Month: May 2023

The Westwood Hills Nature Center, located in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, is a 160-acre nature park consisting of prairies, forests, and marsh areas surrounding a lake. Opened in the 1950s, it remains a popular destination for nature enthusiasts and provides visitors with hiking trails and an educational center.

Designed by HGA, the project recently won an American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE®) Top Ten Award, the architecture industry’s highest honor for sustainable design. 

The project addresses two major challenges: optimizing building operations to maximize programming impacts and providing a high-performance design to reach a zero-energy goal. More than simply a new recreational facility, the building serves as a multi-faceted gateway, creating new connections at a physical, educational, and civic policy level.

In 2016, the City of St. Louis Park—responding to the need to replace their beloved but small and aging facility—initiated a master planning effort to address challenges with the building, assess programming and facility needs, and to establish a relevant shared community vision for the nature center. The 13,500 SF building, completed in 2020 by a design team led by HGA, is a gateway to the park, allowing visitors to experience and learn about the surrounding landscape. The site design and architecture of the new building create a unique and immersive experience, reinforcing human connection to the natural world.

Physical Gateway

The principal mission of the Westwood Hills Nature Center is to connect people to nature through its facilities and programming, and the new site and building design create a more universally accessible entry into the landscape, encouraging people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to experience the place.

Siting the building as a welcoming gateway to the preserve was critical for two reasons: creating the perception of belonging and security in the natural landscape, and to increase physical accessibility to promote engagement with the site for all. Inside, program spaces provide maximum flexibility for use by all types of community groups, increasing facility access. The exhibits and art installations reveal aspects of the surrounding landscape, to help connect all to nature.

In addition, the building placement on the site is key to maximizing solar gain and positioning the geothermal well field; HGA holistically orchestrated the development of the building’s massing and façade with the engineering team’s energy approach. This strategy also accounts for the human factor within a built environment.

Visitors to the nature center experience framed views to the natural surroundings from indoors, creating a strong, immersive environment. Outside each multipurpose room, a concrete thermal mass wall absorbs heat and forms an alcove for hanging coats, while also providing thermal comfort throughout the year. Lighter interior and exterior surfaces reflect daylight to the soffit above to brighten the alcoves. The timber structure expresses a literal connection to the surroundings while the inverted roof form demonstrates sustainable design strategies such as sun shading and rainwater collection, which double as interpretive site features.

Educational Gateway

While the building and site design serve as a literal threshold to the park, the nature center’s exhibits form an analogous interpretive gateway to the surrounding landscape.

The Westwood team deeply connected with the philosophy of land conservancy and appreciation for nature interwoven within the design concepts. A forward-thinking client, the City had a clear and ambitious goal for this project: a net-zero energy building that reflects their commitment to environment stewardship of Westwood Hills and the greater St. Louis Park community. The building was envisioned as a teaching tool, and each effort and strategy is integral to the experience of the space itself, demonstrating and celebrating how net zero can be achieved in a northern climate. Extensive studies throughout all project phases guided the team to passive and active energy strategies.

Another key was educating staff and providing tools that encourage them to “play the building like an instrument”. A green light in the staff space indicates prime moments to open the windows for natural ventilation, door lites provide visitors with views into typically hidden mechanical rooms, and a cut-out in the floor slab gives a glimpse into the radiant heating systems—all features that staff incorporate into their lessons.

The project’s exposed and integrated systems, responsive form and textures, and elemental materiality create an architecture for its place that propels the client’s mission and demonstrates high-performance and responsible resource use. The impact is tangible to the visitor experience.

Policy Gateway

Though the primary mission of the nature center is to connect people to their environment, the City also challenged the team to create a zero-energy building to serve as a pilot for its new Green Building Program and Climate Action Plan.

The City has taken significant steps towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and per the Climate Action Plan’s mandate, all future construction projects that receive funding from the City of St. Louis Park will be required to meet a new standard: zero-energy. This means that each building’s energy usage and production will be balanced annually or even produce excess power.

