Before pursuing his PhD and entering academia full-time, Robert Strand was an industrial engineer and worked supply chain for more than a decade at some of the world’s largest companies. “I knew about price, quality, serviceability and reliability,” Strand recalls. “Those were the four things that we made selections for in how we sourced our materials. I was so ill-equipped to address some of these issues that are front page on a regular basis.”
This issues? All of the potential social and environmental issues that tag along with sourcing a product. Is there modern slavery in the supply chain? Are ecosystems being depleted and overrun? Not to mention, the first world issues like should the FBI force a tech company to hack their own product and consumer data in the name of national security.
“Most of us care about the well-being of others,” says Strand, who is now the executive director of the Center for Responsible Business at Berkeley Haas. “We care about respecting the human rights of others. But we haven’t necessarily felt it was legitimate to ask questions or actually knew what questions to ask to identify where there are human rights issues.”
Robert Strand (left) and Faris Natour (right) are leading efforts for the Human Rights and Business Initiative at UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Photo courtesy of Berkeley-Haas
HAAS DOING HAAS THINGS
Until now. Late last year, Strand and the Haas School hired one of the most influential people in the human rights and business space, Faris Natour, from leading consulting firm in the space, Business for Social Responsibility, to head up their Human Rights and Business Initiative. The newly minted initiative is the second of its kind within the walls of a B-school, following NYU Stern’s Center for Business and Human Rights.
“Human rights is something the University of California-Berkeley has some incredibly strong competencies in,” Robert Strand, tells We See Genius in an interview in his office. “And it’s an increasingly important topic that’s being recognized by businesses–the relevancy and responsibility that business is assuming and also being placed upon to respect human rights.”
Indeed, the B-school resting at arguably the epicenter of progressive mindsets and social well-being seems a natural spot for such initiative. If anything, it seems past due. But it’s here now. And Strand, Natour and other faculty are chomping at the bit to grow and scale it.
INITIATIVE TO FOCUS ON TEACHING, RESEARCH & COLLABORATION
The initiative will rest on three main components: teaching, research and collaboration. For teaching, Natour and Strand plan on not only offering new courses focused on human rights and business, but infiltrate the mainstream courses like finance, marketing, operations and others with human rights-focused themes. This will largely stem from the second component, research. Following the traditional case method, Natour and Strand say they and other faculty members will begin writing and publishing human rights and business-related cases to use in courses. Finally, the initiative will collaborate on projects within and outside of the great UC-Berkeley campus.
“We have such caring and considerate students here, what we’re trying to do is help enable them to exercise their care and concern and their thoughtfulness that they wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to do so,” explains Strand. “That’s a large part of what we’re attempting to do here.”
In the in-depth and robust interview below, Strand and Natour discuss why there is a growing need to train top-minded business students with a human rights lens, how, specifically, the initiative will influence curriculum and co-curricular activities and the industry demand for business leaders with human rights knowledge, among many other things.
Open All Close All Strand: At the highest level, the Center for Responsible Business has been around for over a decade. And our mission is to develop leaders who will redefine business for a sustainable future. We’ve historically cultivated conversations across the spectrum related to responsible and sustainable business. And what this initiative is, is a recognition that in order to really drive even deeper impact, we want to go in-depth on just a few issues that make strategic sense for the Haas School of Business and the issues our students are asking about and the issues the industry is asking about and, importantly, the issues we have some competencies in across the university, from which we can draw and leverage and bring to the business school. Human rights is something the University of California-Berkeley has some incredibly strong competencies in. And it’s an increasingly important topic that’s being recognized by businesses–the relevancy and responsibility that business is assuming and also being placed upon to respect human rights. So we feel that this is an area where we can really pay a leadership role in helping to usher in the mainstreaming of respecting human rights in business. And then it just so happened that we have–he won’t say it, he’s too humble–but, frankly, a global expert in human rights in business in Faris that has been teaching at Haas and desired to get more involved. Natour: I think that’s a good summary. I come from the practical world of working with business on human rights strategy and management and really found, ultimately, to get this right, to ensure business’ respect for human rights, you need business leaders who are aware of human rights responsibilities in business–how things go wrong and also the opportunities for positive impact businesses have around the world to help advance human rights. And the best way to start developing those business leaders with human rights awareness and a sense of responsibility for human rights is at the business school and making sure this issue is integrated effectively in the curriculum and the research we do here. We bring together business practitioners and our faculty and students to start thinking through what are the big challenges and how do we solve them. Strand: The answer is yes, yes and yes–on all those fronts. Our students here at Berkeley Haas are some of the most socially-minded MBA students you can find at any of the top business schools in the United States. We have these four guiding principles at Haas