There can be real business opportunity in addressing social and environmental issues. And increasingly, for-profit organizations are identifying and maximizing the social value drivers that are linked with their business practices and leveraging strategies around their core assets and capabilities to create market-based solutions to social change.
Join us as Patty Morrissey discusses the leadership lessons she has learned about integrating social impact work into a for-profit enterprise, with local experts weighing in on how government, philanthropy, non-profits, for-profits, incubators and citizens can best support social enterprise in our region.
Keynote Speaker: Patty Morrissey was the founding director of the corporate responsibility arm at Groupon since joining the company in May 2010. As Head of Social Innovation, Patty developed Groupon’s global social innovation strategy which aims to connect the dots between the core business and its footprint on the world, including company-wide initiatives such as Groupon Grassroots, the Employee Volunteer Program, Green at Groupon, and Love Local. Patty approaches corporate citizenship and civic engagement from a social work perspective and seeks to create innovative ways to solve social problems through sustainable, scalable models. Blending her social work and tech-startup experience, Patty recently joined Crisis Text Line which is the first and only national crisis-intervention hotline to conduct its services exclusively through text message.
Moderator: Matt Zieger is executive in residence for social innovation at The Forbes Funds. Matt focuses on developing cross-sector, collaborative and technology-driven approaches to support the organizations served by the Forbes Funds and to accelerate regional understanding and adoption of emerging tools to affect positive societal outcomes at substantial scale. Matt’s current focus areas include the development of new platforms to increase access to capital and advanced technologies for nonprofits and social entrepreneurs such as impact investing funds, social impact bonds, and prototyping technology solutions that positively impact our community.
Local Respondent: Adam Paulisick is a cofounder of Fygment, an organization dedicated to creating and empowering entrepreneurs in every industry and size of business. Fygment focuses on helping entrepreneurs get UnStuck every Monday, encouraging a (social) venture capital tourism industry in Pittsburgh, and illuminating technology and trends such as crowdfunding that help any entrepreneur find a way to succeed. Outside of local efforts Adam is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS). Prior to NCS, Adam served as senior director of commercial operations, based in London, for Nielsen’s Emerging Media division. Adam continues to be active in the early stage venture community as a mentor in domestic and international accelerator programs such as AlphaLab (Pittsburgh), seedcamp (NYC+Europe), Techstars (London+NYC), and entrepreneurs roundtable accelerator (NYC).
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