Historically these processes have been invisible to the stakeholder, but with the increased demand for transparency and disclosure, companies have a greater opportunity to showcase meaningful commitments – a silver lining in the sometimes cloudy sky of reporting, rankings and ratings.  And, along the way, the thousands of employees who bring the sustainability commitment to life, from environmental engineers to marketers, are elevated to playing a role in a larger mission, not just “doing their jobs.”

In developing policies and processes for sustainability, Avon has a unique asset: one of the original principles upon which Avon was founded in 1886 is a commitment to “meet fully the obligations of corporate citizenship by contributing to the well-being of society and the environment in which it functions.”  Today, 126 years later, many of our 40,000 worldwide associates are passionately committed to ensuring this commitment is met

In the commitment to being internally authentic, companies face many possible environmental areas to tackle. When the lens of materiality is applied – is it meaningful to the company, the stakeholders, and the planet, and can the company have an impact – certain opportunities rise to the top.

For Avon, as a direct seller, paper usage is among our largest environmental impacts and we are in a position to influence supply and demand. Therefore, a core mission is to help end deforestation, and the Avon Paper Promise outlines specific metrics and goals for paper reduction and sourcing.  Similarly, the global Hello Green Tomorrow program focuses on mobilization, education and fundraising to help restore critically endangered rain forests, with more than $3.5 million raised in its first two years.

While we don’t have traditional stores, Avon has more than 1 million square feet of real estate.  Our Avon Green Building Promise commits us to LEED certification (or local equivalent) for all new or major retrofits.  We have achieved Gold or higher certification in two facilities in the United States, including our New York City headquarters, and significant facilities in Brazil, China, Colombia and the United Kingdom.  The Avon Colombia “Eco Branch” is the first building in the nation to achieve LEED Gold, which helps advance sustainable construction in that country.

In another case of leading by example, the Avon Palm Oil Promise lays out guidelines to help drive sustainable palm oil, which is a leading cause of deforestation in Indonesia. While more than 80 percent of palm oil is for foods, and Avon is a very minor player, we can lend our name and be a leader within our industry for this issue even if our physical influence is minimal.

This is not to say we do not assess sustainability in our products. There is a “Green Team” at Avon R&D, where new concepts, ingredients and products are developed, and the company works closely with raw material suppliers to stay abreast of the latest trends and improvements in product sourcing and ingredients.

For packaging, the Avon team seeks to limit the amount and type of materials.  As an example, there is a savings of raw materials through “light weighting” plastics.  Also, because Avon is a direct seller, we are already minimal in much of our packaging since we do not have to display on retail shelves.

For now, our core commitment is to ensure we are sustainable in the way we run our daily operations around the world. In addition to the policies on paper, buildings, and palm oil, we have goals and commitments for the “nuts and bolts” of our business.  In 2011 Avon manufacturing and distribution facilities had a nearly 80 percent recycling rate, and our manufacturing achieved a 27 percent absolute reduction in water consumption, 11 percent absolute reduction in energy and 23 percent absolute greenhouse gas emissions reduction (from 2005 Avon baseline).

I once read an anecdote that reflects what it is to work on sustainability within a “traditional” business framework.  Three stonemasons toiled away on a cathedral in medieval France.  The first, unhappy at his job, complained that he had to cut endless blocks of stone every day. The second, satisfied with his job, noted that his work allowed him to provide for his family.  The third, delighted with his job, believed his work was a privilege because he was a small part of a grand project that would benefit generations to come.  If we do our jobs right, we can be, too.

This year, Texas Instruments sponsored and helped launch the first ever “engineering patch” for girls in kindergarten through 12^th grade.  The patch curriculum focuses on exciting, engaging and encouraging girls at every grade level to explore STEM education and careers. The patch will be available to all 35,000 Girl Scouts in Northeast Texas and will be a part of the program for the 4,400 underserved girls who experience Girl Scouts through the “Gift of Girl Scouting.”

“A Girl Scouts’ study found that girls’ interest in STEM is higher when they have exposure to those fields and only 46 percent of those surveyed knew a woman in a STEM career,” said Trisha Cunningham, Texas Instruments chief citizenship officer. “That’s why we partnered with Girl Scouts to develop a program where girls can have fun learning more about STEM and we can encourage area women engineers to get involved as role models.”

