Courses
Today’s businesses face new realities, from escalating health care expenditures to carbon constraints to limited access to safe water around the world, and more - although each of these challenges can also potentially be opportunities for innovation.
This is why both graduate and undergraduate-level students are encouraged to build a foundation in sustainability and corporate responsibility through the broad range of classes offered at Haas. Students have dynamic learning opportunities to manage socially responsible funds, lead live consulting projects, and engage with world-class instructors on sustainability issues that are core to business. Learn more about the courses we offer, below.
In addition to our courses, we also offer workshops, events, and seminars in a broad range of topics. For more information check out our events here.
MBA Courses
Fall 2012
Instructor: Nadja Guenster
Offered: Year-round
As the first and only student-led investment fund of its scale ($1.4M+) within a leading business school focused on both social and financial returns, the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund (HSRIF) seeks to achieve lofty goals while offering unique student opportunities and challenges.
HSRIF seeks to contribute to the field of social investing by defining and exploring new ideas around unlocking hidden value based on companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. As such, Fund Principals believe that the less conventional their thinking, the more innovative their approach, the less correlation with the activity of other established SRI funds, the greater the potential to achieve this goal.
HSRIF Principals are MBA and MFE students interested in finance and corporate responsibility. At a high level, the investment philosophy guiding the Fund and its Principals is to achieve a balance between financial and social/environmental performance:
- Financial: Valuation metrics, firm size and growth, size of market, competitive position, strength of management, recent performance, etc.
- Social/Environmental: customer benefits from using the product/service, sustainability principles, supply chain practices, employee treatment, etc.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Nadja Guenster is an assistant professor of Finance at Maastricht University and a visiting scholar at the Haas-Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on socially responsible investing, CSR, corporate governance, and asset price bubbles. Nadja obtained a Ph.D. from RSM Erasmus University. Her studies have been published in various practitioner-oriented outlets, such as the Financial Analysts Journal, European Financial Management and the Journal of Asset Management. Her research has been awarded the 2005 Moskowitz Prize for best quantitative study in the SRI domain, and the 2005 European Finance & Sustainability Research Award, and the 2011 Crowell Second Prize by PanAgora Asset Management.
Instructor: Lloyd Kurtz
With new impetus from the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, the use of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria is becoming increasingly prevalent throughout the world. Social investing is moving toward the mainstream – and at the same time receiving a new level of scrutiny.
Social investors have placed themselves - some perhaps unwittingly - at the center of an important debate. On one hand, many ethical and religious traditions advocate altruism and community-mindedness in all our dealings, including financial and business matters. On the other, some economic and financial theorists argue for a narrow focus on risk and reward, with little regard for the impact of decisions on stakeholder groups or the environment.
Until recently, this debate was primarily ideological in nature. But over the past decade, empirical work has shown surprising and sometimes counter-intuitive relationships between ESG factors and financial outcomes. This course will review some of these studies in detail, and encourage you to investigate and test their findings for yourself.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Prof. Lloyd Kurtz is the Chief Investment Officer of Nelson Capital Management.
Lloyd oversees the investment process and manages portfolios for institutional and high net worth clients at Nelson Capital, a Palo Alto money management firm affiliated with Wells Fargo. Prior to joining Nelson, Lloyd spent nine years as a research analyst and Director of Quantitative Research at Harris Bretall Sullivan & Smith, a San Francisco-based money management firm; and before that was Senior Research Analyst at KLD Research & Analytics in Boston.
During his tenure at KLD, Lloyd did much of the initial quantitative work on the development of the Domini Social Index, the first broad-based social investment benchmark, and co-authored two chapters of the book The Social Investment Almanac. His quantitative analysis of Domini Social Index performance, co-authored with Dan DiBartolomeo, was later published in The Journal of Investing. He also authored the chapter on social investment in the2008 Oxford Handbook of Corporate SocialResponsibility.
Lloyd maintains an online annotated bibliography of studies of socially responsible investing at www.sristudies.org. In 1997 and 2005, he published reviews of this literature in The Journal of Investing. Lloyd is the program administrator for the Moskowitz Prize. He holds an MBA from Babson College and a B.A. from Vassar College. In 1999 he received the SRI Service Award for his contributions to social investing.
Instructor: Kellie McElhaney
Women play multiple powerful roles in today’s business world, including acting as consumers, employees, potential employees, managers, leaders, directors, investors, and investees. Women occupy the majority voice in some of these roles and the minority voice in others of these roles. Smart companies understand that it does make good business sense to ignore or exclude half of the population, as “women hold up half the sky.” Smarter companies are investing heavily in the global development of women, like Nike, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, Coca-Cola and Gap, Inc. Goldman Sachs has even coined the term “womenomics” to describe the increasingly high ROI of investing in women at all levels of business.
