Building a Regenerative Economy: How Green Swans Can Achieve Impact at Scale
Net Impact is excited to launch our 2021-2022 event series, "The Regenerative Economy" on Tuesday, August 31 at 9:30 am PT / 12:30 pm ET with our first interactive event "Building a Regenerative Economy: How Green Swans Can Achieve Impact at Scale." The interconnected problems our world faces are compounding one another, leading to an alarming cycle of destabilizing changes. Unsurpassed record temperatures cause an abnormal intensity of natural disasters throughout the world, while we are just beginning to understand the economic and social impact of COVID-19 on already underserved marginalized communities. Despite these enormous problems, there is a reason for optimism. A regenerative economy - one that recognizes that people, planetary resources, and systems are interdependent - is how we can make progress on building a better world. One of the leading advocates for a regenerative economy, John Elkington, optimistically believes that "Green Swans" are symbols of radically better times to come. John will share how Green Swans deliver exponential progress in the form of economic, social, and environmental wealth creation. Examples of Green Swans include innovations that led to the rapid electrification of our mobility and transportation systems, the exponential evolution of machine learning and AI designed to help manage our businesses, and the emergence of new behaviors, including the rowing appetite for plant-based diets.
This event will give you the opportunity to learn, connect, and apply these questions to the topics you care about:
- how "Green Swans" can impact exponential change
- what we can do to catalyze and support more Green Swan innovations
- what are important and valuable questions to ask as you consider your own ideas and actions to impact a regenerative world
The event will be interactive and will allow audience members to connect with the guest speakers to share their ideas and generate more clarity about effective pathways forward to impact change.
Our special guests will kick off a highly interactive event that invites attendees to participate, challenge, and apply their thinking to the issues you care most about. Please join the Net Impact community as we welcome John, the CEO of Volans, Louise Kjellerup Roper, and a next-generation Green Swan innovator, Gary Sheng, founder of Civics Unplugged, to launch our new series.
About Our Guest Provocateurs:
John Elkington, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder at Volans Ventures
John Elkington, Founder & Chief Pollinator at Volans, is one of the founders of the global sustainability movement, an experienced advisor to business, and a highly regarded keynote speaker and contributor, from conferences to boards and advisory boards. John has addressed over 1,000 conferences around the world. He was a faculty member of the World Economic Forum from 2002-2008. he has served on over 70 boards and advisory boards. John has won numerous awards and is the author or co-author of 20 books. The 20th book was published in April 2020: Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism (Fast Company Press).
Louise Kjellerup Roper, CEO of Volans
Louise Kjellerup Roper is the CEO of Volans. A successful entrepreneur, she has spent her career in innovative businesses, pioneering cradle-to-cradle and circular business models. Louise has reshaped Volans, through leadership initiatives such as "Tomorrow's Capitalism Inquiry" and "Bankers For NetZero" whilst working directly with a select group of forward-thinking businesses to help unlock their vision and capabilities to transform to success in a regenerative future. Highly focused on empowering the next generation of regenerators, Louise is a mentor through Aspire and lectures at a number of universities. She is also on the advisory board of the Global CO2 Initiative, the Sustainable Finance Centre, the UKRI Interdisciplinary Centre of Circular Chemical Economy, and The Good Growth Company.
Gary Sheng, Chief Operating Officer of Civics Unplugged
Gary Sheng is an NYC-based technologist and social entrepreneur dedicated to building tools, systems, and movements that empower people to 1) unplug from everything facilitating human downgrade, and 2) become agents of a better future. Gary is the Chief Operating Officer of Civics Unplugged, an NYC-based social enterprise he co-founded whose mission is to empower leaders of Gen Z to build a brighter future for humanity. He was recently honored by Forbes 30 Under 30 for his work helping build CU. Before co-founding Civics Unplugged, Gary served as a Software Engineering Team Lead at Google, as well as co-director of Dancing Pineapple, a popular electronic music blog and live events company followed by hundreds of thousands of feel-good music lovers. You can learn about Gary and how to connect with him at garysheng.com.