Through this programming, younger Girl Scouts will experience STEM through hands-on projects, and older Girl Scouts will be introduced to career choices and, most importantly, mentors in STEM careers. Texas Instruments is eager to generate excitement about the possibilities offered by STEM in hope that these girls will someday choose engineering as a career, a field that continues to be underrepresented by women.

Cunningham answered a few questions about the program. You can read more about this program on Texas Instruments’ Citizenship website.

What departments at Texas Instruments were involved in establishing the partnership with the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas?

“This initiative was initiated through our Corporate Citizenship group. We tightened our philanthropic focus around science and math education and began meeting with organizations such as the Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas a few years ago to see if there were ways we could work together. They were very receptive as they were in the process of developing their own strategy in this area.”

How was senior management “buy-in” procured to promote STEM skills to local Girl Scouts?  

“From the top of our company on down, TI’s management knows that strong science and math education of our youth will be important not only to our company’s future U.S. workforce, but also America’s competitiveness in this age of technology. We are particularly interested in developing girls and underrepresented minorities in engineering. Today, only one in five engineers is female — below parity with other prestigious professions.”

Are Texas Instruments employees involved in any aspect of this initiative? With the “engineering patch” program? 

“We asked some of our passionate women leaders and engineers to help. When we started to explore our focus on STEM with Girl Scouts, they helped serve on their strategy committee for the program. This resulted in TI sponsoring a STEM strategy workshop that included many in our area who were interested in advancing STEM education with girls and that was also attended by Girl Scouts USA. One of the outcomes of this strategy session was the development of this patch and curriculum, which our employees helped create.”

What have been some of Texas Instrument’s best practices or lessons learned in pursuing this initiative? 

“First, we learned that when you focus on a strategic area, it is important to talk with your community partners and listen to their ideas. We transitioned to our philanthropic focus on STEM over a period of a few years so that it did not come as a surprise to our community partners. We’ve continued to work with those where we could align our interests, like Girl Scouts, to develop programs that are even stronger than our past investments. Secondly, we learned to never underestimate the results you can obtain with passionate employee volunteers — ask, give them a challenge and let them work their magic. We love our employee volunteers! Many of the skills they use on the job everyday are of great value to the community partners we work with. When you combine that skill with their passion around a cause, you have a winning combination. Thirdly, you must be willing to adapt along the way. Since this is a new program, it won’t be perfect so we are willing to adapt. Our goal is that other Girl Scout Councils would want to offer the badge to their girls as well.”

Is the success of this initiative measurable? 

“Yes. We will know how many girls have completed the requirements to receive the patch. One of the great things is that no matter what level Girl Scout you are, there is age-level curriculum and activities so that interest can be maintained throughout all years of the scouting experience. As an incentive, Girl Scouts is giving the patch for free in return for a copy of their completed ‘workbook’ and feedback. This is a great way to continually improve the program.”

What kinds of feedback have you received from employees?

“Kim Smith (at left with Scouts), operations manager for Internet marketing for TI and head of the TI Women’s Network who was one of the key TI employee volunteers for this program, said: ‘Math and science is in everything you do.  I don’t think that you even know what is possible out there as a young woman growing up. It’s important to show girls that they can be anything they want. And when girls succeed, so does society.  We need more girls in these areas. We want girls to have fun learning STEM, and it is fun changing the world and people’s lives and their mindset.’”

In describing the Arizona Public Service commitment to creating long-term value for its communities, APS Chairman Don Brandt talked about the complexity of making infrastructure decisions and investments today that will affect the grandchildren of current APS customers while meeting the consumer demand to “keep power flowing, right now.”

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith pointed out that every large institution needs a conscience, saying, “The conscience won’t have the answer to every question, but the conscience is a voice that needs to be heard. The conscience needs to be a voice that is sensitive to the fact that other voices will need to be heard as well.” He went on to encourage corporate citizenship professionals to act as a voice of corporate conscience: “…if you think something, share it. If you see a problem, escalate it … that, in no small measure, is what corporate citizenship is about.  It’s about being the conscience for companies in a rapidly changing and very complex time. It’s work that matters. It’s work that is not easy, but hard. It’s the work that will make corporate citizenship real, and I believe that should be our goal.”

