Pro Bono Perspectives

Join Common Impact's CEO, Danielle Holly and Associate Director of Field Building, Molly Weinstein as they honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy by sharing new initiatives to make an even deeper impact in our communities. 

There is a fundamental paradigm shift on the horizon in a company's role in society. Last year started with what has become a rallying cry from Larry Fink of BlackRock who stated that the firm would be looking at both its financial and societal performance when making investment decisions. And already in 2019, this idea of a fundamental shift in the way of doing business has moved from the headlines of the social sector press to mainstream publications.

We've been actively exploring this shift, and in particular, asking ourselves about the role of employees and their power in driving and shaping this paradigm change. From that, a few key themes have emerged that we're excited to headline in our kickoff episode today, but will also drive this upcoming year of Pro Bono Perspectives podcast episodes where you'll be hearing from cross-sector leaders who are at the forefront of this change. 

Krista Canellakis is the Chief Innovation Officer for the City and County of San Francisco. Krista joins Pro Bono Perspectives to share her passion for creating an impact in her community. In her role, she connects creative people to projects that make cities more livable, inclusive and responsive. One of her office's signature programs is Civic Bridge, a program that puts pro bono talent from private sector professionals to work in solving critical city issues - you can see why we are excited to learn more!

As we embark on a new year, Pro Bono Perspectives is taking you back to the beginning! Join us this week for a look back on one of our favorite podcast episodes from 2018 with Gary Levante, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility at Berkshire Bank. Gary joins Common Impact's CEO, Danielle Holly for a conversation around employee volunteerism within small-to-medium sized businesses, achieving the SDGs on a local level and our first-ever city-wide skills-based day of service in Boston this past September. 

Kathleen LaValle, President and CEO of Dallas CASA, joins Pro Bono Perspectives for a special #GivingTuesday episode! Dallas CASA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to recruiting, training and supervising community volunteers who advocate for the best interests of abused and neglected children under the protective care of the state, so they will have safe, permanent homes where they can thrive. Kathleen moved to Dallas CASA in 2014, after spending 30 years in the legal profession handling commercial litigation and regulatory disputes at Jackson Walker. Among her many contributions at Jackson Walker, Kathleen founded and led the firm’s women’s initiative, jw2 (Jackson Walker Women), which has helped to make Jackson Walker one of the top law firms in the state in promoting women to partnership.

Dallas CASA has partnered with Common Impact and Fidelity Investments on two skills-based volunteering projects since 2016 - to develop an online database to store and access organizational resources and create a vendor assessment for a new expense tracking system. The organization is a great example of how #GivingSkills in addition to dollars this holiday season can make a real difference for the nonprofit sector. 

Robert Lee, the Co-Founder and CEO of Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, joins us for a special Thanksgiving week episode. Rescuing Leftover Cuisine is a national nonprofit that targets both the prevention of quality food waste and putting an end to hunger. In the United States alone, 40 percent of food gets tossed every year and on average, 1,160 pounds of food are lost to the garbage pail each year by an American family of four. This amounts to $162 billion in waste annually, which could serve over $58 billion in meals using the national average spent on meals of $2.79.

As a child of Korean immigrant parents who once struggled to provide food security, Robert learned the importance of food waste prevention early on in life. Upon graduation from New York University's Stern School of Business, Robert joined J.P. Morgan, while working part-time on launching Rescuing Leftover Cuisine. He left J.P. Morgan in 2014 to run the organization full time, using seed money he and his co-founder won at a venture competition during their senior year at NYU as well as corporate donations from his former employer.

Evan Goldberg is the Founder and Executive Vice President of Development of NetSuite. Before starting NetSuite, Evan worked at Oracle Corporate where he focused on making powerful database technology more accessible to users and launching his first startup, mBED Software, where he developed groundbreaking website technology. After learning from his past experience, Evan started NetSuite, the global business management software company, with Oracle founder Larry Ellison in 1998. The company was then acquired by Oracle itself in 2016. Since NetSuite's inception, Evan has made sure to integrate social impact into the company's DNA and it remains a huge focus on the business, even 20 years later!