5.20.2003 ET

(CSRwire) BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WA - Bainbridge Graduate Institute is the first business school to offer an MBA education that fully integrates environmental and social responsibility into all of its courses. Although a number of other schools have developed programs with a focus on the environment, BGI is the first graduate school devoted to sustainable business.

BGI prepares leaders to succeed in creating and managing environmentally and socially responsible (ESR) businesses and nonprofit ventures that build a better world. And beyond preparing students directly, BGI is developing curriculum and encouraging other business schools to bring social and environmental responsibility into their programs.

“Business has become the most powerful institution of our times,” states Gifford Pinchot, co-founder of BGI. “In a healthy society, leaders take broad responsibility. BGI trains business leaders to create profit in ways that contribute to taking care of people and the planet.”

Drawing on thought leaders from many communities, BGI’s program includes corporate leaders, environmental educators and activists, sustainable business academics, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, organizational consultants, change agents, scientists and technologists.

BGI’s students include innovators who want to promote sustainability initiatives inside existing organizations as well as committed environmental entrepreneurs who want to be more effective in starting and running their own ESR businesses. “What I’m learning at BGI I’m incorporating into my work everyday,” says James Soares, manager of several Ben and Jerry’s stores in Salt Lake City. “And so far, everyone has been very excited about the results, including the owners, customers, employees, vendors and the community.”

Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s MBA program is a strategic initiative. It provides students with the tools needed to combine environmental and social responsibility with the ability to create and manage a prosperous business. These are the tools that present and future generations will need in order to create socially responsible economic networks for communities of people living in harmony with each other and with the diversity of life in a thriving world.

To learn more about Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s program, please visit www.bgiedu.org or call (206) 855-9559. BGI is now accepting students for the Fall 2003 academic year.

For more information please contact: