BLDs are opportunities for B Corps in regions around the globe to come together, learn, and grow in community. On today’s episode New England BLD Co-Chairs Brittany Angelo of ReVision Energy and Kelly Wight of Breckinridge Capital Advisors share their reflections and insights on the planning and execution of this year’s New England BLD.
Below are just some things that worked well for us and some tips we wanted to share out with the rest of the BLD organizing community.
Connect with institutions in your area that are part of the B Academics community. We are so lucky and grateful that we have a partner in the University of New Hampshire’s Sustainability Institute. Not only do they do an excellent job of serving our B Corp community all year round with their B Impact Clinic and Carbon Clinic, as one of the top 5 schools for sustainability in the country, they were also very gracious in opening up their campus to us. This beautiful space was not only welcoming to our community, for many it felt like a coming home because UNH has been so closely connected to businesses in our communities across the New England region.
One other little nugget that we did this year that might be inspiring for other BLDs is that we setup an action center where attendees could participate in a collective action with real world impact. We partnered with Vote Forward to adopt voters and write letters to help turn out the vote in the fall, we had a QR code folks could scan to sign the B Corp Support letter, and we were excited to have Sofia Elhuseini and Adj Marshall from the Class Action First Gen Summit in attendance. They brought lots of energy to the BLD sharing their passion for working with First-Generation college students. Adj is a B Local Boston Board member and founder of the First Gen Summit and Sofia is a sophomore at NYU Stear School of Business and a First Gen Summit Student Planning Committee Member.
At the conference, Sofia and Adj shared with the BLD community the strengths that first-gen students bring to their work but also the systematic challenges they face in transitioning from the role of first-gen college student to first-gen professional. I encourage you all to reach out and learn more about this awesome initiative and how you might be able to support their work.
It really does take an entire community coming together to make a BLD happen. I want to give a special shout out to all the other planning committee chairs; Marketing Chair Anne Richardson of Richardson Media Group, Logistics Chair Emily Gutman of Dimagi, and Accounting Chair Laura Palermino of Breckinridge Capital Advisors. Also want to shout out our volunteer photographer of the day Jackie Weik and the amazing folks at Red Bird for their videography skills to capture the day.