Given the severity of challenges confronting our global society, we can no longer afford to leave half our brains or half our resources on the sidelines. To use a sailing analogy, we need all hands on deck. Three main areas will be explored in this course: cases in which businesses are investing in women as part of their business strategy; the business and societal impact of increasing women’s roles in business at all levels; and enabling women to use their voice as a powerful tool to enhance business and societal ROI.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Dr. McElhaney is the Alexander Faculty Fellow and the founding Faculty Director of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She launched this center in 2003, which has helped place corporate responsibility squarely as one of the core competencies and competitive advantages of the Haas School. The Center has received global critical acclaim with The Financial Times rating Haas #1 in the world in 2008.
Her work focuses in four areas: (1) Analyzing and developing companies’ CSR strategy and its alignment with corporate strategy, business objectives, core competencies, and business value; (2) Exploring the linkage between diversity and CSR and using CSR as a hook to re-engage women with business as employees, consumers, and investors; (3) The business value and opportunities in branding, communication and CSR, on which she has written a book entitled Just Good Business The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand; (4) Leveraging the power of social media to advance good, or a company’s CSR impact.
Kellie consults to several Global 1000 companies in developing integrated CSR strategy, bridging her academic focus with the practitioner world. Her client list includes HP, Gap, eBay, McDonalds, Levi, Wal-Mart, Target, Clorox, Ernst & Young, NVIDIA, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Nokia (Finland), Navigant, Volunteer Match, Ford Motor Company, PG&E, Driscolls Berries, Triage Consulting Group, Ulster Bank (Ireland), Kimberly-Clark, Frontline, Accenture, StatoilHydro (Norway), Yum! Brands, Chevron, ING.
Kellie serves on the Sustainability & Environmental Advisory Committee (SEAC) for the Dow Chemical Company, is an Academic Partner with Blu Skye Consulting, serves on the Boards for Globescan and VolunteerMatch, and is a member of the Advisory Council for SustainAbility. She lives in the Oakland Hills in California and has two school-aged daughters. She enjoys photography, yoga, good wine, running and has even tried surfing. She earned her BA from the University of North Carolina, and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Instructor: Jennifer Walske
Join guest speakers from high profile impact investing and venture capital firms, as well as successful social entrepreneurs that have garnered capital. Students will prepare recent cases that profile social enterprises, and the funders that backed them, providing a dualistic view of the funding process.
Three stages of the investment process will be covered in this course. (1) Raising of funds from wealthy individuals or foundations by the impact investor (2) identifying and investing this capital into social enterprises, and (3) ensuring that the performance of the social enterprises meet the original investors’ expectations. This is one of four business schools, in addition to HBS, Wharton, and University of Michigan, that has been selected to partner with Acumen Fund, to ensure a hands-on, current, and compelling look into impact investing.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Professor Jennifer M. Walske is the Faculty Director of the Global Social Venture Competition, and the Director of Social Entrepreneurship at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at Haas. Dr. Walske was recently awarded the Earl F. Cheit Award for teaching excellence. Dr. Walske also founded Myriad Investments, LLC in 2000, and NVCA registered firm, and serves on boards of directors for both non-profit and for-profit enterprises. Dr. Walske completed her doctorate in 2009 after a distinguished career in investment banking, where she was a nationally ranked software analyst by Institutional All-American, and was a regular guest commentator on both CNN and CNBC. Dr. Walske spent ten years in Silicon Valley holding various marketing positions within the software industry, prior to her career in investment banking. Dr. Walske publishes her research on venture capital and venture philanthropy and frequently presents on the subject of social entrepreneurship and impact investing.
SPRING 2012
Instructor: Nadja Guenster
Offered: Year-round
As the first and only student-led investment fund of its scale ($1.4M+) within a leading business school focused on both social and financial returns, the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund (HSRIF) seeks to achieve lofty goals while offering unique student opportunities and challenges.
HSRIF seeks to contribute to the field of social investing by defining and exploring new ideas around unlocking hidden value based on companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices. As such, Fund Principals believe that the less conventional their thinking, the more innovative their approach, the less correlation with the activity of other established SRI funds, the greater the potential to achieve this goal.
HSRIF Principals are MBA and MFE students interested in finance and corporate responsibility. At a high level, the investment philosophy guiding the Fund and its Principals is to achieve a balance between financial and social/environmental performance:
- Financial: Valuation metrics, firm size and growth, size of market, competitive position, strength of management, recent performance, etc.