and “beyond yourself” speaks to these students. This questions the status quo of business as usual–where the purpose of business is solely about profits. And so our students are demanding more of a beyond yourself perspective. Respecting human rights is one of a number of issues that students want to engage with. But a traditional business school hasn’t facilitated or enabled that. Haas is in a very unique position. Berkeley Haas is an elite business school. It’s a mainstream business school. But it is also a part of this more progressive tradition that is the University of California-Berkeley. And if there’s any business school in the United States that could usher in the mainstreaming of this beyond yourself thinking, of which respecting human rights is so very much an example of this, it’s this school. And I think because of the tradition of the University of California-Berkeley, we attract the kinds of students who want to engage in these certain things. So we certainly see demand from the students. Absolutely. Now Faris can speak to the demand that business feels or the demand being placed upon them to respect human rights. And so marrying the view that our students are asking for it and what Faris can speak to about the industry demand for it. And then we couple that with a broader stepping back and more societal demand that business, which has become the most powerful institution in the world, there is an expectation that business assumes greater responsibility. We’re seeing the demand on all fronts. And here we have this unique opportunity to actually draw from competencies from across this great university and pull them in to meet this demand. It’s an incredibly opportunity that we have. Natour: And I agree completely. We definitely see the student interest and excitement in this agenda both in events we’re doing and in classes that we’re teaching already on the subject. On the business side, I think there is real evidence and anecdotal evidence that point to a much greater interest in these issues. There is an annual study of business leaders and sustainability managers in companies that GlobeScan and BSR do. And it asks, what are your sustainability priorities or your corporate responsibility priorities for this year. And since 2011, the top issue has been human rights. That is driven in part by a new standard, a global standard that the U.N. developed. The U.N. made principles on business and human rights, which make very clear the distinction between government and business when it comes to human rights and outlines very specific responsibilities that companies have. And companies are responding to that and implementing human rights policies and management systems as a result. But then also, anecdotally, if you look at the news, it used to be a little bit harder to make the connection between human rights and business and now pretty much any headline there is a connection there. Most recently, an example would be, the case involving Apple and the FBI and the unlocked iPhone and the conflict between the human right to privacy and the human right to security and life and the different responsibilities of different actors to keep us all safe and protect our privacy. A company like Apple, all the sudden, is in the middle of that debate and discussion. And for them, it’s necessary to have a policy framework and a conceptual framework to think about what is our responsibility for human rights and how do we address a challenge like that. And that’s just one example. You see slavery on Thai fishing vessels in the shrimp supply chain and child labor in the cotton supply chain for the apparel companies. It’s now a lot easier to identify these problems. It means a lot more pressure on businesses to address them. And what we can help do here is develop the tools, develop the leaders that can solve the problems from within companies. Strand: I would add on that, Faris, and I think it’s a really good description of the Apple case, which is phenomenally interesting, that there are tensions. And we want to help raise awareness of these tensions to our students and help provide at least some frameworks through which they can make better informed decisions. And too often–and I can speak from personal experience about this–prior to pursuing my PhD and going the academic route, I was an industrial engineer and did an MBA. I worked on the supply chain of some of the largest corporations. For a decade, I was in corporate America and about half that time, I was working supply chain for companies like IBM. I knew about price, quality, serviceability and reliability. Those were the four things that we made selections for in how we sourced our materials. I was so ill-equipped to address some of these issues that are front page on a regular basis. And not that I didn’t care–not that I didn’t have the concern. But I just had never had the opportunity to exercise a care and concern and to have some framework to try to help make decisions. Most of us care about the well-being of others. We care about respecting the human rights of others. But we haven’t necessarily felt it was legitimate to ask questions or actually knew what questions to ask to identify where there are human rights issues. And we have such caring and considerate students here, what we’re trying to do is help enable them to exercise their care and concern and their thoughtfulness that they wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to do so. That’s a large part of what we’re attempting to do here. Natour: We have three pillars in the initiative. They are teaching, research and collaboration. On the teaching side, I think there is an interesting parallel in the business world. So if we think 20 years ahead when our students are leaders, and CEOs of companies, a lot of companies now have human rights positions–human rights directors, human rights managers–other times, it’s in the corporate responsibility or in the public affairs. Those people have to come with an understanding of business and an understanding of human rights and they serve as a catalyst and a liaison for other departments and functions to help embed human rights in the company. We want to make sure through our teaching, we prepare our students for those types of explicit roles. But you also see that decisions are made in companies–anywhere