Corporate Responsibility

CECP: The CEO Force for Good will convene the 2018 CECP Summit: Leading Through Complexity May 22-23, 2018 in NYC, bringing together 250 corporate leaders who drive societal investment strategies at the world’s largest companies. Attendees will learn and connect with the trailblazers making big, bold moves in a complex business climate – those who are taking charge and re-defining ‘purpose’ and success for themselves. CECP is a coalition of more than 200 companies and CEOs that believes that a company’s social strategy--how it engages with key stakeholders including employees, communities, investors, and customers--determines company success.

The Taproot Foundation’s U.S. Pro Bono Summit is an annual gathering of leaders from across sectors and industries with a shared vision to make the talents and skills of the business community accessible to social change organizations. The 7th annual Summit was held in San Francisco on April 18 and 19.

CECP: The CEO Force for Good announced the addition of Kari Niedfeldt-Thomas as Managing Director, an integral part of CECP’s senior leadership team. As a CEO-led coalition of more than 200 of the world’s largest companies, CECP believes a company’s social strategy – how it engages with key stakeholders including employees, communities, investors, and customers – determines a company’s success. As the former Executive Director of The Mosaic Company Foundation, Kari brings multiple years of experience in corporate social investments, company strategy, and business development.

Benjamin Francisco has seen a lot in his eight years with the Minnesota Army National Guard. Deployed twice, to Egypt and Kuwait, it was his job to keep critical IT communications systems up and running. But convincing employers those skills can transfer to the civilian workforce has been another matter. Medtronic is trying to help veterans overcome that challenge.

Ruben Xochitiotzi, 16, a sophomore at Chino Hills High School, hopes to be a successful restaurateur or businessman one day. He got a taste of what it would be like to be part of a cookline making pizzas using modern commercial kitchen appliances during his recent class visit to Southern California Edison’s Foodservice Technology Center.

Telemedicine in Latin America is expanding — proving just how important partnerships and technological advancements can be to health care management in remote areas. Medtronic, along with the Lumen Foundation and Internal Telemedicine Systems, formed the Latin American Telemedicine Infarct Network (LATIN) to address one of the region’s most pressing challenges — cardiovascular disease, specifically STEMI. Today, LATIN is offered in more clinics — serving more patients – than ever before. The model continues to grow in Colombia and Brazil with more than 120 participating clinics and 19 hospitals. In remote parts of Mexico, 35 primary care centers and three hospitals have adopted the model for the first time.

Being honored as a top employer requires employees who help to create a unique culture every day. That kind of impact at Medtronic was given the spotlight in May when the Asia Society, a leading educational organization, awarded Medtronic with multiple awards including “Best Employer for Promoting Asian Pacific American Women” and “Best Employer for Marketing and Support to the Asian Pacific American Community.”

Erika Irish Brown was honored for her contributions to the finance industry at the 2018 CollegeBound Initiative (CBI) Celebration on Tuesday evening, May 15, 2018. CBI is a comprehensive college guidance program which empowers more than 18,000 young women and men to realize their higher education and life potential.

The electrification of road transport will move into top gear in the second half of the 2020s, thanks to tumbling battery costs and larger-scale manufacturing, with sales of electric cars racing to 28%, and those of electric buses to 84%, of their respective global markets by 2030.

I’ve recently begun to wonder if we’re moving away from the world of commodities as we’ve known them for hundreds of years. The buying, selling, trading and hedging of commodities like cocoa, grains and energy have been stalwarts of global trade. For decades, people in corporate procurement have sourced raw materials from around the world based on defined specifications and quality standards.