I agree that we would all benefit from better developed expressions of conscience in our businesses and in ourselves. It is difficult to express a conscientious position in today’s society.  It requires courage to do so — courage to know that you may be sacrificing social capital in your organization — or more. This is especially so in organizations that might not share Microsoft’s commitment to the open examination of mistakes as learning opportunities.

So what can we do to enable the difficult honest conversations in our organizations that can lead to meaningful efforts that, as Smith differentiated, “solve problems rather than manage them”?  In his keynote presentation, Hershey Chairman Jim Nevels reminded us that one “should never ask anyone else to do something we wouldn’t do ourselves.” Substantive corporate citizenship progress will continue to elude us if we cling to the self-protection of cynicism and fail to believe that sincere attempts to engage difficult issues require that we demand courage not only from our leaders, but also from ourselves. How many of us have sat mute as a leader presented a conclusion or plan of action or made an assertion that had not perhaps had the benefit of all of the facts and that we knew to be wrong or misguided?

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” We are at the testing point with the issues we confront in our environment and in our societies, and inaction puts all of us at risk. What is extraordinary about the messages that each of these men carried into the conference is that neither of them has the words “corporate citizenship” or the acronym “CSR” in their job titles. Yet I walked away feeling that each of them believe it to be part of their job responsibility — based both on their presentations and on off-line conversations. They care enough about the work of corporate citizenship to make public comment on the issues. The material business issues that each described on stage are not trivial to solve. They are complex and fraught with history and conflicting values and interests. That did not prevent them from talking about where their companies are in confronting the challenges today, while acknowledging that there is work yet to be done. Those stories took both courage and conscience.

We would be in a better place if more executives followed their lead, and each of us can lead also from the seats that we occupy.  Winston Churchill said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” We can all do better at both and these gentlemen reminded me of that.

CEMEX’s goal is to help support people striving to provide homes and shelter for their families. Through its affordable housing initiative, CEMEX is “helping to supply these new homeowners with affordable and reliable products, and helping them find the right financial solutions to secure quality housing,” said Juan Luis Alfiero, leader of the initiative. “The key to the future of this initiative will be the support of other institutions and partners to create an integrated and collaborative approach to ensuring the future of housing and infrastructure in developing countries.”

The housing initiative, which was launched in 2010, is defined by a two-tiered approach of providing affordable quality building solutions while also identifying adequate financial solutions to meet each family’s needs. As part of the initiative, CEMEX housing experts have developed several prototypes of concrete houses for various types of urban and rural communities. These prototypes have been adapted to local use and customs in different regions of developing countries. In recognition of the social and cultural differences in each country, CEMEX conducts market assessments to understand the needs and customs of each region, noted Martha Herrera, Communication and Responsibility Director. The cost of building these houses, including finishes, fixtures, and equipment is less than $10,000 U.S.

Herrera observed that implementation of such a large-scale global initiative involves coordination with multiple departments such as the Housing, Concrete and Commercial Division, the Planning and Corporate Communications Department and the Public Affairs Department in each country. She added that “we share best practices and success cases between us through our internal web network and with monthly conference updates.  Every country has different needs and has different housing actors. Active participation of our local employees is crucial in this initiative.”

CEMEX is also working with various institutions to obtain suitable financial product fees and payment terms for the beneficiaries. As of today, CEMEX has implemented 30 housing projects under this initiative in coordination with third-party developers in five countries – Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama. Cemex had built more than 4,800 houses over the past two years and plans to expand its efforts to the Mediterranean and Asian regions.