The Westwood Hills Nature Center was the first targeted zero-energy building developed under the Climate Action Plan, reaffirming the initiative in practical and concrete terms. In 2022 the project achieved Zero Energy Certification from the International Living Future Institute, a distinction “recognized worldwide as one of the highest aspirations in energy performance in the built environment.”

“Since we are asking our own residents and businesses to take measures related to the city’s Climate Action Plan, we knew we had to lead by example with this new building,” said Cindy Walsh, St. Louis Park Deputy City Manager. “We’re proud to have created a model that inspires visitors to implement sustainability measures in their own lives.”

Since its opening, the building design and energy-efficient systems have served as an important public-facing informer to developing policy in the region and nationally, providing a case study showcasing the impacts of an integrated design approach with passive energy reduction strategies, a high-performance envelope, advanced lighting, and effective use of proven heat pump technologies to eliminate the use of operational fossil fuels.

Yet the key impact will be the knowledge gained from this project over time. The team will continue to actively monitor the site, comprehensively participating in the post-occupancy stage and gathering information for future projects. This project is a prime example of what is possible in the built environment, and a reflection of the shared responsibility to shape a livable future.

Learn more about sustainable design at www.hga.com. 

SAN DIEGO, May 10, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Benevity Inc., the leading provider of global corporate purpose software, today released its annual edition of The State of Corporate Purpose, uncovering the trends shaping the future of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the workplace based on proprietary data and insights from its community of purpose-driven brands.

Launched at Benevity Live!, the company’s flagship conference, the report from Benevity Impact Labs highlights trends shaping CSR in 2023, such as polarization in the workplace; a heightened desire for diversity, equity and inclusion; the future of environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting; and an emerging trend of “quiet giving” – all within the context of increasing stakeholder expectations and the need to deliver bottom line results during difficult economic times.

“As companies face the global economic downturn, they can’t overlook employees’ and other stakeholders’ continued desire to have a positive impact on the world,” said Sona Khosla, Benevity’s Chief Impact Officer and head of Benevity Impact Labs. “For the past few years, companies have leaned into their values and proven they can be a force for good in the world when it’s needed most. Businesses who resist pullbacks in CSR and DEI in the face of economic pressures will be poised to navigate this year with greater business resilience and positive societal impact.”

Key Findings and Trends from this year’s State of Corporate Purpose include:

Purpose and polarization are going head-to-head: It is becoming increasingly challenging for companies to balance taking action on societal issues their employees care about and facing backlash for veering into issues deemed politically polarizing. 71% of CSR leaders say companies should be more cautious about which causes they support, and yet 88% believe companies should continue to be courageous and take a stand, even if it means alienating some people.“Quiet giving” is on the rise: Despite the economic downturn, businesses remain committed to being a force for good, but are doing it more quietly than in past years. 90% of CSR leaders say companies should spend more time acting on social justice issues through their own practices and programs versus making bold statements.Companies are becoming communities: Nine in 10 CSR leaders agree that companies who are focused on building community into their culture will be the most successful in retaining and attracting top talent by providing a place where connection, learning and positive action are part of one’s job. 71% of companies are increasing their reliance on volunteering to improve cohesion with their people.ERGs are now a must-have strategy in DEI: CSR leaders are realizing the power employee resource groups have on more than just a company’s DEI profile. 90% say ERGs offer opportunities for professional development, skills building and growth.ESG is evolving toward positive impact: Two-thirds of companies believe that ESG is mostly a risk management strategy, with one-third believing it’s a good measurement tool for impact. As boards and businesses continue to prioritize ESG policies and strategies, how ESG is measured will evolve beyond risk mitigation.

To learn more about the corporate purpose trends shaping companies and the employee experience in the year ahead read the State of Corporate Purpose 2023 here.