in the company–and they could impact human rights dramatically. Robert’s example is a great one. If you are a sourcing manager and you make a sourcing or purchasing decision, that could have impact on human rights issues like forced overtime in a factory or a more grave human rights issue deeper in the supply chain. And so, in addition to having these nominally focused on human rights managers in the company, you need to make sure companies get to a state of rights-aware decision making anywhere in the company where a decision could be made to impact human rights. So we need to get to students who will have careers in supply chain and will have careers in strategy, finance and marketing and make sure they come to those careers with an awareness of human rights and understanding what human rights are. And understanding how various business decisions could impact human rights. The way we want to do that on the teaching side is not only through dedicated courses on business and human rights, but also embedding human rights content in all of those mainstream disciplines in all of the courses we are teaching here at the business school. We also want to make sure students in other parts of campus learn and understand that business plays an important role in human rights. And so for human rights courses taught at the university, we want to embed business content into that as well. Strand: If I could add one point in there quickly, one thing we are trying to overcome in Faris’s point about getting out in the university. For too long, business has had an adversarial relationship with, for example, civil society. How can business be an enabler for protecting and respecting human rights? If we can’t facilitate exchanges between business students and students from across the university out there, who will later go into NGOs, for example, then how the hell will we do it out in the world, where that collaboration is desperately needed? So I think Faris’s point about getting business out to the rest of the university in addition to human rights into the business school is such an important one. Natour: Perfect. And I think that is so true. To give a few examples on the research and collaboration as well, on the research side, one project that we’re working on now with our law school at Berkeley and the law school at the University of Washington is on sustainable investing in human rights and looking at ways to demonstrate the material impact of human rights’ performance on financial performance in companies. That is something that combines a number of key strengths that we have here at Haas. But also is an important and actionable outcome for the business practitioner constituency that we’re engaging here the investors who are looking for better returns and have a sense there may be something there. And the practitioners within business who often need to make the case inside their companies that this agenda matters. That’s a good example because all of the research that we do here is going to be actionable in that way. We want to apply academic rigor but apply it to very practical and actionable outcomes for those in the business world and civil society that are looking to embed human rights in business. On the collaboration front, we have great convening power here at Haas and Berkeley. More broadly, we have a number of great corporate partners and connections with human rights leads at businesses. Human rights experts that work with business externally and we want to bring them together with our faculty and students and with the research capabilities we have here to try to use collaboration and collaborative efforts to try to address very complex and systemic human rights challenges. One event that we did last month was in partnership with the U.N. agency for humanitarian affairs, U.N. OCHA, and a partner institute here at Berkeley called the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, where we are looking at ways businesses can support the response to humanitarian challenges through innovation and other business capabilities. And bringing together different experts from the humanitarian space from business and various entrepreneurism innovators was a really good way to identify a couple of easy things to do and a couple of longer term goals for that work. So we’re looking to do more of those types of things, and there sadly is no shortage of complex human rights challenges where business can play a role in the solution. Natour: One key example that is in the news and is going to continue to be in the news right now–and that’s also a very local issues for us–is the human rights issues arising from the disruption we are seeing in a lot of markets through the on-demand economy or the shared economy. We have Airbnb disrupting the hospitality sector pretty dramatically. Then we see the same with platforms like Uber and Lyft for ride sharing and transportation. And what we’re seeing then is new players in these markets operating within a human rights and business framework–and a broader regulatory framework–that’s developed from the markets they’re disrupting. And so there is this unknown or gray space of how do we protect human rights in the context of these new economic models. One tangible outcome of research we are doing and want to continue doing in that area is, what does a social safety net look like for this new economy and what does it look like in a world where most of us are going to be micro-entrepreneurs instead of employees that enjoy benefits. I’m not saying that one approach is better than another, but there is clearly a need to adjust the operating context from the human rights perspective. Another example would be discrimination. Airbnb would be an example of a company that may be struggling with applying traditional responsibilities around discrimination to a platform where hosts could make their own decisions on who to allow stay in their house or not. And there are a lot of legitimate reasons to be somewhat discriminatory, for example, women wanting only to rent to other women. When you compare that to a traditional hotel saying, we’re only going to rent out rooms to women, that may be a problem. The role we can play in that is to help bring together the different actors to develop new policies, approaches and initiatives at those companies to make sure