Are capitalism and doing good mutually exclusive?
We've all read the horror stories of capitalism gone bad and big business hurting the general citizenry. This panel will prove that a for-profit, humanistic business can do good!
Join us as an All-Star panel featuring Chicago Tech Leaders Desiree Vargas Wrigley (GiveForward), Patty Huber Morrissey (Groupon Grassroots), Brittany Martin Graunke (ZealousGood), and Thea Durfree Polancic (ClearSpace) discuss their past, present and future experiences utilizing web and mobile technologies to bring communities together, do GOOD, and run successful businesses!
____________________________________________________________________
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Desiree Vargas Wrigley
• Founder & President of GiveForward
• Featured Crain's Chicago Top Tech 50
Half Costa Rican, half Kansas-cityan, Desiree graduated from Yale University in 2004. Prior to founding GiveForward in 2008 with co-founder Ethan Austin, she worked as a specialist in collegiate entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City and as an independent consultant for Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors. She is passionate about philanthropy and the role that small-scale donors can have on our communities. When not working, she spends her time with her amazing family and inventing recipes that don’t always work.
Patty Huber Morrissey
• Manager of Groupon Grassroots
Patty Huber Morrissey, Manager of Groupon Grassroots, leads the philanthropic arm at Groupon. Harnessing the collective action platform, Patty developed the Groupon Grassroots initiative to turn deal seekers into do-gooders by tapping into the collective power of the group to respond to local community need. Passionate about volunteer involvement and crafty with online engagement, she has led Grassroots in raising funds and awareness for local charities across the nation.
Patty discovered her passion for community development and civic engagement through her experience developing service-learning and experiential education programs for high school and college students. She went on to produce corporate volunteer programs while pursing work in mental health and social service agencies. Patty approaches corporate citizenship and civic engagement from a social work perspective and seeks to create innovative ways to solve social problems through sustainable for-profit models.
Brittany Martin Graunke
• Founder, ZealousGood
A passionate social entrepreneur, Brittany founded Zealous Good, a website that connects people with extra goods to donate to local charities with matching needs. Brittany studied Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University and began her career in the Chicago office of Bain & Company as a strategic business consultant. Wanting to find ways to make the world a better place, Brittany left Bain to pursue a career change to the non-profit arena. She joined the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago as a strategic engagement manager, where she realized the need for a more efficient process for matching donated goods with non-profit organizations. Shortly thereafter, Zealous Good was born in Chicago and since then Brittany has been focused on making the in-kind donation process easier, faster and more meaningful. In her free time, she's working toward completing her new years resolution of running 500 miles.
Thea Durfee Polancic
• Founder of ClearSpace
• Founder of Conscious Capitalism, Chicago Chapter
Thea is a founding partner of ClearSpace, LLC, a consultancy focused on leader, management team, and organizational effectiveness. She coaches CEOs and their teams in a wide range of industries and stages of venture maturity to help create exceptional results and cultures of gracious accountability. She has helped facilitate some of the most important achievements of her clients’ organizations, including landing funding, going public, creating successful cultures and being able to scale.
Thea cut her teeth in leadership working for Fortune 100 companies in emerging markets. Her roles put her in the operations leader and CEO seats in her 20’s. She returned to the US in 1999, and in 2002 co-founded ClearSpace. Over the past fifteen years, she has coached Chairmen, CEO’s, and senior and executive leadership in businesses and not-for-profit organizations such as Ace Hardware, Inc., the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Standard Parking, Inc. and the Museum of ContemporaryArt.; as well as clients in Canada, the Netherlands and the U.K.
Thea is active in the innovation and entrepreneurship community in Chicago. She has been a mentor for Healthbox and ExcelerateLabs for the past three years and continues to work with many early stage CEOs and their teams, including BenchPrep, Power2Switch, GiveForward and Target Data.
Thea is a passionate proponent of Conscious Capitalism® and is the Founder of theChicago Chapter. Conscious Capitalism has proven that businesses elevate humanity and out-perform their competitors through conscious culture, purpose, leadership and creating value for all stakeholders.
http://wunderlandgroup.com/how-to-use-mobile-web-to-connect-communities-and-do-good