The worldwide housing deficit has an estimated 1.1 billion people in urban areas alone living in inadequate housing. Mitigating the deficit is a challenge that requires joint action between governments, financial institutions, NGOs, and private enterprises to help build communities from the ground up. CEMEX has already collaborated with a number of important international, federal, state, and local organizations to ensure such affordable housing including Ashoka Housing for All, the International Finance Corporation, the Mexican National Housing Commission (CONAVI), Federal Mortage Society (SHF Development Bank), the Costa Rica Housing Ministry and the Costa Rica-Canada Foundation, the Nicaraguan Housing and Urban Institute (INVUR), the General Bank of Panama, the Nuevo Leon and Campeche Housing Institutes in Mexico, among others. With the support of these institutions, CEMEX expects to contribute to improving living conditions of families living in inadequate and inhumane conditions.

1. Trust in business remains low. The 2012 Trust Barometer that Edelman, the communications firm, develops annually revealed that public trust in business, government and NGOs shrank in 2011. What struck me, in particular, is that the 47 percent of the public who think business is doing what’s right tie their belief largely to “business competence, like delivering consistent financial returns.” However, societal behaviors – listening to customer needs, treating employees well, putting customers ahead of profits, and having ethical business practices – are ranked higher in importance for building future trust.

With that understanding, corporations have an opportunity to build future trust through demonstrating that social responsibility is a priority and business takes it as seriously as reporting financial results.

2. Business must be profoundly transparent. Voluntary reporting allows us in particular to put a stake in the ground and be accountable for targets such as those we’ve outlined in Humana’s report: to reduce our energy consumption, greenhouse-gas emissions and energy expenses by 10 percent by the end of 2012 from 2009’s baseline, and hire 1,000 military veterans and/or their spouses across the company, to name a few examples.

Of course, business doesn’t always succeed at hitting such targets – and it must be transparent about that, too. Starbucks took such a stance, admitting publicly that it didn’t achieve energy reduction goals for 2010.  Stakeholders appreciate such candor and can then better understand such situations when they arise.

3. Companies cannot afford to slide in their efforts to improve the environmental performance of their operations. Why? In addition to the long-term environmental implications, investing in sustainability is a financial investment. In a study, McKinsey & Company, the management consultancy, projected the U.S. could save $1.2 trillion through 2020 by investing $520 billion in such improvements as sealing leaky building ducts and replacing inefficient appliances with new, energy-saving models. Evidence also exists that companies that demonstrate responsibility reap increased employee engagement and morale, higher employee-retention rates and better performance.

We’ve all heard: What gets measured gets managed. At Humana, we firmly believe the long-term investments we make in our CSR initiatives help us build trust, increase transparency, save money and earn the license not only to exist but to lead. We’re proud to share this progress through our industry-leading CSR report.

Smith noted that professionals must manage strategic, operational and personal environments by mastering knowledge, context, and structure. The Center, she explained, wants to assist professionals in confronting and navigating these volatile environments by helping them acquire knowledge about practices, issues, and operational context.

Offering a closer look at the business environment, Smith presented results from a meta-analysis of 214 studies seeking to understand how environmental or social corporate citizenship investments affect the financial performance of a company. Examining nine different effects that could be measured, one finding of the analysis was that corporate citizenship investments haven’t been shown to hurt firm performance and there may be positive benefits to some types of investments.

“It looks like if you ask the question: Does it pay to be good? It does, probably. It doesn’t hurt, for sure,” Smith remarked. “I think this is a really important study for us to be familiar with. It’s thousands of data points over 30 years and it strongly supports the importance of the work that you all do.”

Smith also revealed early findings from the Center’s 2012 State of Corporate Citizenship study. This biennial signature research looks at the executive perspective on the role that corporate citizenship can and should play in society and in their companies. As part of that research, the Center tracked a question that parallels the Nielsen Global Socially Conscious Consumer study and compared responses when 1,000 U.S. consumers and 750 U.S. executives were asked what issues business should be involved in solving.

“What we learned is that there is substantial agreement among executives and consumers about business involvement in a handful of issues,” Smith said. “There were also areas where significant gaps emerged.” She pointed out that the surveys found corporate executives more concerned about equity issues related to workforce readiness than U.S. consumers. The surveys showed consumers were more concerned with basic human needs such as food and access to water.

Understanding these gaps is important, Smith said, to better align companies’ corporate citizenship investments with their consumers’ interests.