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About Benevity 
Benevity, a certified B Corporation, is the leader in global corporate purpose software, providing the only integrated suite of community investment and employee, customer and nonprofit engagement solutions. Recognized as one of Fortune’s Impact 20, Benevity offers cloud solutions that power purpose for many iconic brands in ways that better attract, retain and engage today’s diverse workforce, embed social action into their customer experiences and positively impact their communities. With software that is available in 22 languages, Benevity has processed more than $12 billion in donations and 58 million hours of volunteering time to support 418,000 nonprofits worldwide. The company’s solutions have also facilitated 900,000 micro-actions and awarded 1.2 million grants worth $18 billion. For more information, visit benevity.com.

About Benevity Impact Labs 
Benevity Impact Labs is a social innovation hub bringing new data, research and insights to help companies, nonprofits and individuals accelerate their impact and drive greater inclusion. With unparalleled access to the world’s most iconic brands, Benevity Impact Labs combines Benevity’s robust data and insights with third-party research to report on the top trends shaping corporate purpose and measure the full range of impact from their strategies and investments.

Media Contact 
 Maggie Crouch│Walker Sands, for Benevity│benevity-pr@walkersands.com

David Brabham, Georgia-Pacific’s director of stewardship strategy, has been concerned with environmental stewardship since he was just a little boy – and he can prove it.

“I, David Brabham, am committed to aluminum can recycling for a cleaner, more beautiful world,” reads the faded recycling pledge certificate dated January 23, 1991.

Growing up in Ohio, David tried to spend as much time as he could exploring the woods and catching crawdads in the creeks behind his childhood home. That love of being outdoors is what drove him to get a degree in natural resource management from Ohio State.

“My dream job was to be a park ranger,” he says.

Which he pursued for a short time interning at Badlands National Park and Seney National Wildlife Refuge. But he eventually realized he was more interested in working in industry to help advance corporate conservation efforts and improve environmental stewardship.

“Feeling like you have a purpose, that you’re contributing to something that makes society better, is important,” he says.

At Georgia-Pacific, David works every day to help the company identify and understand environmental trends and ways to meet the environmental stewardship needs of its customers. David says he recognizes that manufacturing anything has its impacts, but finding ways to reduce those impacts, even minimally, can make a significant difference.

“There’s a personal responsibility to try to do the right things,” he says. “We’re not going to get it right all the time, but I think we can always make progress. That’s the important part.”

Even outside of his job, David works to make it easier for people to connect with nature and the outdoors as a member of the board of Park Pride. Its goal is to work with communities in and around Atlanta to improve the availability and quality of public parks.

David says he wants to make sure that there are beautiful and healthy natural spaces for all future generations to enjoy – and public parks are an instrumental part of that vision.

“When you don’t know that nature is there,” he says, “it’s easy to dismiss it.”

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May 10, 2023 /3BL Media/ – For the global economy to reduce emissions in half by 2030, as scientists say is necessary to avert irreversible climate catastrophe, it cannot be only publicly traded companies that decarbonize. The rapidly growing numbers of privately owned companies must also be decarbonized, as private equity now represents a 10% and growing share of the combined market cap value of public and private companies in the U.S.

Ceres, in a new report, “Data as the key: Essential steps for decarbonizing private equity,” explores strategies and best practices that more than a dozen private equity general partners (GPs) and limited partners (LPs) employ to collect and report data on greenhouse gas emissions of portfolio companies and makes recommendations on how to improve the data collecting and sharing process. It is co-authored by Peter Ellsworth, Senior Director, and Kelly Odion, Senior Associate, of the Investor Network at Ceres.

Both GPs making direct investments in private companies and the LPs who in turn invest in those private equity managers recognize they must decarbonize portfolio companies to succeed in the transition to a net zero emissions economy. GPs also want to meet the demands of their asset owner LPs seeking to align their private equity investments with their climate commitments. One key obstacle to developing a decarbonization strategy is the lack of high-quality data for measuring emissions.

This Ceres report addresses the range of ways that private equity investors engage with portfolio companies, the methods available for sourcing emissions data, their expectations on what data to report and how, and recommendations for enhancing dialogue between GPs and LPs.

