Speaker biographies

Beth Beloff is the director of Golder Associates Inc., a global geotechnical engineering and environmental services company. She is also the founding president of the BRIDGES to Sustainability Institute. Since the early 1990s, she has been a leader in formulating concepts and practice of sustainable development. Today, she is an expert in combining sustainable development with other crucial business aspects, specifically in measuring sustainability performance. Prior to BRIDGES, she founded and directed the Institute for Corporate Environmental Management in the business school at the University of Houston. She has given about two-hundred speeches and authored over thirty publications, including the much acclaimed Transforming Sustainability Strategy into Action: the Chemical Industry (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2005). She currently consults corporations, NGOS, and cities on integrating sustainability into strategy, operations, and supply chains. Ms. Beloff is currently working on a series of books for children on sustainability.

Nicholas Capaldi is the Legendre-Soule Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics at Loyola University, a Hume Scholar, and a domestic public policy specialist. His research focuses on public policy and its interaction with political science, philosophy, law religion, and economics. He is a member of the editorial board of six journals, including Public Affairs Quarterly. Mr. Capaldi is the author of six books, over fifty articles, and the editor of six anthropological works. Previously, he was a professor at the University of Tulsa, Queens College, the National University of Singapore, and State University at Potsdom in New York. He is currently writing a biography on John Stuart Mill for the Cambridge University Press.

Mauro De Lorenzo is a resident fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at AEI, where he studies private sector-based approaches to development in postconflict and post-Socialist countries; Chinese investment and political influence outside the Pacific region, particularly in Africa; and democratic accountability in aid-receiving countries. In 2005, Mr. De Lorenzo worked as a consultant to Afghan construction companies in Kabul, and prior to that he was a research associate at both the American University in Cairo and the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala, Uganda, focusing on refugee policy and the wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. In 2002, he researched and was associate producer of The Price of Aid, a BBC documentary about U.S. food aid to Africa.

Thomas Dichter is the author of Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World has Failed (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). His research focuses on the role of NGOs in economic development, development policy analysis, and microfinance. He has worked in international development since 1964 in fifty developing countries and for a variety of institutions such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Peace Corps, the Aga Khan Foundation, and TechnoServe. He has also taught development courses at Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts, Clark University, and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He has also written numerous books, most recently What’s Wrong with Microfinance: The Sequence of Growth and Credit in Economic History (Cato Institute, 2007).

Jonathan Doh is an associate professor of management at the Villanova School of Business and the founding director of the Center for Global Leadership. His research focuses on international strategy and corporate responsibility. Perviously, Mr. Doh was a trade official with the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he was the director of Canada Trade Policy and later, the director of NAFTA affairs. He is the author and coauthor of over forty articles in top international business and management journals, twenty chapters in scholarly volumes, five books, and over fifty conference papers. He is also the associate editor of the journals Business & Society and Academy of Management Learning and Education. He is also a frequent speaker on issues such as globalization, trade policy, economic integration, and corporate social responsibility.

Don Eberly is the author of The Rise of Global Civil Society: Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up (Encounter Books, 2008). Mr. Eberly has served as a senior adviser for global corporate citizenship at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Business Civic Leadership Center. He has served in key staff positions in Congress the White House during two administrations. He also cofounded the nonprofit organization Civil Society Project, was a senior counselor for international civil society at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the director of private sector outreach and coordination for tsunami reconstruction at the State Department. Mr. Eberly authored or coauthored eight books and speaks to business and civic audiences on issues of civic renewal, corporate citizenship, and the growing international movement to promote business-based development.

Jon Entine is a visiting fellow at AEI, a columnist for the U.K.-based magazine Ethical Corporation, and a writer on business ethics, science, and public policy. His newest book, Abraham’s Children (Grand Central Publishing, 2007), focuses on the nexus of race, disease, and identity in Western culture. He previously wrote and edited the AEI Press books Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (2006) and Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (2005). Before launching his writing career, Mr. Entine was a network television news writer and producer from 1975¬–94, winning more than twenty awards, including two Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the former Soviet Union. While at NBC News, he produced and cowrote Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, which won the award for best feature film at the Forty-Fifth Annual International Sport Film Festival in 1990, and which inspired his book Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk about It (PublicAffairs, 2000).

Josh Gilder is a founding director of the White House Writers Group. He was a senior speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan from 1985–88. He authored and coauthored many of the president’s televised speeches, including two State of the Union addresses and the highly regarded 1988 Moscow Summit address. Mr. Gilder was also the principle deputy assistant secretary of state for human rights and an adviser to numerous presidential primary and general campaigns. He has been published in many periodicals including, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Times.

Adam Greene is vice president of labor affairs and corporate responsibility at the United States Council for International Business, where he advises clients on international codes and initiatives, internal management systems, strategic alliances, and corporate reporting. Mr. Green is also the vice chairman of the Business Technical Advisory Committee on Labour Matters to the Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour. Previously, he was the associate director of the global environmental program at the Stem School of Business at New York University. He is currently working on the implementation of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development guidelines for multinational enterprises and the International Labor Organization Tripartite Declaration on Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy.

Ian Maitland is a professor of management at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. He has taught in the Carlson School’s China and Warsaw executive MBA programs and as a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo. His teaching and research primarily focuses on business ethics and markets. He has had numerous articles in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Business Strategy, the Journal of Politics, and the Journal of Private Enterprise. Mr. Maitland has been a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and was the first senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment.

Anthony O’Hear is a professor of philosophy at the University of Buckingham. He is also the director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and the editor of Philosophy. Previously, he was the senior education adviser to the British government. Mr. O’Hear has written many articles and books on philosophy, including and has contributed to numerous media outlets in the United Kingdom. He is currently working on a book titled, The Great Books, which will be published in February 2009.

Gwen Ruta is the director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s corporate partnership program. Her work focuses on developing innovative, business-based solutions to environmental challenges and leveraging market forces to create environmentally friendly products and services for large corporations. She was also the vice president at Metcalf & Eddy, an international environmental engineering firm. She has also held senior positions at both the Environmental Protection Agency and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Environmental League of Massachusetts and of the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute.

Fred Smith is president and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy group established in 1984. Previously, Mr. Smith was the director of government relations for the Council for a Competitive Economy, a senior economist for the Association of American Railroads, and a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Elaine Sternberg is the author of Just Business: Business Ethics in Action (Oxford University Press, 2000). She is also the principal of Analytical Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in business ethics and corporate governance. Ms. Sternberg is a visiting scholar at the University of Florida and a visiting fellow of the University of Leeds in the  Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre. Her numerous publications include Corporate Governance: Accountability in the Marketplace (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2004) and The Stakeholder Concept: A Mistaken Doctrine (Foundation for Business Responsibilities, 1999).

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