Month: May 2024

Across North America, women at Saint-Gobain take the lead in Making The World A Better Home. They are manufacturers, innovators, scientists, engineers, and executives, all playing a vital role in shaping our industry.

Watch the Saint-Gobain video series empowHERed here

About Saint-Gobain

Worldwide leader in light and sustainable construction, Saint-Gobain designs, manufactures and distributes materials and services for the construction and industrial markets. Its integrated solutions for the renovation of public and private buildings, light construction and the decarbonization of construction and industry are developed through a continuous innovation process and provide sustainability and performance. The Group’s commitment is guided by its purpose, “MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER HOME”.

€47.9 billion in sales in 2023
160,000 employees, locations in 76 countries 
Committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 

Originally published in Qualcomm’s 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report

We have been a committed partner to countries around the world for more than 30 years, supporting policies that encourage innovation, foster the advancement of technology and enable business-friendly environments globally. With each new generation of wireless connectivity, we strive to create shared success in collaboration with lawmakers and regulators and to create new opportunities for local industries and communities.

We implement our public policy approach around four key principles:

Participation: We engage in policy discussions with governments, organizations and industries around the world to advocate for policies that promote innovation and protect and foster new ideas in connectivity. We are committed to helping policymakers at all levels understand our business model and role as an ecosystem enabler.Responsible Governance: We abide by all applicable laws and regulations regarding political contributions and expenditures, and our contributions are subject to the approval of our senior management with oversight by the Governance Committee of our Board of Directors.Transparency: We publicly disclose to the Federal Elections Commission all political contributions made by our Company and our Political Action Committee, and we abide by all legal obligations of the FCPA and similar legislation around the world.Policy Guides: We carefully monitor and evaluate developments that affect the world of connectivity. Our key public policy topics are 5G, invention and IP, spectrum, privacy, immigration and taxation. Our general positions are outlined below and published on our public policy website.

Key public policy topics

5G: 5G is a unified connectivity fabric that we believe will continue to transform industries, create jobs and usher in an estimated $13.1 trillion in global sales activity in 2035.17 To achieve these benefits, we believe governments must continue to adopt policies that support a comprehensive 5G rollout plan.Invention and IP: Invention, innovation and protection of IP are core drivers of economic growth and competitiveness. Without robust patent systems and strong global protection of IP, innovation would be significantly weakened.Spectrum: The benefits of wireless connectivity depend on the availability of adequate and appropriate radio spectrum. We believe in freeing new spectrum in a responsible way to meet the demands of consumers and businesses.Privacy: We believe that cultivating consumer trust through a foundation of security and privacy practices helps drive broader adoption and more personalized wireless technology offerings.Immigration: Highly skilled talent, especially in the areas of math, engineering and the sciences, is vital to the success of our Company and to the future of technological innovation around the world.Taxation: We support policies that incentivize innovation and enable American technology companies to compete in today’s global marketplace.Environmental Sustainability: Our technologies, our business model and our role as a driver of technology transformation can support communities, governments and other stakeholders in a transition towards a more sustainable future.

Our public policy position on climate change and environmental sustainability, published in 2023, can be found on our public policy webpage. We believe that environmental sustainability is a societal imperative. The conservation and protection of natural resources and global ecosystems yields significant social and environmental benefits for present and future generations. These benefits require collective action and leadership from corporate citizens.

Our Global Tax Strategy highlights our commitment to being a responsible and transparent corporate citizen. Our approach to tax is consistent with our CoBC and Code of Ethics and is premised on complying with applicable tax laws, maximizing stockholder value and delivering transparent tax reporting and disclosures. We also seek to pay the requisite taxes on profits generated from the activities performed in each jurisdiction.

“We are committed to helping policymakers at all levels understand our business model and role as an ecosystem enabler.”

