The Silicon Valley is one of the most economically dynamic and innovative places on earth. Now Presidio Graduate School (PGS) and Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) have formed a strategic partnership to apply talent and resources to helping keep San Francisco Bay Area communities sustainable and thriving.
Bay Area communities are grappling with the social and environmental impacts of the booming local economy. PGS students will benchmark best practices in business and draft policy to help address these impacts. PGS and SVLG will also engage community groups to learn what makes a community livable and thriving for residents, crowdsourcing ideas to help inform policy and corporate discussions.
Collectively, members of the SVLG provide nearly one in every three private-sector jobs in Silicon Valley, and have more than $3 trillion in global GDP. PGS educates and inspires new generations of skilled, visionary, and enterprising leaders to transform business and public policy and create a more just, prosperous and sustainable world.
“Silicon Valley Leader Group’s partnership with Presidio Graduate School affords our members hundreds of hours of MBA student best-practice research to further the sustainability of their products, services, operations, suppliers, and customers,” says Mike Mielke, Vice President, Silicon Valley Leadership Group. “Plus, the Leadership Group itself will benefit from the college’s MPA (Masters of Public Administration), students’ time drafting policy that benefits the environment, society, and business at the municipal, state, and national levels. In essence, the partnership multiplies our members’ and our organization’s reach in doing good in the world and in the Valley’s economy.”
To help SVLG executives and employees of member organizations better understand the complex issues around designing more sustainable communities, PGS will provide student research projects and corporate training opportunities based on its first-of-a-kind Sustainable Solutions MBA and MPA curriculum. Municipalities will benefit from PGS expertise in designing public-private partnerships.
This partnership will deliver tremendous benefits to PGS, SVLG members, and the community. SVLG members and local government will have access to sustainability expertise. Students get to practical research and policy drafting experience. As Katie Excoffier, Sustainability Manager at Genentech and PGS Alumna, said after this partnership was announced, “By leveraging PGS students’ research and professors’ innovation in sustainable management and policy, my company (Genentech) and the hundreds of other Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s members can access the latest best practices and brainstorming events tapping corporate, government, not-for-profit, academic, and civic engagement.”
Together, the two organizations will take an exciting leap forward to activate thousands of business and governmental professionals in organizations throughout Silicon Valley. Working together with local residents and leaders, this partnership has the potential to create and model sustainable solutions to social and environmental challenges, improving the health of our communities.
PGS Board Co-Chair Suzanne Farver says, “The PGS-SVLG partnership will multiply PGS’ impact in Silicon Valley and, through the companies’ influence, globally. Plus, leveraging PGS’ expertise in public policy and public-private engagement will foster the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s ability to propose systems-thinking solutions for energy and sustainability in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, and beyond.”
Connect with Us:
@greenSVLG; @SVLeadershipGrp; https://www.linkedin.com/company/silicon-valley-leadership-group/
@PresidioGrad; https://www.linkedin.com/school/presidio-graduate-school/
– Robert Coombs, VP of Marketing, Presidio Graduate School | May 9, 2019