- Social/Environmental: customer benefits from using the product/service, sustainability principles, supply chain practices, employee treatment, etc.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Nadja Guenster is an assistant professor of Finance at Maastricht University and a visiting scholar at the Haas-Center for Responsible Business at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on socially responsible investing, CSR, corporate governance, and asset price bubbles. Nadja obtained a Ph.D. from RSM Erasmus University. Her studies have been published in various practitioner-oriented outlets, such as the Financial Analysts Journal, European Financial Management and the Journal of Asset Management. Her research has been awarded the 2005 Moskowitz Prize for best quantitative study in the SRI domain, and the 2005 European Finance & Sustainability Research Award, and the 2011 Crowell Second Prize by PanAgora Asset Management.
Instructor: Omar Romero-Hernandez
This is a corporate strategy course. You will learn how to use corporate responsibility as a business strategy, linked to a firm's core business objectives and a firm's core competencies, leading to financial and social / environmental return.
Students will be exposed to the theories, frameworks, and cases of corporate responsibility (CSR). We investigate "good practices" of companies who have implemented socially responsible strategies while maintaining or maximizing financial returns. Students will develop their own repertoire of tools and implementation strategies that can be utilized across industries and sectors to set up CSR strategies that yield both financial and social profit. Students will gain both a broad understanding of the issues within external and internal corporate responsibility, and deep vertical knowledge on industries of their selection.
Students will bid on consulting projects supplied by the instructor, and will work in teams on the consulting project to which they are assigned. After reviewing and analyzing any existing CSR efforts, students will develop a new CSR strategy focus aligned with business objectives and core competencies. Projects might include, but are not limited to, the following: social entrepreneurship; socially responsible investing; branding; communication strategies; stakeholder engagement; transparent annual reporting; public/private partnerships; strategic philanthropy; consumer segmentation and awareness. It is an opportunity for learners to put their newly learned theory into practice with real-world, complex, multidisciplinary CSR problems. It is expected that the company will be implementing the students' recommendations, which will be backed with solid data.
Students will emerge ready to develop and implement strategic CSR within their own companies and industries through any job function.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Prof. Omar Romero-Hernandez is a Chemical Engineer with graduate studies in Economic Policy and Government and a PhD in Process Economics and Environmental Impact from Imperial College, London, UK.
Find out more about the CSR & Projects Course
If you represent a company and would like to submit a consulting project for the class, click here.
Undergraduate Courses
SPRING 2012
Instructor: Alan Ross
This is a survey course on the political, social, and ethical environment of business. It is designed to give you insight into complex and controversial social issues and public policy problems that complicate the task of managing American business. Each week a guest speaker will discuss an issue ranging from corporate social responsibility to protecting the environment.
Instructor: Omar Romero-Hernandez
Being "green and sustainable" lies at the top of those strategic decisions that aim to take advantage of business dynamics and the development of new markets. As future leaders, students need to understand how to translate ideas into solutions for complex problems that can increasingly only be met with new ideas and solid academic foundations on sustainability strategies, best green business practices and tools. It is all about integrating value creation, environmental enhancement and positive societal impact.
This course is part of a synergy with other related courses offered at Haas, including: The Social, Political and Ethical Environment of Business, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility and Energy and Environmental Markets. The focus lies on identifying opportunities to create business value from environmental and sustainability issues, and understanding some of the implications related to successful execution and operation of corporate green initiatives.
The content follows a logical top-down approach where students are first exposed to environmental theories and frameworks that help them understand the combined role of Business Strategy and the Environment. A second tier of content focuses on green business value chain. Practices such as Green Business Intelligence, Corporate Green House Gas accounting, and the role of sustainable value innovation are covered. The third tier aims to present tools and initiatives implemented by leading international companies in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage. Topics include Life Cycle Analysis, Green Product Design, Eco-branding, Eco-efficiency and Green Project Management. The course includes readings, business case studies, quantitative assignments and a hands-on laboratory session with sustainability software.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES:
Prof. Omar Romero-Hernandez is a Chemical Engineer with graduate studies in Economic Policy and Government and a PhD in Process Economics and Environmental Impact from Imperial College, London, UK.
Other Opportunities
Lecturer, Faculty, and Professional Researcher
"I am thrilled to teach our Corporate Sustainability and CSR class… it is an unparalleled opportunity for students to work with companies at the forefront of corporate sustainability. Students emerge ready to develop and implement successful strategic corporate sustainability initiatives within any company or industry and through any job function."
