Emory’s The Roberto C. Goizueta Business & Society Institute celebrated its official launch March 4 during a virtual celebration attended by nearly 300 guests. The Institute marks the next phase of the Goizueta Business School’s social impact initiatives.

To celebrate the launch, Wes Longhofer, Goizueta Business School associate professor and academic director, led a fireside chat on “Reimagining Capitalism” with Harvard Business School professor and author Rebecca Henderson. Published in 2020, Henderson’s book “Reimagining Capitalism in A World on Fire” articulates a framework for building a profitable, equitable and sustainable capitalism grounded in new ways of defining the role of business in society.

Transforming business to solve society’s challenges

The Institute’s goal is to transform business to solve society’s challenges through cutting-edge research, innovative programming and principled leadership. The belief is that business and society can work collectively to address the challenges of inequality and climate change, two of the most pressing issues facing both business and society today.

“If business and society are to work together to solve some of our biggest challenges, a good place to start is in a business school like Goizueta,” said Longhofer. “We are excited to continue 10 years of social impact work at the Goizueta Business School and honor the legacy of Roberto C. Goizueta through this new institute.”

The Roberto C. Goizueta Business & Society Institute is made possible by an investment from The Goizueta Foundation and follows the success of Social Enterprise @ Goizueta, an academic research center that has been in existence at the school since 2009.

The Institute creates interdisciplinary study that explores the connections between business practices, market structures and social and environmental outcomes.

The call to action is to create stronger communities in Atlanta and globally by focusing on microbusiness development, specialty markets and next generation leadership.

Coursework and hands-on experiences including travel, mentorship, conferences and consulting projects that will help students accelerate their business knowledge into impactful roles in the business community locally and abroad.

Experiential programming for community engagement

Programs in The Roberto C. Goizueta Business & Society Institute include:

• Start:ME – Offers an intensive 14-week business accelerator program to the most promising micro-entrepreneurs in marginalized metro Atlanta communities, including business training, mentorship and early-stage financing to develop their businesses.
• Grounds for Empowerment – Provides female specialty coffee farmers in Latin America the market connections and business knowledge to grow their farms. The program has served 50 female coffee farmers in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
• Social Enterprise Fellows – Provides Goizueta MBA and BBA students with hands-on education, exposure and experiences to become the next social and environmental impact leaders in their industries.

New initiatives addressing strategic focus areas of inequality and climate change will be launched in the future.

Learn more at emory.biz/society.