Other Recommendations include:

Developing a plan for prioritizing engagement on decarbonization with portfolio companiesSupporting the development of climate expertise in portfolio companiesReporting scope 1 and 2 emissions to LPs at the portfolio company level annuallyReporting material scope 3 emissions as portfolio companies improve data gatheringUsing templates for emissions reporting as a basis for dialogue between LPs and GPs

Ceres’ report also provides detailed descriptions of 18 carbon accounting resources and tools that LPs and GPs could use.

Private equity investors increasingly recognize that their portfolio companies need a credible decarbonization strategy as a value driver to maximize investment return at exit. In addition, GPs need to be responsive to the climate commitments made by the LPs that are their clients.

“The investors we spoke with were clear that there is no single definitive path to decarbonization and net zero, but they were equally clear that they benefit from hearing how others are approaching many of the same challenges,” Ellsworth, Ceres Senior Director, said. “The perspective offered by the GPs and LPs in this report, combined with its recommendations, will help investors as they develop, implement and communicate a decarbonization strategy.” Ellsworth and Odion lead a private equity working group of members of the Ceres Investor Network.

“As a private equity investor, we recognize the urgent need to address climate change and the role we play in decarbonizing our portfolio. Ceres’ report provides valuable insights into the strategies and best practices for measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions data in private markets, which can help inform our own efforts in this critical area,” said Emily Rodgers, Managing Director & Director of ESG at EIG, a leading institutional investor in the global energy and infrastructure sectors. “We agree that high-quality data is essential for developing a decarbonization strategy, and we support efforts to standardize reporting formats and enhance dialogue between GPs and LPs. We are committed to working with many of our portfolio companies to set ambitious emissions reduction goals and to support their transition to a low-carbon economy.”

Elizabeth McGeveran, Director of Investments, McKnight Foundation, an LP, said. “I found this brief extremely informative and helped prompt my thinking on our ongoing engagement with our GPs about net zero goals and tracking emissions.”

About Ceres

Ceres is a nonprofit organization working with the most influential capital market leaders to solve the world’s greatest sustainability challenges. Through our powerful networks and global collaborations of investors, companies, and nonprofits, we drive action and inspire equitable market-based and policy solutions throughout the economy to build a just and sustainable future. For more information, visit ceres.org and follow @CeresNews.

In 2020 VMware teamed up with Howard University to expose students to VMware’s Telecommunications technology and the Telco industry at large. The school, located in Washington, D.C., is one of nearly a hundred historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States.

In partnership with Howard’s School of Business Information Systems department, our collective vision is to build the first Telco-focused program at an HBCU. VMware is a leader in this space with technologies like Telco Cloud Automation and Telco Cloud Platform. Over the past three years, we have worked with many teams across the company to begin the foundational work for the program’s funding. We have not achieved that goal yet; that work is still ongoing! However, there is progress to celebrate.

Thanks to our Service Provider and Edge Business Unit (SEBU), we funded a $300K grant that gives us the opportunity to expose Howard students to VMware and our Telco work. We also just completed a 2-year successful mentorship program. That mentorship program is part of a two-phased approach to student engagement and exposure. By giving cohorts access to telco professionals and VMware industry executives we are building brand awareness while also introducing Howard students to a new industry that needs diverse talent.

Supported by VMware’s employee resource group, Black@VMware, we’ve also created and delivered a 3-day DevOps Class to expose students to GitOps methodologies using VMware Tanzu, Github, and bit of HTML coding. The students developed a resume website built using GitOps practices. Check out the lab here.

But perhaps best of all, we hired two talented students, now professionals, into SEBU because of our vision and continued efforts to expand our relationship. Our larger plan is to leverage our success at Howard as a model to engage other HBCUs in developing additional Telco industry-focused programs. Building a telco program of this kind, is a first for VMware and the Howard School of Business. Our vision is to build a repeatable model to engage the HBCU community and build VMware Telco-focused centers of excellence that promote exposure to students and diversity in the Telco industry.

