Month: April 2023

Comcast NBCUniversal is excited to share that Mona Dexter has been named Vice President of Military & Veteran Affairs, succeeding Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Carol Eggert, who recently retired from Comcast. Mona will oversee our military hiring, inclusivity programs, and initiatives engaging military customers and communities. 

Mona joins Comcast from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation Hiring Our Heroes, where she was the Chief of Staff and Vice President of the nation’s leading service member and military spouse workforce development program for the past five years. She also held several leadership positions in higher education and adult education programs, including with the Department of Labor, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Army. Mona is the proud mother of a U.S. Army soldier and a military spouse for over 25 years.

Our Military Engagement initiatives reflect our company’s deep commitment to serving veterans, service members, and military families. Comcast NBCUniversal has hired nearly 21,000 veterans, National Guard and reserve service members, and military spouses since 2015. In 2022, Comcast NBCUniversal earned recognition as one of the nation’s leading military employers and military-friendly brands, including top rankings by Military Times, VETS Indexes, DiversityInc, and Military Friendly.   

These accomplishments are largely due to the incredible leadership of Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Carol Eggert over the past eight years. We are thankful for Carol’s three decades of military service and what she and the Military & Veterans Affairs team have done to connect our company to our military teammates, customers, and communities. We wish Carol a happy retirement and continued success serving others as a Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army and several higher education and nonprofit boards. 

We welcome Mona and wish her great success in her role, leading our commitment to serving the military community across Comcast NBCUniversal.

Each year, 660 million tons of construction waste goes to landfills or incinerators in the U.S. alone. Indeed, with each new data center, Meta sends tons of drywall debris to the trash since most local facilities do not have systems in place to recycle or recover drywall.

We wanted to do better so in 2022 we began working with Mycocycle, an innovative technology company in the zero-waste market, to pilot a new project at our data center in Gallatin, TN. The idea: train mushrooms to eat trash and turn drywall debris into a fully circular product that reduces waste and returns drywall to our data center buildings as newly manufactured building products.

Today our team is working closely with large building manufacturers to further test the approach and illustrate how Meta’s potential buying power can substantially influence the production of new sustainable building materials.

By prioritizing material circularity and zero waste this program aligns with Meta’s goal to reach net zero emissions across our value chain in 2030.

Cummins

Cummins’ most recent solar installation to go on-line has been honored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The 3.62 megawatt (MW) solar farm at Cummins’ Rocky Mount Engine Plant (RMEP) in North Carolina was recognized with a 2023 Better Project Award. The recognition highlights projects in the energy department’s Better Buildings/Better Plants initiative for accomplishments in implementing and promoting sustainable energy management. Cummins has been a part of the initiative since 2011.

“The Better Project awards highlight unique efforts to make meaningful headway in reducing energy, water, waste and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Carolyn Snyder, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency at the DOE.

The energy department’s Better Buildings/Better Plants program works with leading manufacturers to boost their competitiveness through improvements in energy efficiency and emissions reductions. More than 270 industrial companies representing nearly 14% of the U.S. manufacturing energy footprint partner with the DOE and commit to reducing their energy intensity, typically by 25% over 10 years across all their U.S. operations.

The solar installation at Rocky Mount went on-line in September of 2022. Located on 14 acres adjacent to the plant, it is capable of producing around 5.6 million kilowatt hours of energy annually, which goes to the manufacturing facility to reduce electricity purchased from the grid.

The renewable energy generated by the solar installation sequesters the carbon equivalent of 4,862 acres annually, roughly the space occupied by the Raleigh-Durham International Airport every year. A solar installation in Beijing, China, is the only solar array larger than Rocky Mount’s within Cummins.

Unique to RMEP, the project uses solar tracking panels that arc and track the sun as it rises and sets. This increases system efficiency without having to install more panels. The tracking panels were installed with ground mounts due to the project having available space and the ability to maximize system size for optimal exposure.

Cummins has been putting a major push on including solar in the company’s energy mix to help meet the goals in Cummins’ PLANET 2050 environmental sustainability strategy. The strategy includes the 2030 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from facilities and operations by 50% as well as the aspiration to achieve zero emissions in the company’s operations and products by 2050.

To date, Cummins has completed 65 solar array installations at 49 locations around the world, from Australia to North America. Thirty-nine of these projects have been completed since 2019, with 18 installations in India, where Cummins has its largest solar footprint.

During the 2021-2022 school years, students who took Fifth Third Bank Finance Academy® courses increased their knowledge about financial topics by 50%. On assessments taken before the courses, students scored an average of 57; post-course assessments saw those figures increase to 85 out of 100.

Some key statistics include:

Knowledge about financing higher education increased 54 points from 40 to 84.Insurance knowledge increased from 48 to 88.Income and employment awareness increased from 55 to 84.Consumer skills increased from 56 to 85.

“Before Finance Academy, I saw college as something difficult to pay for if not impossible as my family and I are immigrants in this country, but after receiving the knowledge of this program, I realized that there are many options to pay for college and become a successful individual,” said Stephanie Franchi, a Fifth Third Finance Academy student in Indiana.

Fifth Third Bank Finance Academy® is one of the Fifth Third Bank L.I.F.E. (Lives Improved through Financial Empowerment®) programs offered at no charge to people at every age and stage of life. Other signature programs include the Fifth Third Bank Young Bankers Club® and the Fifth Third Financial Empowerment Mobile, or eBus, a financial empowerment classroom on wheels, that takes financial access and resources directly into underserved communities.