The Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI) graduated its fourth and largest class of MBA’s and Certificates in Sustainable Business, and Marty McDonald of egg was amongst the graduates. It was quite an emotional day, as this year’s graduating class of 30 MBAs in Sustainable Business and 31 Certificates in Sustainable Business and Sustainable Entrepreneurship & Intrapreneurship gathered at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle to fete their accomplishments and herald a new day for the next generation of business leaders for whom the construct of successful business venture is about more than just making money.

With “changing business for good” a key tenet of BGI’s philosophy, the class of 2007 chose David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, as this year’s commencement speaker. The New York Times describes Bornstein’s book as “must reading” for “anyone who cares about building a more equitable and stable world.” It chronicles and analyzes the work of social innovators who are successfully addressing social problems at scale in several countries. Bornstein’s first book, The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank, was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the best books of 1996. The book traces the history of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Grameen Bank during its first 20 years, describing the global emergence of the now-famous anti-poverty strategy known as “micro-finance.”

Gifford Pinchot III, BGI’s fearless and visionary founder, was feeling like a free-range, grass-fed pig in methane-rich stool, when he exclaimed “It’s not every year that you receive a #1 ranking in Net Impact’s 2006 Student Guide to Graduate Business Programs, land your biggest class yet, launch a successful concentration in Outdoor Industry and a certificate program in downtown Seattle, are named One of the 20 Ideas That Changed the Way the World Does Business [by Social Venture Network] and have 3 students inducted into the Society of Royal Arts for figuring out new ways to bring food to market. It’s going to be tough to top this year. But we’ll figure out a way.”

We are pleased and energized to bring the ethic of BGI to our community and clients.