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When Jamari Brooks was looking for a new job last fall, he knew he wanted his future employer to have a few key qualities. As he perused pharmaceutical companies’ job postings, he kept a look out for diversity in leadership, the potential for personal career growth and a commitment to helping improve the lives of people and the health of the world.

It was through Gilead’s relationship with the National Black MBA Association that he encountered the company. Gilead checked all his boxes, but it was the interview process that really cinched the deal for Jamari. Jasmine Pree Hameth, Senior Director of Corporate Function and Strategic Talent Sourcing at Gilead, connected him with diverse, executive-level Gilead staff so he could learn about their experiences at the company – which, Jamari says, had an impact.

“Before I even started, Jasmine set me up with people within Gilead that I could build networks with and potentially work with,” Jamari says. “It didn’t feel like they were checking a box hiring me. It was an authentic recruitment process. I thought ‘this is where I need to be, no question about it’.”

Today, Jamari works in Sourcing and Procurement at Gilead, where he helps research teams identify and purchase equipment that allows them to create new medications. His experience joining Gilead represents one of several efforts the company is focusing on to hire new, top talent with the belief that diversity drives performance and innovation and helps shape an inclusive culture.

For the past three years, Gilead’s Talent Acquisition team has focused on a multi-year set of commitments to increase diversity within the organization’s workforce by building relationships with, and by hiring diverse talent from, universities and institutions such as the National Black MBA Association, the National Society of Black Engineers, the National Sales Network and a number of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

As another part of the recruiting strategy, Gilead also launched a Programming Academy, a four-month program that draws in early and pre-career underrepresented and diverse talent to train them in how to do pharmaceutical programming. This ranges from the curation of data, which means handling data gaps and errors, and analytical programming, which reveals scientific discoveries embedded in data.

Talent Acquisition’s efforts are largely focused on building partnerships outside of Gilead’s backyard, to ensure that the California-based company finds diverse talent across the United States. Jamari works remotely from Chicago, and the Programming Academy is based in North Carolina.

Gilead’s Programming Academy 
The Programming Academy is how Adashi Odama discovered Gilead. She graduated with a master’s degree in public health last year, and as part of her job hunt attended a Gilead virtual event. It sparked her interest, and when she saw an application online for the academy, she applied. “I always like a new environment, something that’s a challenge,” she explains. “I’m very interested in data analysis and I do a lot of programming that involves statistics. I thought I could go for it.”

Michael Neece, the head of Gilead’s Programming Academy, says he created it to fill the gaps in knowledge that he recognized when he started in the pharmaceutical programming world. “We just kind of stumbled into the industry,” he says of himself and the two chief instructors. “Hopefully, we’re removing some of the barriers to being really successful in the program by having created what we wish we had when we joined.”

The Academy offered Adashi a unique opportunity to learn on the job, tackling everything from clinical trials to drug production to Food and Drug Administration rules and regulations. She also learned SAS, a programming software she previously had no experience with.

The training nurtured Adashi’s love of statistics and allowed her to focus in on her desire to make a difference. “Once you start to get into statistics, you realize that it tells you pretty much everything,” she says. “I think it’s a very tangible way to understand health problems, to see exactly what needs to be fixed or what should be addressed.”

When Adashi graduated from the Programming Academy last October, she was offered a job with Gilead’s inflammation team. “It definitely prepared me for what I’m currently doing,” she says of the academy. “I was given the confidence to believe that I could be successful. It laid a very solid foundation, and now I feel I’m able to learn more.”

Adashi and Jamari came from different backgrounds, pursued different degrees and lived in different parts of the country. But their commitment to personal growth, and to doing work that makes a difference, is a uniting force that brought them to Gilead.

“Gilead is a company that really values innovation and empowering employees,” Jamari says. “You can create a fingerprint at the company quickly. It’s been awesome to experience.”

Learn more about Gilead Careers.

Originally published by Gilead Sciences