their human rights are respected. Strand: Another tangible outcome we’ll see here is we have the Berkeley Haas case series, which is a top-notch case series where we publish traditional business school cases. And what we’re doing there is writing cases for your operations classes, for your marketing classes, for your finance classes, that have these human rights issues and tensions embedded within them. Students who are your traditional operations or mainstream whatever functional area in the business school can start engaging with these issues as they will see them when they’re out in the world. Because very rarely will an issue come at you and say, ‘OK, I’m a human rights issue,’ with flashing lights. So what we want to do is embed them within these cases that we can then promote and get adopted and integrated within existing curriculum. And that’s part of our effort for mainstreaming this. Faris and myself and other faculty members across here will actually write these cases with our partners, which is a very important part of this and you’ll see the Berkeley Haas case series will increasingly have this kind of content embedded in it. Another tangible outcome you’ll see–and Faris indicated this on the research side–is related to the sustainable investing and finance. Haas has a traditional competency in this. We have the world’s largest student-managed socially responsible investment fund–the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund–and what will increasingly be engaged with these students and feeding them the research that’s being conducted on demonstrating the links between respecting human rights and financial returns. This is very important because the final domain of figuring out how to link some sort of socially responsible performance with financial performance is and will be the human rights domain. It’s the trickiest to try to quantify and put in a traditional analyst model. We have a tough enough time on environmental issues. But they are at least fairly well defined and have a limited suite of units to use. As we move into the more social domain where it’s very ill-defined, there is a need for some institution to step up and take a leadership role and try to articulate this very important field into financial terms. One of many reasons this is important–as Faris indicated before–that individual inside the company that sees first-hand human rights challenges needs to be able to sell the issue within the company to other people who maybe aren’t as closely impacted or don’t see first-hand the human rights challenges. So we need to arm those people with defensible arguments for why this actually matters even beyond the values basis, but actually effects the valuation of the company. We describe that as from values to valuation. The values of caring about human rights and respecting human rights is so important and we need to move it into the valuation of companies because that is a way to encourage even more wide-spread adoption of the integration for concern for human rights and business. Strand: I’ll stay at the high-level of the fund and then Faris, if you want to chime in and talk a little about some of the work you’re already doing and opportunities moving forward with the students. At the highest level, the Haas Socially Responsible Business Investment Fund is the world’s largest student-managed socially responsible investment fund. Each year we select principals to manage the fund. And they follow some of the traditional social responsible investing (SRI) and environmental social governance (ESG) frameworks to embed this in their decision making process to take into account these ESG performances alongside financial performances. Traditionally speaking of the environmental, social and governance, we can do a fairly decent job of putting valuation on governance. Environmental is challenging, but you can at least measure things like greenhouse gas emissions and try to figure out, OK, maybe we put a shadow price on carbon and perhaps we can take it in when we expect regulation to come down the pipe sometime in the future. There are at least some frameworks to try to consider how to incorporate those sorts of issues within an SRI framework. On the social side, it’s much more challenging. How to assess a company’s performance in considering issues of potential child labor in supply chain. And then how to make a link with financial performances. This is a completely new frontier. So here we have an aspiration and some credibility for why we have a great potential to achieve some of the aspiration to actually embed and figure out how does one take into account human rights considerations from a valuation perspective. How would your analyst sitting on Wall Street, what kind of data do you need to feed them for them to actually be able to incorporate into their models, human rights. And this is an aspiration that we have to help set the framework, the foundation for this, and then actually be able to deliver. And using our own students as testing ground, looking at the models they’re using to actually make their buy/sell decisions and feeding them data as we’re developing it from a research side and actually working together with the students to try to incorporate this. Natour: I would just add I think all of this is happening also in a context of a general desire to rank and benchmark companies on their human rights performances. A new effort that is being launched right now called the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark, which will look eventually at 500 different companies and annually asses their human rights management system, compare each company to their peer set in their industry and then rank them accordingly. A lot of leading companies in human rights welcome this as an additional reflection of the competitive advantage they have in this area. There is a number of similar rankings and ratings already out or under development that look at specific aspects of this. There is one called Know the Chain, which is a ranking of company’s approaches to addressing human trafficking in their supply chain. There is an initiative called Ranking Digital Rights, which will look at technology companies efforts to respect human rights in the context of the internet and technology in general. So the work we’re doing in understanding