Implementing our business strategy requires specialized engineering and other talent, as our revenues are highly dependent on technological and product innovations. To attract top talent, we must be able to hire top engineers, regardless of their country of origin. Beyond fierce competition for talent across our industry and with our competitors, existing immigration laws make it more difficult for us to recruit and retain highly skilled foreign nationals, making the pool of available talent even smaller.

We engage in public policy efforts to support regulations that are aligned to today’s economic reality. Our Government Affairs team participates in diverse advocacy efforts that contribute to immigration laws that support our Company’s ability to develop leading-edge technologies specifically and our innovation-based global economy in general. Our advocacy efforts, as they relate to immigration laws and recruiting a global workforce, are generally implemented through collaborations with trade associations and diverse coalitions of employers. For more information on our approach to managing a diverse highly skilled workforce, please see our SASB Index.

Fostering a more accessible patent ecosystem for all

Our belief that the U.S. patent system should reflect the diversity of this country is stronger than ever. We know that diversifying who is inventing and patenting can create more jobs, boost the national economy, close wage and wealth gaps and enable the U.S. to remain a global leader in innovation. We are actively working within our Company and externally to create equitable opportunities for all.

Last year, we announced, in collaboration with Invent Together, the launch of The Inventor’s Patent Academy (TIPA). TIPA is a free mobile-friendly course that guides inventors through the process of protecting their inventions through patenting. The e-learning course readies innovators to apply for their own patents, offering actionable advice for overcoming obstacles and navigating the system. It also shares real-life stories of inventors and how they surmounted challenges and brought their ideas to life. It gives inventors a solid understanding of patent law and the patent filing process.

Since its launch, TIPA has already reached close to 1,400 students. Two-third of those students responded to an optional survey to help TIPA better understand the profile and satisfaction of participants. Around three quarters of survey respondents highlighted being from historically URM and over 40 percent were women, 70 percent of whom were women of color. The United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) First-Time Filer Expedited Examination Pilot Program is using TIPA as a learning resource. Students come from all sectors of the economy, including government, higher education, startups and accelerators and private corporations. Nearly a quarter are individual inventors. We are proud of this strong start and intend to continue outreach to our target audiences as we acquire more students.

At Qualcomm, we leveraged our diversity-oriented employee resources, including providing a new inventors’ workshop series entitled “Cultivating Innovation.” These workshops were a collaboration between our IP Department, Government Affairs and employee networks, with the goal of increasing diversity in innovation within the Company. We provided 16 events, including a workshop on TIPA, as part of that series. More than 90 percent of participants agreed that course material addressing systemic barriers to patenting and patent law content was useful and relevant. Given the positive feedback and our large engineering population, we are exploring ways to offer the course more broadly within the Company.

We are thankful for the help in our recruiting from Invent Together partner organizations like AnitaB.org, the Society of Women Engineers and the Native American Intellectual Property Enterprise Council. We are equally grateful that the USPTO has linked to the TIPA program on its website, featuring it as a learning resource for the USPTO’s new First-Time Filer Expedited Examination Pilot Program.

This past year, we also implemented updates and improvements in the content of the online course. For example, we incorporated user feedback and now provide an enhanced smartphone experience, updated voice-narration, learning capsules, improved accessibility and additional inventor resources including information on the patent pro-bono program. The enhancements and updates to TIPA will further our Company’s commitment to enabling the accessibility of the inventing and patenting process for all. We firmly believe that empowering inventors with robust patent rights enables them to transform the world for the benefit of all.

Learn more about how Qualcomm is driving innovation, societal advancement and sustainability in the 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report

Originally published on U.S. Bank company blog

For more than a decade, Jen Loller and her mom, Jo Maravilla, have jointly run a thriving outdoor wedding venue business while also juggling the joys and logistical challenges of a multi-generational family.

“There’s really no other way to describe running a business with your own mother than to say, our business and personal lives are interwoven. We’re not just coworkers, we are family, and support each other emotionally as well,” said Loller, whose two sons grew into adults while she helped manage Maravilla Gardens in Camarillo, California. “It’s like a big nest, as if we are birds collecting branches and building a nest to support both the business and our lives together.”

