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Social Enterprise Symposium draws crowds

CEO of Honest Tea speaks, inspires at event

By Sarah Kraut

On April 6, 2011

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The Center for Social Value Creation (CSVC) hosted the third annual Social Enterprise Symposium at Stamp Student Union Thursday evening, which was a huge success.

The event featured keynote speaker Seth Goldman, CEO of Honest Tea, the first organic, free trade bottled tea to be put on the market.

The theme of the evening was "Be Bold, Be Now, Be the Future", which Dean Anandalingam explained is a "call to business entrepreneurs with a passion for social and environmental change".

The past two years the event has been held in Van Munching Hall. According to Lakshmi Sankar, the Graduate Assistant for CSVC and one of the main organizers of the event, the symposium was too big for the school to accommodate last year, so they made the switch to Stamp.
"We were generating a lot of buzz for the event," she said, adding that Hoff Theater, which holds about 550 people, reached full capacity for the keynote speaker. "I think it was a big success."

Goldman's speech truly embodied the purpose of the event. He told the story of his own entrepreneurial journey and how went from having an idea to being a Coca-Cola owned entity.

"The reason we're growing is because we believe in what we're doing, because we're putting our values into action," he said.

Goldman's inspiring words made for the perfect segue into the remaining programming for the evening. The event featured 32 speakers, eight different breakout sessions and a networking fair at which 20 companies were present.

Rachel Epstein, a senior marketing major who volunteered at the event said she attended two sessions. The first was titled "Promoting Sustainability From Within", which discussed how companies should go about getting their employees on board with taking on more socially conscious ventures.

"I also went to a talk about the middle class in Africa and how it's important to help them so they'll grow and pull in people from the lower class," she explained.

"I thought the event was fantastic," said Melissa Carrier, who started the CSVC. "I've been getting a bunch of e-mails from students raving about the event, and I've had a lot of students approach me as well to tell me how great it was."