Turning her focus to the operational context that those assembled operate in every day, Smith presented an analysis of the words most commonly used by 285 corporate citizenship professionals when asked to share their companies’ greatest challenges. From those words themes emerged and in looking at how they connected, four primary areas of concern were revealed:

• Global strategy and operational integration
• Employee engagement and community involvement
• Measuring:  Outputs and impacts
• Communicating corporate citizenship

Further analysis looked at the combination of operational and strategic forces, such as environment and society, that make up the macro context in which corporate citizenship professionals work.

“Context is central to your job description,” Smith stressed. “You are uniquely qualified to provide perspective and add value just by helping your company to understand the macro context. This is the value that you really bring to all of your companies. It’s your primary area of expertise. You’re the one that will understand communities whether geographic or affinity-based. You’ll understand environmental impacts and you’ll understand emerging social issues because you’re interacting at the intersections of your firm and these forces.”

Smith added that the opportunity and the challenge for corporate citizenship professionals is to be able to respond in a context where the landscape is changing continually. “There are no real maps. You are going to have to be trailblazers. You’re forging new paths and connections all the time.”

What makes these challenges even more significant, Smith explained, is that professionals are facing them in a corporate organizational structure that does not match the networks they work in. While many corporate structures operate as linked verticals, corporate citizenship professionals must create networks that span many boundaries to create a more networked structure.

“You probably can’t affect the structure of your organization,” Smith remarked. “But you can organize or structure your work. So we have to structure our work so that our responses are appropriate for our context, purpose, and competencies.” Some contexts will lend themselves more to looser and more robust networks, she added, and some will demand tighter networks that allow for more command and control.

“The key thing to remember is that you are the indispensable connector in the leadership network of your firm and you can lead from any seat.”

Jones joked that the title of his address could have been “Preaching to the Converted,” as the assembled professionals are well aware that business needs to do better to do well. “Look at this as ammunition you can take back to your companies,” he advised.

Pointing to the global economic crisis sparked by a pursuit of profit for profits sake, Jones suggested that if business doesn’t change its behavior there will be another crisis. But he emphasized that since that time we have moved into an age where people are empowered through digital and social technology to hold business leaders accountable. With a new “radical transparency” making what was once private public, “If you behave in the wrong way today, you’ll get found out.”

Millennials are big drivers in this new world, Jones said. They have different standards and are experts at using a technology that gives individuals the ability to create mass movement. Jones identified a number of ways that, as a result of this evolution/revolution, business is changing and needs to change.

From Image to Reality – Businesses need to focus on creating the best possible realities and share it. “If our companies’ realities differ from the image we’ll get taken down,” Jones said. He stressed that it’s about transparency, authenticity, and speed in communicating about the good and the bad. “People don’t demand perfection but they do demand honesty,” he remarked.

From Control to Collaboration – In the past, those who had the most information had the most power. Today those who share the most information have the most power. In the old world, Jones said, consumers might tell 10 or 20 people how they felt about a product, Now it could be thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions.

Employees to Advocates – Employees today are in a position to be the voice of a company with negative or positive results. Those employees are more inclined to assume that voice as they have more of a personal connection to their company. This is a problem for the more than 70 percent of companies that do not have a social media policy.

From Buying Attention to Earning It – Getting a message out is no longer about simply buying more ad time and the volume of communication by a company online or anywhere else. Ninety percent of branded viral videos fail to generate buzz, Jones said. “It’s an art rather than science.”

From Who to Where – There is a new power connected with the ability to locate people and the products or services they desire. Eighty-five percent of mobile search queries are location based, Jones said. Calling the fears stirred by this technological ability generational-based, Jones predicted that in the future giving up some degree of privacy won’t involve the major issues that have been written about.

From Profit to Purpose – It can no longer just be about making money. Eighty-six percent of consumers think it’s important for companies to stand for more than just profitability. Jones describes this new reality for business as the Social Business Idea – the overlap of making money and doing good. “Capitalism is a good thing. Business is a good thing,” said Jones. “But business has to behave the right way. It’s about good intentions and great execution.”

