• Choose a “Champion” in Business Sustainability that has demonstrated success
in incorporating sustainability practices while maintaining positive financial returns.
• The champion must be from hospitality industry but can also include leaders of large corporations as well as successful founders and entrepreneurs of emerging businesses.
• If the leader you choose is from outside the hospitality industry, please indicate how their innovations/changes might also be applied to a hospitality-focused company (i.e. products, technology, supply chain, other)
• For ideas, please research successful companies, within and outside the hospitality industry, currently receiving high environmental scores (i.e. Disney, Unilever, Patagonia, IKEA, Autodesk, Adobe, Accenture, Salesforce and Nvidia). Who was the CEO/founder/owner that drove the company towards sustainable practices?
• Also look at business and environmental publications that have highlighted and featured sustainability champions such as Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, Brad Hole, CEO of Sustainable Group, Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMs Shoes, Maggie Dawson, founder of Maggie’s Pure Land Products.
• Provide information on what corporate sustainability trends were implemented such as
reducing supply chain emissions and/or increasing innovation.
• Your paper should also include information on what made your champion successful. It should provide the leader’s education and career background and what “influencers” helped inspire or motivate him/her to become a sustainability leader.
• You are selling your audience on your knowledge of your chosen champion and the ability to make a convincing argument that their sustainability practices also coincided with business success. Be enthusiastic and use the knowledge in the course to prepare your plan.
