Women & Sustainability: Pathways to the Private Sector

Join Women & Sustainability for our first panel event of the semester, Pathways to the Private Sector!

Tuesday, September 24th, 2013 at 8pm

Meet and greet will begin at 7pm.  Begin networking with our speakers and fellow Women & Sustainability members!  Panel and Q&A to follow.

Light refreshments will be served!

RSVP HERE

Meet our speakers:

Jenni Grant, Manager, Global Sustainability Programs at Oracle

Jenni is a passionately engaged intrapreneur and Global Sustainability Manager at Oracle, with a solid reputation for leading transformation and change for the benefit of the environment. She spearheaded the very first Global Sustainability Program for Oracle’s Worldwide Real Estate & Operations and works with multiple organizations, both inside and outside of the company, to implement projects and programs that  minimize Oracle’s impact on the environment.

Jenni began her journey in environmental conservation in 2006, when she left her home in Georgia (Fine Art degree in-hand) and drove 2,500 miles across the country to photograph the fabled California Redwoods. Determined to stay close to her place of awe and inspiration, and do her part to protect it, she continued northward another 150 miles and knocked on the door of the Sierra Club’s National Headquarters in San Francisco, where she got a job working as a Receptionist. A year later, she had moved into Human Resources, working on Recruitment and Web Design. Prior to the Sierra Club, Jenni had spent many years working exclusively in the non-profit sector, including arts and education programming in Atlanta.

While at the Sierra Club, Jenni became fascinated with the corporate world, where she could see there were enormous opportunities to help preserve the environment through transformation of business practices at the world’s largest global companies. Inspired, she moved 30 minutes south to Palo Alto in 2009, where she spent the next year learning everything she could about the unique cult of innovation and entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley, as well as the language of business, and the culture of the valley’s biggest, most

profitable players. In 2010 she made her transition to the corporate tech world as a Business Analyst at Oracle. Two years later, Jenni had convinced executives to promote her to Project Manager for Global Real Estate Operations. The following year, Jenni had successfully carved out a role for herself as a Global Sustainability Manager and was promoted to manage global teams who share her vision for corporate environmental responsibility. Today, Jenni continues her work at Oracle and also loves mentoring and teaching others how to leverage empathy, authentic leadership, and strategic communication to create change from the inside-out.

Jenni is a member of:

Women’s Environmental Network Silicon Valley Leadership Group Sustainability Roundtable
Green Grid

 Alana Libow, Environmental Sustainability Manager at The Dannon Company

Alana Libow is The Dannon Company’s (North American subsidiary of Groupe Danone) Environmental Sustainability Manager. She manages the development and integration of environmental strategy across each of the company’s functional areas (including sourcing, industrial, logistics, packaging, sales, and marketing).  Prior to working at The Dannon Company, Ms. Libow worked for Winston Eco-Strategies as an independent consultant and spent her Wharton MBA summer with FIJI Water (a division of Roll International) within its home delivery business unit.  Before receiving her MBA from Wharton, Ms. Libow was a non-traditional equity analyst at Innovest, Strategic Value Advisors, a global research investment advisory boutique, now owned by MSCI. At Innovest, she managed the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk management and strategic profit opportunity analysis across seven sectors (with a particular focus on CPGs and agriculturally-based products, including beverages, tobacco, and textiles). Ms. Libow also managed Innovest’s Community Development Index. Ms. Libow served as a Fulbright Scholar in Bolivia (2004-2005). As a Fulbright Scholar, Ms. Libow assessed the socio-economic impact of four microfinance strategies upon the livelihood of 20 female indigenous entrepreneurs in Bolivia. Ms. Libow spent her earliest years post undergraduate studies working at Harvard’s Kennedy School within the Women and Public Policy Program. Ms. Libow holds an MBA from The Wharton School (2010), with a major in Operations and a sub-focus in Environmental Risk Management and graduated Magna Cum Laude, with an A.B. in Anthropology (focus on Latin America), from Washington University, in St. Louis (2002).

 

Carol Casazza Herman, Climate Change and Sustainability Services at Ernst & Young                    

Profile

As Climate Change and Sustainability Services lead for the Life Sciences sector for the Northeast Region, Carol’s focus is on sustainability issues that arise in the Life Sciences and health care delivery value chain.  She has broad and deep environmental sustainability experience having held positions in a global corporation, law, academia and government.

Experience

• Brings extensive experience assessing sustainability programs to evaluate their effectiveness and adaptability to changing business demands.
• Brings significant experience developing environmental, health and safety (EHS) regulatory compliance and liability management systems.  She has additional experience evaluating sustainability and EHS issues in the context of commercial transactions.
• She recently participated in the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board Industry Working Group developing sustainability materiality standards for the biotech/pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors.
• Before joining Ernst & Young, Carol founded her own consulting firm providing management consulting services to business, not-for-profit and academic organizations.  Prior to that she was Vice President, Assistant General Counsel, Global EHS at Pfizer Inc where she managed the company’s worldwide EHS program.  In that capacity, she led a multi-disciplinary team who supported the business in the areas of EHS compliance assurance, operational support and stakeholder interactions.  Previously at Pfizer, she headed the company’s EHS legal practice group and provided counsel on local, national, and international issues in business transactions, regulatory compliance and policy advocacy.  Led US pharmaceutical trade association advocacy on international environmental issues.
• Her academic experience includes teaching  law and policy at Columbia University in an innovative program in sustainability management.  As an adjunct faculty member at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law Hofstra University and Pace University School of Law she taught environmental law topics related to climate change, international policy and business transactions.
• Carol started her career at the United States Environmental Protection Agency where she held positions first as an Environmental Scientist and then as an Assistant Regional Counsel.

Education and certifications

• Undergraduate degree in Ecology from Rutgers College, Rutgers University and a Juris Doctorate from Hofstra University.
• Member of the bar of the State of New Jersey.

More about Carol

• Public interest work includes past board memberships with the Environmental Law Institute and the New York League of Conservation Voters.