and using ESG factors to inform investment decisions for the fund and for other vehicles, that will get easier once those types of benchmarks are up and running. But even today, we see there is a demand from various different actors and understanding better exactly how are you managing this. I would say even five years ago, the question was still do you do anything on human rights? Do you recognize that you as a business have a responsibility to protect human rights? Today it’s much more nuanced that the bar is a lot higher and to be considered a leader in business human rights you have to hit a number of criteria from the policies, management systems, the scope of your responsibility in the work you do. So it will become easier for us to assess financial performance in this valuation piece based on the company’s approach to human rights. Strand: They use a number of different frameworks that they’ve put on. But they are assessing the environmental social governance and the financial performance of the firms and weighing those between them. Calling it a double bottom line, if we said one of those lines is your financial and the other line is more of your social impact that encapsulates that environment social governance, that’s effectively what they’re doing. Part of the reason the fund exists is to test out, try and push the boundaries of what these models are. They’re always trying new things because incorporating environmental social governance is a relatively new domain. Social responsible investment funds have been around for a century, but historically speaking, they were exclusionary, where it said, I don’t want to invest in gambling or armunitions or these sorts of things. What we’re shifting to is how do you positively screen. How do you actually pick out top performers? And then with the mindset that these companies that are doing well environmental social governance, they’re probably well-managed companies and are probably going to out-perform the market. But how do you identify the ones that are performing well? That’s the challenge and that’s where we need to help out in the human rights and business space. Natour: And it’s a rapidly mainstreaming part of the investment world. And so going back to our objective of making sure we are preparing students for successful careers in business, any student who wants to join a mainstream investor, now this will be good and in a better position of knowing the ESG side and this value side of a company’s performance and how it impacts financial performance and valuation. That’s something that will make them stand out from other candidates of the same jobs. Strand: And that’s an important play that we have here. We want the BlackRock’s and the Goldman Sachs’ coming to Haas. And increasingly they are and will, because those are the firms that are increasingly asking for the analysts that can assess environmental social governance and the financial returns. And that is where we have a competency in our students and will increasingly have a competency as we develop these existing, supporting initiatives such as the human rights and business. Strand: I’ll say one thing and then, Faris, please chime in. I’ll point to these defining principles–beyond yourself. What we’re doing here is putting in practice beyond yourself. We attract students that are drawn to that. Part of our admissions is looking at these defining principles. So this beyond yourself mentality is something that our students come here for. And we created a community of those students. This beyond yourself thinking questions the status quo of traditional business–that is this self-interest narrative. So we send those students out in the world and you’re absolutely right, they are going to get push-back on some of these beyond yourself concepts. One, being at Haas and knowing they are not alone and have a cohort of students–that’s very important. And our alumni networks are important to help these students face challenges when they’re out there in industry. But, two, the things that Faris and I are offering with respect to how to actually develop tools for implementing human rights in business and how to help us move down the path of being able to demonstrate links to financial performance. These are things that traditionally, individuals who went out in the world with this beyond yourself thinking, they didn’t have those at their disposal. So the degree to which we can demonstrate that there are financial returns, for example, and then convincing those people, as you described them, a more traditionally-minded business person, that becomes a tool that our students can actually use later on. I think our students come with values and care about this deeply. And many of them see they want to use business as a means to improve the world. What we want to do is give them tools so those who maybe don’t come towards business with the same perspective, those tools can convince them otherwise. That wasn’t so good. It made sense in my head. Natour (laughing): No, it did. I think it makes a ton of sense. If you’re thinking about challenges, I would mention three and I think you alluded to one of them, which is as we said at the beginning of the discussion, we’re one of two business schools in the country with a program like this, which means there’s a whole lot of recent and not-so-recent business school graduates working in business who haven’t had the opportunity to learn about and engage with these issues as part of their management education. So our graduates entering the business world in various positions of leadership will have to help bring along a number of their colleagues. What I’ve seen in my work with businesses is human rights is a universal concept and you will not easily find anyone in any company that is opposed to the idea of human rights. I think the challenge is to make that connection to business and then to the individual person in the company making a decision. That’s precisely why we have our initiative and we want to help make sure we prepare our students for that challenge. Another challenge I would mention is that this is a very complex set of issues. I was initially drawn to a career in human rights because of the black and white nature of the concept, the idea there is this line that we shouldn’t cross and a basic fundamental understanding