The roots of Maravilla Gardens go back to some of Loller’s earliest memories. When she was four, her parents – Jo and Tony Maravilla – purchased a lemon orchard in the Ventura County foothills. They turned it into a nursery, started up a landscaping contracting business and also built the family’s home on the property.

Pinched by the early 2000s recession, her parents decided to diversify their business by adding a wedding venue to the scenic grounds. Her father, Tony Maravilla, who designed and installed landscaping for his business, methodically created the venue grounds. Jo Maravilla, meanwhile, enlisted her knowledge of gardening, a trade she developed during her many years of running a plant nursery on the property, and turned the wedding venue into a joint project they were excited to work on as a team. In addition to running the nursery, Jo Maravilla kept the office straight for all three businesses.

During that time, Loller lived in Sacramento and was busy raising her young family. But she stayed in close touch with her parents and found that her artistic eye – Loller holds a degree in studio art – could benefit their business. She helped create a website that showcased the wedding venue’s scenic setting, doubling the number of ceremonies in a year. Within a few years the Maravillas decided to focus solely on weddings at the six-acre property. Loller and her family moved back to Camarillo in 2010 so she could jointly run the business with her mom, and today lives in her childhood home that overlooks the reception area.

“When people visit, they always comment on how the site has such an amazing flow – from the cocktail and reception areas the views overlook agricultural land that can’t be developed” because the base of the valley is a flood plain, she said.

Maravilla Gardens’ relationship with U.S. Bank began 15 years ago with predecessor company Union Bank. Over the years, Maravilla Gardens has worked with the bank for financing including a Small Business Administration loan, said Priscilla Valles, small business specialist at U.S. Bank.

“I’m honored that they trust me as an honest advisor who will always be here to support this family legacy business for years to come,” Valles said.

“There’s really no other way to describe running a business with your own mother than to say, our business and personal lives are interwoven. We’re not just coworkers, we are family, and support each other emotionally as well.”

– Jen Loller, who runs Maravilla Gardens with her mom, Jo Maravilla

Camarillo’s year-round sunshine and mountain views have turned the Southern California city into a destination for outdoor weddings in recent years. While the eight permitted venues in the area are technically competitors, they’ve also banded together to help market the region. The Camarillo wedding venue community also provided immeasurable practical and emotional support to each other during the nerve-racking months when all events in the state were canceled due to Covid.

For Maravilla Gardens, the shutdown was particularly painful because the lavish landscaping needs constant attention.

“Our business is, literally, alive,” Loller said with a laugh. “We had to stay on top of all of the maintenance of the gardens even though we couldn’t hold any events.”

When the pandemic hit, Maravilla Gardens had 58 weddings booked for the 2020 season, set to begin in less than two weeks. Suddenly 58 couples, made up of 116 engaged people in the middle of their wedding planning, began calling to express anxiety, grief, and an intense annoyance over the loss of control they were experiencing, Loller said

“The wedding industry is a joyful, energetic, and vibrant business, that requires teamwork, all while guiding a host of interesting and sometimes challenging clients,” she said. “My job was to listen, support, and assist each couple in picking dates that would postpone their forthcoming nuptials to what ended up being as long as three years past their original wedding date. I found myself in the trenches, performing the role of a makeshift wedding therapist. Let’s just say that I empathized my heart out!”

Now the wedding industry is returning to a new normal, and Jo Maravilla and her daughter are starting to plan ahead. Jo Maravilla celebrated her 83rd birthday in April. While she continues to be involved in owning the business, she’s also thinking ahead to her eventual retirement.

“This property was previously owned by a member of the Camarillo family. It is now our family legacy, and the business is a big part of what my parents have built to pass on,” Loller said. “Running a business that makes amazingly beautiful celebrations possible for so many couples is an honor. Over the years couples have returned for anniversary, family, and maternity photo shoots. It is a wonderful purpose to create a setting where beautiful moments happen on very important days. It doesn’t get much better than that.”