Professor Rudy Durand of HEC Paris, a pioneer in Corporate Social Responsibility, believes the focus is shifting toward a new approach to social impact. What matters now is corporate purpose. He emphasizes that creating a constructive social impact can no longer be seen as a secondary agenda.

Professor Shirley Tang of Bocconi University, a global citizen with experience in China’s oil & gas industry as well as academia, studies the paradoxes and dilemmas of transparency.  For example, she analyzes the opportunities these complexities create for companies to avoid accountability. 

Henri Hammond-Paul, Sante Fe’s Director of Community Health and Public Safety, explains how government actors often hesitate to rely on the promises of companies to accomplish important innovations. How can this be overcome? Through dialogue, trust, and a commitment to putting in the time.

Professor Daphne Baldassari of the University of Southern California shares her research on the Oscars So White and #MeToo movements in the film industry. How do we overcome persistently unequal outcomes despite significant efforts for change? Daphne and Anita discuss profound solutions to this pressing issue.

Professor and GIDMO Founder Tunji Adegbesan discusses the challenges that GIDMO faced in providing educational materials to hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Africa before, during, and after the pandemic. Through strategic pivots, he and the GIDMO team are now partnering with large companies that integrate GIDMO’s gaming software into their products, thereby enhancing educational outcomes along the way.

Professor Raja Roy of the Stevens Institute of Technology, an expert on NASA's achievements, joins Anita to discuss the Space Shuttle, the world’s first reusable spacecraft. NASA successfully orchestrated the involvement of multiple companies working on different elements of the design, knowing that they would both compete and collaborate. How did this government agency pull this off? 

Professor Jasjit Singh of INSEAD argues that the skillsets taught in MBA programs are often too narrow and lack the ambition needed for today’s challenges. He emphasizes the importance of encouraging students to bring their full brainpower to the pressing issues in the world and to collaborate with corporations and key government actors to drive meaningful change. In other words, “Be bigger than your job."

Professor Thomaz Teodorovicz examines how investments by companies in the general education of low-income workers can lead to unexpected improvements in their lives, ultimately resulting in higher worker retention. He and Anita discuss how companies can support such investments at scale by partnering with city governments, citing the example of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Professor Dovev Lavie is dedicated to building new institutions that leverage our collaborative and altruistic instincts, rather than our competitive and exploitative tendencies. He believes that digital technology can provide the tools necessary to spark an epidemic of collaboration.

Professor Sergio Lazzarini of INSPER, one of Brazil's leading business schools, is deeply engaged in various sustainability initiatives. He believes that companies succeed in creating social impact when they act with justice. Achieving this, he says, requires listening to communities as they define the challenges they need help with.