative Outstanding Commitment Award for the Energy and Climate Change category with her thesis project of replicating an exchanging mechanish of recyclables for food, "Cambio Verde", in Mexico.
Daniela earned a Bachelors of Arts in International Relations from Tec de Monterrey in 2005.
Michael Goldman
Michael Goldman is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, South Africa.
He lectures, researches and consults in the area of Marketing, including topics such as Marketing Strategy & Management, Customer Centricity, Base of the Pyramid, and Sports Marketing and Sponsorship. He is a regular commentator on marketing-related issues in the media and has published widely.
Through his teaching, speaking and consulting work, Michael has enjoyed the opportunity to work closely with a number of leading organisations, including Sasol, Entyce Beverages, SAB Ltd, British American Tobacco SA, Standard Bank, Telkom, PepsiCo and BMW.
Michael received an undergraduate degree in education from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth before completing his MBA from GIBS. He is currently completing a doctorate through GIBS.
Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise
The Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management (USA) believes the private-sector has a critical role to play in helping solve the world's most pressing environmental and social problems. It views solutions to environmental and social problems as business opportunities, not a cost of doing business. The Center works directly with companies around the world to identify, understand, and capitalize on these competitive opportunities by framing the solutions to these complex issues as new business growth rooted in innovation and enterprise development. The Center maintains a global network engaged in collaborative research and field work focused on strategy formulation and implementation in two domains: sustainable innovation and base of the pyramid enterprise development.
The Center engages students and managers alike to develop a deep theoretical and practical understanding of a complex set of interrelated economic, social, and environmental issues. To do this, it focuses on building the skills and capabilities needed to formulate and implement practical, operational solutions that have value in today's marketplace. Combining the business and entrepreneurship expertise of the Johnson School and the vast resources in science, technology, and the study of humanity at Cornell University, the Center is attempting to advance the global knowledge base in sustainable enterprise.