Corporate Impact Summit
April 20-21, 2023 | Dallas, Texas
The Corporate Impact Summit is the world’s leading invitation-only gathering dedicated to effective stakeholder engagement for corporate responsibility. You are one of a series of hand-picked executives, advocates, investors, and funders whom we invite to share candid insights and ideas from the front lines of environmental advocacy and protection and corporate governance for social impact.
You will explore the latest strategies for finding common ground, building trust, and mobilizing markets to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges. We host the summit under Chatham House Rule to encourage delegates to speak with candor and “leave their talking points at the door,” meaning this is not a pay-to-play conference model.
Our past summits have kindled lasting friendships and forged professional collaborations between leaders across sectors and ideologies. You might find one of your “toughest critics” seated across from you at dinner, get to know them as a person, and find that you both leave with refreshed, nuanced perspectives.
Terms of Engagement
Adapted from Joan Blades’ “Living Room Conversations” Agreements
BE CURIOUS AND OPEN TO LEARNING | Listen to and be open to hearing all points of view. Maintain an attitude of exploration and learning. Conversation is as much about listening as it is about talking.
SHOW RESPECT AND SUSPEND JUDGMENT | Human beings tend to judge one another; do your best not to. Setting judgments aside will better enable you to learn from others and help them feel respected and appreciated.
LOOK FOR COMMON GROUND | In this conversation, we look for what we agree on and simply appreciate that we will disagree on some beliefs and opinions.
BE AUTHENTIC AND WELCOME THAT FROM OTHERS | Share what’s important to you. Speak authentically from your personal and heartfelt experience. Be considerate of others doing the same.
BE PURPOSEFUL AND TO THE POINT | Notice if what you are conveying is or is not “on purpose” to the question at hand. Notice if you are making the same point more than once.
OWN AND GUIDE THE CONVERSATION | Take responsibility for the quality of your participation and the quality of the conversation by noticing what’s happening, and actively support getting yourself and others back “on purpose” when needed.
Venue
We will gather at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Dallas Market Center.
2023 AGENDA
Thursday, April 20
8:00 AM – Breakfast
9:00 AM – Welcome & Opening
9:15 AM – Stakeholder Engagement Lightning Round
Relationships build trust. Trust fosters dialogue. Dialogue generates shared ideas. Shared ideas lead to collaborative action. In this facilitated session, we’ll help encourage you to begin taking these steps, in rapid form. Grab your business cards and hone your elevator pitch. Let’s mingle!
10:00 AM – The Force For Good Forecast: Emerging Trends, Tools, and Tactics
Which issues are environmental and social activists prioritizing this year and beyond? How are business leaders advancing sustainable practices in a tumultuous global geo-politics? In this session, the Future 500 team will offer its take on evolving sustainability challenges and opportunities, then open the floor to ideas from corporate and civil society experts.
10:40 AM – Break
10:55 AM – Introducing the “Fireside Chats”
In a series of casual, interactive conversations with thought leaders from across the corporate and advocacy spectrum, we dive deep into three of the most complex social and environmental challenges—and opportunities—facing the corporate sector. Where is the common ground? Are there solutions to be found? And how can we more effectively move from rhetoric to collective action?
11:00 AM – Scaling Restoration and Regeneration: Biodiversity, Forestry, & Agriculture
After COP15 in Montreal, issues around biodiversity are increasingly on corporate agendas. But many companies are grappling with how to step in to protect ecological health, often viewing biodiversity issues too narrowly through solely a climate lens. In this session, corporate and NGO thought leaders will explore what they are doing, the implications of the movements like 30x30, and emerging opportunities in regenerative agriculture for people and planet.
Panelists:
Jennifer McGowan, Chief Scientist, Untamed Planet
Larry Kopald, Founder & President, The Carbon Underground
Moderator: Brittany Mazal, Future 500
12:00 PM – Lunch
1:00 PM – What is the Future of Capitalism?
A fireside chat with Ketan Patel, Chairman, and Advisory Council Chair of the Force For Good Initiative
1:30 PM – Navigating ESG Politicization: Keeping the Northstar amidst Political Blowback
For the past 40 years—starting with public outrage toward corporate involvement with Apartheid, Child Labor, and environmental pollution—investors have increasingly sought to measure the investment risk of environmental and social risks, and how companies govern those risks to inform their investment strategies. Today, ESG has entered the mainstream, influencing global investment flows and global capital markets, alongside corporate and governmental priorities. But the mainstreaming of ESG is inviting political backlash and attacks as “woke capitalism.” In this session, we will hear from impact investing innovators and thought leaders on how companies can navigate the newest political wedge issue to manage material risks and opportunities to create durable shareholder returns.
Panelists:
Tim Smith, Founder & Special Adviser, Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
Elizabeth Levy, Head of ESG Strategy, Trillium Asset Management
Moderator: Erik Wohlgemuth, CEO, Future 500
2:30 PM – Break
3:00 PM – Companies, Advocates, & Climate Justice
The impacts of climate change are not and will not be born equally. Who pays for those effects, socially, economically, and environmentally, is extremely unequal. A growing movement to right this inequality is growing. Climate justice is “a term, and more than that a movement, that acknowledges climate change can have differing social, economic, public health, and other adverse impacts on underprivileged populations. Advocates for climate justice are striving to have these inequities addressed head-on through long-term mitigation and adaptation strategies.” The Climate justice movement will make demands of countries and corporations alike. In this session we will hear from experts in climate justice on what the movement means, why companies need to know about it, and how companies and NGOs can partner in equitably addressing climate changes’ impacts.
Panelists:
Ruth Rhoads Allen, President, CDA (Collaborative for Development Action)
Melanie Santiago-Mosier, Equitable Energy Transition Advisor, The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
Sacoby Wilson, PhD, Director, Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice, & Health (CEEJH)
Moderator: Kajsa Hendrickson, Director, Future 500
4:30 PM – Concluding Remarks & Adjourn
5:30 PM – Networking Reception
DoubleTree Hotel
Friday, April 21
8:30 AM – Breakfast
9:30 AM – Welcome & Opening
9:40 AM – What Does it Mean for a Company to be “Future Fit” – and What Comes After the UNSDGs?
A fireside chat with Marc Buckley, Founder, ALOHAS Regenerative Foundation
10:10 AM – An Update on the Federal Bottle Bill
Maia Corbitt, Director of Mission Giving at Garver, Black, Hilyard Family Foundation; President, Texans for Clean Water
10:40 AM – Accelerating Circular Business Models
Overshoot day occurred in 2018, heralding the first time scientists estimated that humankind is depleting global ecosystems beyond the earth's capacity to regenerate its resources annually. By 2021, the annual depletion rate rose to roughly 1.7 times the planet's capacity to regenerate. To halt and reverse this trend, foundations, social and environmental issue advocates, scientists, and regulators are mobilizing to incentivize the transition from linear to circular business models to help dematerialize and decarbonize the global economy to function within planetary regenerative boundaries. Companies across value chains, from the extractives sector to brands and retailers, are rapidly responding to these market signals and prioritizing business model transformation. In this session, we will hear from a leading global expert working with a variety of companies, sectors, and advocates on redesigning value chains from points of extraction to end-of-life recovery that embrace circularity.
Panelists:
Ramona Liberoff, Executive Director, Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE), an initiative of the World Resources Institute (WRI)
Tiana Lightfoot-Svendsen, Director, Strategic Initiatives & Communications, U.S. Plastics Pact
Jennifer Ronk, Senior Sustainability Manager, North America, Dow
Moderator: Phoebe Fu, Future 500
12:00 PM – Concluding Remarks