For-Credit Courses

Course Description:

Building a new sustainably-focused fashion business, or shifting an existing business not currently managing sustainability considerations, requires a specific set of skills, considering all needs of the business from supply chain to marketing messaging. As the world changes and demands a new paradigm for operating a business – eschewing the former singular goal of profit for shareholders and replacing that with the need to serve a wide range of stakeholders – a new knowledge base, a greater flexibility and an entirely different skill set is required to succeed. Success under such a paradigm is not just doing better than before but actively doing good.

This module covers the range of considerations specific to operating with a common good lens but general to every fashion business, focusing on product creation including designing for reduced impact, material sourcing for sustainability and ethics, supply chain considerations, tools and metrics by which to manage sustainability/ethics/impact in your business, brand voice and impact messaging, circular economy considerations, risk management, positive impact opportunities, best business structures for positive impact, and shifting stakeholder perspectives. Through readings, lectures, class discussion, guest speakers, and development of a sustainability focused business outline students will develop the toolset needed to function at any level of a business – from independent contributor to CEO – to support positive impact.

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This course aims to provide participants with the knowledge and tools to discuss and practice strategic management in a world characterized by rapid change and increasing concerns for economic, social and environmental sustainability. Additionally, the course seeks to address the who, what, why, where and how of strategic decisions, with an emphasis on generating sustainable growth across national boundaries.

GCNYC draws on nearly 150 years of our parent university’s commitment to the Common Good, something which parallels the shift in fashion business objectives from a mindset of increasing profits to adding value. Companies operating in the fashion and lifestyle space need to prove their commitment to the common good, or risk existing at all.

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Climate change. Population growth. Collapsing natural resource stocks. Economic inequality. Governance breakdowns. Automation. Ideological conflict. Distressed infrastructure.

We live in a world that will be forced to confront these challenges, whether we like it or not, whether we are ready or not. Do you know how these factors will affect your professional future and your organization? Businesses don’t operate in a vacuum. They simultaneously shape and are shaped by the geopolitical, economic, social, natural, and technological environments in which they operate. As companies seek to navigate the risks and opportunities presented by future changes, they urgently need curious, ethical, and responsible leaders who can look at these global trends and solve problems across corporate functions.

This course is designed to equip participants with the skills and tools to successfully face some of the most significant global issues for business managers. It asks participants to envision the future they would like to live in, and to consider the myriad ways of leading their communities and companies to that future. During the course, participants will be challenged to think about ways to rebalance equity across the value chain, promote circular economies, and integrate cross-sector approaches that lead to positive social and environmental impact.

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Being an exceptional leader in today’s complex and fast-moving business environment demands specific skills and the ability to successfully predict and adapt to changing realities. Through their words, actions and behaviors values-based leaders seek to inspire, influence and motivate the people in their organizations to lead with shared values and implement them consistently to the benefit of their business and the common good. In Values-Based Leadership Skills for An Interconnected World, students will accelerate their leadership by reflecting on their own assets and developmental needs, learn how others perceive them and leverage this new self-awareness to create their own leadership development action plan.  Because performance in a leadership role requires more than just knowledge and skills, we will use group experiential activities to help students gain an understanding of the factors that drive effective values-based leadership across the spectrum of contexts affecting their ability to achieve great results.

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Are you and your business ready to adapt to rapid environmental, economic, social, technological and political challenges, safeguard people and assets, all the while maintaining profitable and impactful enterprise? What does it mean to have a complete risk assessment and planning that would assure continuity of your business and its mission? Business resilience is exactly a measure of your readiness for unexpected, any adversity that can test your enterprise to its limits.

In this course, students will work towards constructing a complete business resilience mapping and business continuity planning, all based on real life case discussions and up-to-date examples of dealing with management of extreme risks.

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This course aims to equip participants with a general overview as to how global and local circumstances shape social business and microfinance, and to equip them with the knowledge and skills to determine what factors they should take into account when developing their own social ventures, or when creating an enabling environment for social business and microfinance. Particular attention is paid to how different political, cultural and economic institutional environments favor the evolution of different forms of social business and how different forms of social business negotiate tensions between social and commercial objectives.

Through this course, we will explore the foundations of money, the evolution of financial tools and structures that enable social impact, and where the field will continue to develop. In the first section of the course, we will break down the role of money in society to understand the ways that it can be utilized as a potential force for good and/or bad. Next, we will learn about microfinance, venture philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, access to capital, market-based approaches to social change, and community initiatives through case students to analyze how money is being applied in the market. The course also explores the complexities of money’s role in society and the importance of multi-stakeholder analysis and partnerships across sectors to enable partnerships.

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