Bill Shireman, President & CEO of the Future500

In the midst of the divisive national climate leading up to the November elections, Future 500 has joined forces with Corporate Responsibility Magazine to convene corporate, NGO, and political leaders from the left to the right, for an UnConvention to explore areas of conflict and potential common ground on energy, innovation, capitalism, and sustainable prosperity.  This will be featured as part of the COMMIT!Forum, taking place October 2-3 in New York City, where the world’s leaders will come together to shape the face of corporate responsibility.  

The UnConvention will bring together allies and adversaries, to explore iconoclastic ideas from across the political spectrum. The speakers will include renowned leaders who together defy political categorization, such as:

• John Perry Barlow, Co-Founder, Electric Frontier Foundation & Former Lyricist, Grateful Dead
• Joan Blades, Co-Founder of MoveOn.org
• Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute
• Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Environmentalist
• Dennis McGinn, Vice Admiral of the U.S. Navy (ret.)
• Peter Schweizer, Hoover Institution , Stanford University
• Dr. Robert Shapiro, President Clinton’s Chief Economic Advisor
• George M. Shultz, Former U.S. Secretary of State
• David Stockman, President Reagan’s Budget Director
• Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

“By hosting the UnConvention with CR Magazine, we are using a unique approach to break through the rhetoric and get to the heart of some key societal issues ,” said Bill Shireman, President & CEO of Future 500.  “We know that the world’s best companies work constructively with NGOs and policy makers to drive innovation across their supply chains in these areas, so what better place to have these discussions than at the COMMIT!Forum.”

On the agenda for UnConvention plenary and breakout discussions will be topics such as:

• Crony Capitalism: Building Common Ground on Maximizing the Potential of the Free Market While Reducing Cronyism Favoring Privileged Industries, Individuals, & Firms
• Dual Deficits: Overcoming Society's Mounting Fiscal & Sustainability Debts moderated by Bill Shireman, President and CEO of The Future 500
• Energy Security: Safe, Stable, & Reliable Energy Sources to Fuel Our Economy with panelists from the US Navy, Tauri Group, Harvard Kennedy School, and Sierra Club
• Digital Freedom: Securing an Online World that Generates Greater Innovation, Prosperity, & Freedom moderated by Bruce Piasecki, author of Doing More With Less

“Our goal for the UnConvetion is to provide a safe environment for rational people from across the political spectrum and leaders from businesses and non-profits to come together and discuss real solutions to real problems,” said Forum Chairman Richard Crespin.

This promises to be an inspirational event engaging over 800 total attendees – C-suite executives, heads of corporate responsibility, sustainability officers, investment analysts, NGO and government leaders, academics, and more –at the Cipriani Wall Street over the course of the two days.  The complete COMMIT!Forum agenda can be found at www.commitforum.com.

Thanks go to Forum sponsors AHA!, AT&T, Brown Flynn, Deloitte, Mosaic, and State Street for their support.

About the COMMIT!Forum (http://www.commitforum.com/)
The COMMIT!Forum, calls people to commit to changing the world. How? By inspiring, educating, and engaging them in ways that prepare them to make the commitments necessary to change themselves and their organizations. The path to COMMIT, which began on April 17^th at the New York Stock Exchange with the announcement of CR Magazine’s 13th Annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens, culminates October 2-3 in New York City at the Forum and continues well beyond through commitments people make there.

About CR Magazine (www.thecro.com)
CR Magazine is the voice of the corporate responsibility profession covering case studies, best practices, and trends in the 5 primary segments of the CR profession: a) Governance, Risk, Compliance, b) environmental sustainability c) Corporate Social Responsibility, d) philanthropy, and e) workforce/diversity. 

About Future500 (www.future500.org)
Future 500 brings together strategically-selected companies, NGOs, and opinion leaders to overcome mutual distrust and advance systemic technology and policy solutions in four areas: energy, water, materials, and human rights. We leverage our extensive global network of multi-sector stakeholder leaders active, using an informal strategic engagement approach that is more effective at finding genuine common ground between corporations and stakeholders.

SharedXpertise

SharedXpertise

About CR Magazine www.thecro.com CR Magazine is the only print publication covering the full range of corporate responsibility, providing decision-makers with the data and insights they need to maximize their positive impact while reducing or eliminating the negative. CR covers case studies, best practices, and trends across the CR field: a) governance, b) environmental sustainability c) employee relations, d) human rights, e) financial performance, and f) philanthropy.

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