J840 Communicating Social and Environmental Initiatives

Hello all,

It’s very late the night before our first class, and as I’m sure many of you (all of you?) can understand, it’s been a very busy couple of weeks.

A little about me: I moved to Lawrence in December 2007 from Toronto, Canada to work at KU’s Lied Center. I definitely miss my hometown, but if you’ve got to be anywhere, Lawrence is definitely a great place to live.

I did my undergraduate degree in a communications-based discipline. I started a graduate program in communication and culture and I spent a while working at a busy downtown Toronto communications agency.

I really like to make things; among other projects, I’m currently taking (and teaching) a metalsmithing and jewelry design class.

This is my first semester in the program, and Communicating “Greeen” Initiatives will be my second course. I’m looking forward to meeting you all tomorrow.

Please forgive me if I put an extra ‘u’ into some words; some habits die hard.

You know, I always thought my parents were a little crazy. When I was 10, we moved from a prosperous Minneapolis middle-class suburb to a hobby farm in rural Minnesota.  It was a fixer-upper to say the least, but the 18 acres of pasture were filled with wildflowers and places to get very dirty.  Kid heaven.  Despite spending my summers and winters chopping wood, pulling weeds in the vegetable garden, breaking the ice in the stock tanks, cleaning barns and pretty much living in sleeping bags, I think I miss those days.  Because I’m back to living in a prosperous suburb and now I think I’m a little crazy.  I feel like I’ve lost that close connection with nature and the outdoors. 

I hope in this class to learn about green connections and viewpoints and how to recognize them and define them.  And how they spill into the business world.  It seems these days so many issues, like those surrounding environment, are so polarized.  Listening seems to be a lost art.  But I think opposing viewpoints need to be communicated with respect and clarity, and then heard with respect and clarity.  Consensus can be an elusive but critical component to making quality change in the world.

Let’s hope I can communicate that to my eight-year-old.  I’ve been taking care of him full-time since I put my freelance publication career into mothballs eight years ago.  Before he was born, I wrote, edited and designed business publications for large, small and nonprofit clients.  Now that my son is older and more independent, I decided to start freelancing again and go back to school to get my masters in Marketing Communications.  (I received a B.A. in Journalism/Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.)  This is my first semester at KU.  My goal is to eventually offer clients a fuller package of services that might include marketing research and strategic planning.  In my meager free time, I love sailing, tennis, mystery novels, reading the comics with my son and watching KU basketball with my husband.

We have a really interesting group of people in the class.  I look forward to getting to know you all better.  See you Friday.  By the way, this is only my second attempt at archery.  I was way off target.  No injuries reported.

        

In my office, I have a poster of Halley’s Comet over an Arizona desert with the following anonymous quote:  “We must never lose our sense of awe at the magnificence of our planet.” 

About 18 months ago, my wife, Heather, and I took a trip to San Francisco.  The scenery was so incredibly beautiful and reminded me of that quote and of our collective responsibility to the Earth. 

View of the Pacific near Big Sur, CA

A cool picure of my favorite bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge

Having two young kids, I want to preserve the Earth for them and their kids.  I believe we can use the Earth’s resources to meet our needs, but we need to be responsible and sustain the ability of the Earth to do so for future generations.

I try to be “eco-friendly”.  Could I do more?  Certainly!  I think we could always do more in most aspects of life, but there are practical, physical, and financial limits to everything.  IMHO, the key is striking a fair balance of living on Earth while sustaining it. 

This Class:

My interest in this class is two-fold.  I’m interested in the general communication aspects and also the green movement, which is becoming more prevalent in my work.

Personal:

Heather and I have been married almost 14 years.  We have two sons:  Elijah (age 5) and Kellan (age 5 months).  We also have a beagle / basset hound mix, Guinness (nicknamed “Bubba”).  We moved here from Illinois about two years ago.  We love it here! 

Our family

Guinness

Work:

I work as a structural engineer and project manager for Hanson Professional Services Inc. (www.hanson-inc.com). 

School:

I started the MBA program last fall after a nearly 13 year sabbatical from school.  I’ve truly enjoyed it so far, mainly because of all the interesting people I meet, many of whom do work and have education that is totally different from me, and because the courses are so different from my engineering undergrad work. 

I am also a blogging rookie, so please forgive any major “faux pas”.  I look forward to this class and meeting everyone!

There’s another one of these posts buried on this blog but I thought it would be easier to repost it here. (And I think I just missed my own deadline.)  Unfortunately, as the blog administrator, I will be known as J500 instead of SimranS.

It’s great to be working with all of you.  Here’s my spiel:

Simran Sethi is a sustainable business contributor to CNBC and the Lacy C. Haynes Visiting Professional Chair at the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communications, where she teaches courses on environmental communications. Simran is writing a book on environmental equity for Harper Collins and is the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, winner of the bronze 2008 Axiom Award for Best Business Ethics book. She is the co-host/ writer of Sundance Channel’s environmental programming The Green and the creator of the Sundance web series The Good Fight, highlighting global environmental justice efforts and grassroots activism.