Jones sees this new Social Business Idea as a force behind social media. He contends that social responsibility, or social irresponsibility, drives social media. “Social media has taken CSR out of the silo and put it in the P&L statement,” Jones said.

These were some of the key questions posed by moderator Nikki Korn, principal of the Cause Consulting Group, during a breakout session on Innovation in Corporate Citizenship.

The old, traditional for-profit model is no longer sustainable in today’s accelerating, complex world, panelists agreed. Businesses need to focus on getting the right balance by integrating and aligning social responsibility and innovation within their organizations. The creation of superior long-term customer value can be achieved by focusing on the “social ROI.” But how do we educate top level management on social return? Since a social return on investment involves people, finding the right people who are “cause-related and motivated to change the world” is key, stressed the panelists from Verizon, Coinstar and Abbott Laboratories.

As Tom Maguire, Verizon’s director of Public Policy, Coinstar’s CSR Director Nicole Trimble, and Abbott’s Divisional Vice President of Global Citizenship & Policy Katherine Pickus shared their stories, a few key points emerged that give serious pointers on innovation:

• How do we find where the next growth engine is? Maguire suggested that businesses must rethink what the real societal benefits of their products/services are for their customers. It is about understanding “the connecting tissue between business and social needs of our businesses,” he said, and creating a multiplier effect of achieving scale both within and outside businesses.
• Pickus encouraged the audience to create unique trustworthy citizenship partnership with affiliates to help businesses understand the local reality, and consequently, make transformative differences in complex emerging markets such as India. It is no longer about “giving a fish or teaching how to fish, but about revolutionizing the fishing industry.” This decreases dependency and reinforces long-term sustainability, she said.
• Trimble shared her views on the urgent need for businesses to embrace change. Coinstar has a disruptive revenue-share model that brings internal social outcomes, she added. Offering Coinstar as an example, she noted that one way to achieve this is by educating employees first, thereby, developing a positive and engaging culture within the organization. “We take our employees to recycling field trips. You have to touch people – get positive employee engagement through tapping people’s emotions.”

To capture the spirit of the breakout session, Korn ended by posing the following question to the audience: When you wake up every day, what is the special sauce that is different from anyone else that creates a social impact?

With the industry growing and the interest declining, the United States has a national crisis on its hands, asserted the panelists in this breakout session on STEM Education. Academia and government both carry responsibility for finding a solution to this problem. Yet it may be the corporate citizen who steps into the gap to avert disaster.

Led by facilitator Marlene Ibsen, VP Community Relations at The Travelers Companies, Inc., the panelists detailed three ways companies could fund and develop STEM programs most effectively: focus your efforts, invest in capacity and infrastructure, and elevate the issue.

Focus your efforts
Julie Coleman, Arizona Public Service corporate giving and foundation leader, explained that the Arizona Public Service Foundation learned the hard way that even a generous organization cannot be everything to everyone. Scattered giving and sporadic volunteering have only minimal long-term impact. APS wanted to make a lasting difference, so the company decided to focus its efforts.

After a detailed company assessment and landscape analysis, APS discovered that STEM education is the cause that most accurately fits its needs: It aligns with the core business goals, it addresses a felt need in the community, and there are strong nonprofits ready to act as partners. With these understandings in place, APS was able to identify signature programs with measurable outcomes.

Invest in capacity and infrastructure
After years of paying attention to community needs, ExxonMobil eventually gathered each of its smaller efforts into four signature initiatives, according to Truman Bell, ExxonMobil senior program officer.

The main focus of one of these initiatives is the facilitation of the leadership of teachers. Teachers who are expected to teach STEM education to children are often poorly equipped to do their job well. In response, ExxonMobil’s programs, such as the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy, emphasize development of highly qualified teachers in these subjects..

The Academy is a one-week, all-expenses-paid intensive professional development program for third-, fourth- and fifth-grade teachers  designed to provide them with the knowledge and skills necessary to motivate students to pursue careers in science and math. Kids can even vote for their teachers to be given an opportunity to attend. Through ExxonMobil’s support, teachers are made leaders in prioritizing the nation’s STEM education.

Elevate the issue
While it may seem obvious that STEM education is an issue of grave importance, there are many who have yet to make it a priority.

