Making an Impact
Owen Students and Alums Put in Overtime to Host International Conference on Social Responsibility
Julie Sinton earned her MBA from Owen last spring. But that didn’t stop her from contributing 20-25 hours per week, above and beyond her other responsibilities, on behalf of the school and her former colleagues.
| Old habits, apparently, persist. | |
Julie was part of a 10-person student working group responsible for hosting the prestigious annual Net Impact Conference at Owen on November 1-3. Each year, a graduate school of business hosts the event, which attracts MBA students, other graduate students in business-related fields, recruiters and business professionals.
Net Impact is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting corporate social responsibility and ethical business practices. Its global network encompasses more than 125 student and professional chapters on four continents in 75 cities and 80 graduate schools. The two previous conferences had been hosted by Stanford and Northwestern; Vanderbilt was the first school in the Southeast in many years to serve as the conference site.
Julie got involved almost two years ago, during her first spring at Owen, when she and several colleagues decided to submit a bid for Vanderbilt and Nashville to host the Net Impact event. “For us, she explains, “it was a real chance to showcase Owen, Nashville and the Southeast. We wanted to get the Owen name out more.”
Putting together the myriad details for Owen’s proposal was arduous enough. Once the Owen team learned they had been awarded the conference, the work only intensified. While they coordinated with and received assistance from Net Impact’s staff, Owen students shouldered the greatest part of the load.
In addition to planning the overall curriculum—which included 90 panels and forums on a wide range of topics—the team was responsible for lining up more than 300 speakers and coordinating the logistics of managing 1,800 people who descended on Vanderbilt and Nashville.
The team also lined up more than 40 companies for the conference’s Career Expo, including such notables as Google, Apple, Mattel, Humana and Accenture. Also on board were a number of corporate sponsors that provided in-kind support and half a dozen different media sponsors.
The Net Impact job required the Owen team to scour the Vanderbilt campus and other venues around the city to secure space for various sessions. For example, the keynote address, which featured Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, was held at the historic Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville.
The logistical challenges, in turn, required meeting and corresponding with people in various departments and buildings. Time management, a skill honed at Owen, was a challenge, too, considering that each team member on a typical day had to respond to up to 100 Net Impact-related emails.
“It was nonstop with extra hours each week and on weekends and holidays,” says James Butler (MBA Class of 2008), the other co-chair, who concentrated a majority of his efforts on curriculum planning and marketing the conference. He got involved after learning about Net Impact from Julie and didn’t look back.
“We are very pleased with how well this year’s Net Impact Conference came together in terms of planning and execution, and we have many reasons to be proud of the Owen and Vanderbilt communities for their important contributions and support. This event challenged participants to think more critically about the realities that our world is facing and the role that they–and business in general–can play to improve society.”