Named one of the top ten eco-heroes of the planet by the UK’s Independent and lauded as the “environmental messenger” by Vanity Fair, Simran has contributed segments to Nightly News with Brian Williams, the Today Show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Ellen DeGeneres Show and the Martha Stewart Show.  She is committed to a redefinition of environmentalism that includes voices from the prairie, the inner-city and the global community.  Simran serves on the Sustainability Advisory Board in Lawrence, Kansas and is the Chair of the City’s task force working group on climate change education, outreach and policy.

Simran currently blogs about energy policy and life cycle analysis for The Huffington Post.  She has been a featured guest on National Public Radio and is the host of the Emmy-award winning PBS documentary “A School in the Woods.”  Simran graduated cum laude with a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from Smith College and holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio School of Management.

Hello! My name is Jennifer W. It has sure been fun reading about everyone on this blog. I have lived in Leawood, KS my whole life except for four years in Lawrence during my undergrad. I graduated from KU spring 2005 with a degree in Journalism: Strategic Communications. In addition to earning my degree in journalism I enjoyed holding positions within my sorority, Gamma Phi, and I also completed internships at Fox 4 and Infinity Broadcasting. Upon graduation in 2005 I began working at C3 Brand Marketing. I work on SONIC Drive-In and am responsible for the Kids Segment. In addition to work I volunteer for the Ali Kemp Foundation. I assist with marketing and event planning for the Ali Kemp Foundation. I’m also a member and volunteer with the KC Advertisement Club.

This is my third semester in the KU Marketing Communications Master’s program. I’m enrolled in nine hours this semester and am certainly keeping myself quite busy. When I’m not working, studying or volunteering I love traveling with my family and friends, especially to the beach! My sister and I travel to Southern California often to visit our family. I enjoy going to the lake, my puppy Lucy, Royals baseball, summer and working out.   

Looking forward to a great class!

Greetings!

I’m Liz Hawks and no, my middle initial is not J.

I am in my eighth semester of the program and, as such, am very much looking forward to the day that I can say, “this is finally my last semester!”

I am a Vice President at Fleishman-Hillard. We are an international communications firm with 80 offices worldwide. I work with fun, creative clients like Hallmark and a little more stale, heavily-regulated clients like those managing clinical trials. Additionally, I am founding co-chair of the firm’s global marketing-to-moms practice group (essentially a consultancy within the firm), which is my passion. Did you know moms make 85% of household purchase decisions, yet 70% don’t think marketers are targeting them? My goal is to help clients bridge the gap.

Before coming to FH six years ago, I worked for Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore (www.restorekc.org) here in KC. This is the part where I tell you about my “green” side. ReStore’s mission is to support the construction of houses by Kansas City Habitat for Humanity through the collection and sale of new and used building materials diverted from the waste stream, keeping them out of our landfills and in circulation where they can benefit the Kansas City community. Have you remodeled your home? Thrown out a sink or window with that remodel? Guess what — you could have saved that from filling up our local landfills by donating it to ReStore AND you would have at the same time helped Habitat build new houses for families in need.

Outside of FH and KU (and catching up on my sleep whenever and wherever I can steal it) the most important part of my life happens to be two little guys, ages 1 and 2, who are the reasons for that part about needing to catch up on my sleep. Graham and Reid have both entered my life while I’ve been a student in this program and thus proof that it is possible to be a full-time working mom and still get a master’s degree! (And to all of you who have mentioned coffee here…cheers to that!)

We love mommy almost as much as we love Elmo

Hello, my name is Vanessa Ruperto and I am KU MBA student. I earned my undergraduate in Management in 2003 from Baker University.  I am a native to the Kansas City area and truly love my hometown.  I have worked at Sprint for 11 years in operations and I enjoy the constant change of technology. My husband Richard and I have been married for five years.  In addition to my fulltime job and school my husband and I recently started a photography business called RVR Photography, as in Richard and Vanessa Ruperto Photography.  Photography is Richard’s passion and creating something that is our own is my passion.  Although juggling these three competing priorities can be hectic I enjoy each of them and thrive on pushing myself to be successful.  As a result of these three priorities I haven’t had much time for hobbies but whenever possible I love traveling, visiting with friends and family and jumping on the back of my husband’s Harley to take a relaxing ride.

I am looking forward to this class and truly believe I will learn things that I can use in my personal and professional life.  After completing some of the assigned reading for the first day of class I realized how little I know about green initiatives and the complexities of communicating them.  Needless to say the readings peaked my interest.  However, this paled in comparison to how excited I was after I read some of the “About Mes” on our class blog.  I was blown away by the range of backgrounds of my classmates and know this diversity will make the class a great learning experience.