Jennifer Chan, senior manager, Community Relations, at Raytheon Company, noted that part of the company’s investment in STEM initiatives includes a commitment to elevate the issue in people’s minds to the national crisis that it is.  With research and statistics to back its programs, Raytheon draws employees across the company into the various volunteer and giving opportunities it has been working hard to develop since 2005. One such robust program is called MathMovesU. MathMovesU is a web-based initiative designed to engage middle school students in math and science through interactive learning programs, contests, live events, scholarships, tutoring programs, and more. The site receives more than 1,800 visitors per day.

Raytheon also produced a booklet explaining its comprehensive STEM solutions, which outline some important findings by the Business-Higher Education Forum. For example:

• Only 16 percent of American students are proficient in math and interested in a STEM career by 12^th grade.
• Only about half of STEM college graduates actually pursue a STEM-related career.
• The resulting labor shortages now threaten to compromise the nation’s global standing through a significant erosion of competitive advantage.

The only way forward? Collaborative partnerships, emphasized the panelists.

“The more strategic philanthropy becomes the more difficult it is to lop off. It becomes strategic to your brand,” said moderator Victoria Baxter, SVP of Social Impact at Weber Shandwick. Baxter was joined by Jennifer Silberman, VP of Corporate Responsibility with Hilton Worldwide and Nicole Rustad, Corporate Citizenship program director of the Interactive Media unit of Disney.

Hilton finds integrated ways to manage reputation and integrate citizenship across 10 brands operating in 88 countries. “How we manage issues, how we manage reputational impact of all those stakeholders is something we have to balance within a corporate framework and reputation of the brands,” she said. The company uses its corporate-wide framework to unite brand-specific messages and broader corporate responsibility strategy that extends all the way to the guest experience.

Employees managing the guest experience are the business end of this reputation and citizenship strategy, she continued.

“Employees often see citizenship as an extension of their brand. We work with them to help make those decisions in a more strategic way,” said Silberman. Each brand has a cross-functional leadership that includes a “Culture” specialist focused on engaging more than 33,000 employees of the company. “That culture function really is the glue that holds it all together from a team member perspective,” she said.

This framework helped preserve Hilton’s reputation when its brand was threatened by an activist group that targeted brand-name hotels in an anti-child-trafficking campaign with claims that hotels were not doing enough to prevent prostitution. Silberman’s response was to learn more about the issue and create employee training tied to broader internal strategy.

“We were building an internal strategy to engage our team members to recognize this illegal activity,” she said. Many of the claims against Hilton were discredited soon after the campaign launched because Hilton had a policy and internal employee training in place, she emphasized.

For The Walt Disney Company, reputation is central to brand. “We’re managing a huge number of brands within the brand of Disney itself, so it does make it a little more interesting when looking at reputation,” said Rustad. The business thrives on creating memorable experiences for children and families and the challenge of managing reputation in this $40.9 billion company is no small task. “Reputation is at the heart of who we are as a company because we care and parents expect more from us,” she said.

A robust citizenship team advises brand managers and business units on topics that include environment and conservation, healthy lifestyles, inspiring kids and communities, employee engagement, supply chain and human rights. When Disney became the target of a campaign to eliminate paper products sourced from endangered forests, the citizenship team addressed the problem cross-functionally. By facilitating collaboration among internal leaders and outside stakeholders similar to Silberman’s work at Hilton, they supported a solution with research and a new wood and paper sourcing policy to avert the reputational threat.

Reputation and responsibility go hand-in hand for new Disney products as well, she said. The company acquired the virtual world of Club Penguin for kids because of Club Penguin’s commitment to providing moderated supervision and a safe place for kids to play online.

“Reputation and the responsibility that came with creating a product that would be safe for kids to play online was at the heart of Club Penguin,” she said. The business quickly grew to the largest virtual world and online network for children ages 8-12, and spread to more than 200 countries. It donates a percentage of profits to families in need.

“It’s part of our environment, culture, and expectation in the creation of our products to do all the initiatives we do,” she said, referring to Disney’s processes that help make citizenship authentic to the business and its reputation.