December 8-9th, 2022 
Ivey Business School, London, Ontario

Business schools through their diffusion of management skills and ideas are playing an increasing role in the governance of our organizations, societies, and environment. Such hegemony has led to both positive and negative outcomes. The time is now for business schools to take the lead in the global movement toward sustainable development – a development that provides for the needs of organizations and society, both today and tomorrow.  

The Ivey Sustainability Conference aims to create an inclusive community of scholars eager to push the frontiers of knowledge toward sustainable development. Researchers from various disciplines and career stages are invited to attend and participate in the conference. At a time when intellectual discourse seems to be divisive, we hope that this conference build a safe, stimulating arena for the scientific community to engage and grow intellectually to assure prosperity for all.

The theme of the 2022 conference was 'Communities and Capitalism'.

Featuring:

Melissa Aronczyk

Melissa Aronczyk is Associate Professor in the School of Communication & Information at Rutgers University. She is the co-author, with Maria Espinoza, of A Strategic Nature: PR and the Politics of American Environmentalism (Oxford UP 2022) and the author of Branding the Nation: The Global Business of National Identity (Oxford UP 2013). Her research has been featured in The Nation, the BBC, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Grist and the podcast Drilled, among other venues.  

shakara tyler

shakara tyler is a returning-generation farmer, educator and organizer who engages in Black agrarianism, agroecology, food sovereignty and environmental justice as commitments of abolition and decolonization. She obtained her PhD at Michigan State University in Community Sustainability (CSUS) and works with Black farming communities in Michigan and the Mid-Atlantic. She has worked with the MSU Center for Regional Food Systems as the Underserved Farmer Development Specialist where she provided technical assistance to underserved farming groups such as BIPOC farmers, women farmers and beginning farmers. She explores participatory and decolonial research methodologies and community-centered pedagogies in the food justice, food sovereignty and environmental justice movements. She also serves as Board President at the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), board member of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op (DPFC) and co-founder of the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund (DBFLF) and a member of the Black Dirt Farm Collective (BDFC). 

Rashedur Chowdhury

Rashedur Chowdhury (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is Professor of Business and Management at Essex Business School (EBS), University of Essex. He also holds an honorary, lifetime Batten Fellowship at the Batten Institute, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia (UVA), and an Affiliate Membership at University College Dublin (UCD) Earth Institute. Rashedur specializes in understanding the dynamic relationship between firms and marginalized groups, conceptualizing how marginalized groups influence firms and how firms respond. He does so, by immersing himself with marginalized people and their spaces, where they live, suffer or experience pain, reject dominant institutions, and aspire to thrive on their own terms or maintain non-conformist lifestyles. Rashedur has been invited as a Visiting Scholar by various institutions, including INSEAD Business School, France; Darden, UVA; Smurfit, UCD; Faculty of Business and Economics, HEC Lausanne, Switzerland; School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, Finland; Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of the Western Cape, South Africa; School of Government, Peking University, China; School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine; and Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

Anita M. McGahan

Anita M. McGahan is University Professor and George E. Connell Chair in Organizations and Society at the University of Toronto.  Her primary appointment is at the Rotman School of Management. She is cross appointed to the Medical School and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and is affiliated at the Munk School’s Innovation Policy Lab, the School of Cities, the School of Pharmacy’s W.H.O. Centre, Massey College, and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Professor McGahan is also a Faculty Member and Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University; Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University; and a past President of the Academy of Management. During her 2010-2015 appointment as the Director of Toronto’s PhD Program and as the Associate Dean of Research, the School’s PhD and research rankings internationally increased from #11 to #4 and #17 to #3, respectively. McGahan earned both her PhD and AM at Harvard University in two years. She holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where she received highest academic honors as a Baker Scholar, and a BA from Northwestern University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She also spent several years at both McKinsey & Company and Morgan Stanley & Company and was previously on the faculties of both Harvard Business School and Boston University.