Institute for CSR Alumni Reflections: Interview with Kelly Waldron, Director of Capacity and Performance at United Way Worldwide (formerly with Deloitte)

Why did you choose to participate in the Institute for Corporate Social Responsibility and what year did you graduate?
The Institute for CSR was an incredible opportunity to learn from industry leaders – like Tim McClimon from American Express and Diane Melley from IBM – as well as network and learn from my peers in the field. I was part of the inaugural class (2014) and learned a great deal.

Every year, about 13 percent of the nation’s 3.4 million teachers transfer to different schools or leave the profession altogether, according to the Alliance for Excellence in Education in collaboration with the New Teacher Center. It’s estimated that over 1 million teachers move in and out of schools annually, with 40 to 50 percent of teachers quitting within five years.

Employees from Xylem (NYSE:XYL), a leading global water technology company that is dedicated to solving the world’s most challenging water issues, logged more than 21,000 volunteer hours in 2016 in activities aimed at providing and protecting safe water resources and educating people about water, sanitation, and hygiene.

The latest milestone in open source development at Bloomberg is the incorporation of the Learning-to-Rank (LTR) plug-in into Apache Solr 6.4.0, which shipped this week. The release of the plug-in marks the culmination of a year’s worth of close collaboration between two groups of Bloomberg software engineers in New York and London and the open source project’s community to make it easier to re-rank search results using machine learning.

The largest U.S.-based food services provider, Aramark, has teamed up with the nation’s largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke, American Heart Association, to develop the “Healthy for Life 20 by 20” initiative. This outstanding collaboration is aimed at improving the health of Americans 20% by 2020 by empowering people to make healthy food, nutrition, and lifestyle choices. Read more.

Duke Energy Renewables has completed its large-scale wind power plant in Oklahoma, the 200-megawatt (MW) Frontier Windpower Project.

I have always been curious about human biology and have had a desire to help others. This has motivated me to study human diseases and to pursue a career in which I could help others through medicine and scientific research.

CECP, in association with The Conference Board, announced the launch of the 16th annual Giving in Numbers survey. The largest and most robust of its kind, the survey is open through March 31, 2017 to companies with revenue of US $2 billion or more, including companies not yet affiliated with CECP or The Conference Board. CECP: The CEO Force for Good is a coalition of more than 200 of the world’s largest companies that represent $7 trillion in revenues, $18.6 billion in societal investment, and 13 million employees.

Educating children in hygiene is a good investment in their health. A joint SCA and Vinda project in Shenzhen, China, showed that good hygiene habits can reduce the risk of childhood diseases such as hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) by up to 60%.

I was at a friend’s birthday party recently and noticed something interesting about the presents he received from guests. The standard bottle of wine or tickets to a ball game don’t cut it anymore. The trendy gifts these days are gadgets that incorporate “smart” technologies, connect to your home and try to make life easier. You can speak to a radio to tell it to change the station, remotely lock the doors or turn off lights in your home and even buy an interactive refrigerator with touchscreen and internet access!