of what it means to treat people with respect and dignity. And as I started working in the field, I realized it’s really not black and white. It’s just a bunch of gray and very complex challenges. And navigating that isn’t easy for anyone and it’s not easy to do that within a very complex multi-national corporation with a number of different incentive structures. Finding a clear way to embed that and having clarity in the company about what human right’s responsibility is and how to lead that responsibility practically is a key challenge. Robert mentioned the defining principles and the student always principle is one that applies there. You’ll never be finished with this work, regardless of what kind of career you choose in business and human rights. Because the field keeps advancing and the challenges keep evolving as well. And the third challenge I’d mention is that when we’re talking values to valuation, the real positive impact of a sound and robust human rights management system on the financial performance of the company is a longer term proposition. And the business world too often still has a very short mindset. So you have to make the case within that short-term mindset for the importance–and this is not only true for human rights, but for sustainability in general–the importance of thinking long-term and the long-term health and sustainability of the company. You have a number of examples of companies and sectors who wish they had the benefit of hindsight and had thought a little more long-term. But that will continue to be a challenge both for human rights and sustainability as a whole. Strand: I’d like to say exactly what Faris said. Everyone: (Laughing) Strand: I’d like to add one thing on here, and Faris’s point is spot-on, the long-term challenge of demonstrating the financial returns of human rights. We should not try to portray that we’ll be able to demonstrate the business case immediately. But where there is a more immediate case in terms of companies that engage with respecting human rights is talent, attraction and retention. We are increasingly seeing–our students at Haas are particularly the case, but our students are not alone in this–companies that recruit from business schools across the States can attest to the fact that the businesses are being asked questions about what are they doing in these topics. Human rights and business is one of a suite of topics that traditionally have not been asked by students who are interviewing for a job and increasingly they are asking these companies, where they are going to work, what are you doing in these areas of social impact or environmental impact? The companies that engage in this in a meaningful matter are actually the ones that are going to attract the top talent and retain the top talent. Because human rights is an issue that is an example of something that people can be very passionate about. You get jazzed about getting up and working for a company where you can have a positive impact on society at large and people. And this is part of the re-humanizing the corporation, is enabling the people to care and exercise their empathy and concern for the well-being of others. Those are the companies that build really strong cultures and they’re going to win over the long-run. So I think that’s where we can demonstrate a more immediate business case for this stuff–your talent, attraction and retention. Natour: One very exciting offering is we will have an MBA course on human rights and business called Managing Human Rights and Business. It will be very focused on equipping our students with the tools and frameworks for addressing human rights risk anywhere in a company in any sector. What I think will get our students and potential students particularly excited about is the connections we have with human rights leaders in many of those companies. We will have a series of guest lecturers from practitioners who deal and wrestle with these issues constantly. One of our guest speakers is from Twitter and shares with the students and really puts the students in his role of what would you do in this situation? When you’re asked to delete this tweet, do you do that, impacting the right to free expression? Or do you not, potentially impacting security or contributing to harassment? So, I think our students have the ability to see first-hand what it’s like to have to manage human rights issues in a company from the people who are in very traditional management roles in those companies and I think that’s a very unique experience. A second advantage and key impact I would highlight is the fact that this agenda is interesting to a number of students across campus, which helps facilitate multi-disciplinary engagement and collaboration, which I know a lot of our current students and prospective students are really interested in, so that they learn from different disciplines and get to engage with students from different institutions and schools here on campus. It’s something we see as very valuable for the outcomes that we’re trying to achieve, but it’s also a very nice benefit to the students to be in that environment. Strand: And building on that, we have a tradition and we want to further the tradition of attracting students into our MBA and undergraduate program who are pushing the boundaries and are of a very progressive mindset. And maybe we can attract some people to join the business community who otherwise wouldn’t have. And can affect greater change from within business. We see a role for external pressure on business to change but we also need a lot of change enablers within business. And we want to attract students that really question the status quo of business and can do so and can see business as a vehicle for positive change by working within business and challenging business from within. And I think this initiative can attract some students to Haas who maybe otherwise wouldn’t have considered pursuing a business degree. So we’re looking for traditional students, but also those progressively-minded, forward-looking non-traditional students. That’s a strength of Haas, that we are formed to collect these different kinds of students. And we draw very much from our traditions of being part of this great University of California-Berkeley and with the progressive spirit that this university brings.
