Global Sustainability Series

Biodiversity is the variety of plants, animals, and other species interacting with their environment to maintain the balance of nature. In cities, these environments include natural areas, urban landscapes, and other built environments that species call home.

Los Angeles is located within a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot. While this makes the city a biodiversity jewel, it also means that the region faces significant threats. Ensuring resilience and sustainability requires innovative strategies, as biodiversity plays a crucial role in ecosystem services that support both nature and human well-being. How can we protect biodiversity while fostering urban growth and sustainability in Los Angeles and beyond?

On Tuesday, March 18th, a panel discussion will explored biodiversity, its challenges, and strategies for protection on both a local and global scale.

Our panelists included:
Dr. Eric Strauss – President's Professor of Biology at Loyola Marymount University and Executive Director of the Center for Urban Resilience (CURes)
Dr. Tyler Harlan – Associate Professor of Urban and Environmental Studies
Dr. Lawrence Kalbers – Professor of Accounting and the R. Chad Dreier Chair in Accounting Ethics

The gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that is growing dramatically in popularity and global reach. An important concern is the environmental impact of gaming systems and operations and the social impacts of this entertainment medium. Activision Blizzard (recently acquired by Microsoft) has been widely recognized for its leadership in ESG initiatives and reporting, especially related to carbon footprint tracking and disclosure, its multiple mitigation initiatives supporting its Net Zero goal, and leading social and philanthropic programs.  

Keynote speaker and former Head of Sustainability/VP of CSR & ESG, Dan Goldenberg told the story of the work of ESG at Activision Blizzard. Under his leadership, Activision Blizzard entered the top quartile of America’s Greenest Companies (Newsweek) and the Call of Duty Endowment rose to become the world’s largest philanthropic funder of veteran employment, backing more than 130,000 high quality job placements at 1/19th the cost per placement of U.S. Department of Labor efforts and achieving $7.9 billion in economic impact for veterans and their families.

With insights from:

Melissa Fitzpatrick, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Business Ethics and Sustainability
Junghoon Park, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Global Sustainability Strategy

Every day, 5000 daily truckloads of food from farms to distribution centers are lost in the United States due to a fragmented agriculture and food supply chain. This disconnection from farm to table leads to production and consumption mismatches, food waste, and unnecessary expenditure of financial, human, and natural resources. California-based Agtools provides game-changing intelligence to reunite the global food supply chain.

We hosted Agtools CEO and co-founder Martha Montoya, VP at Chipotle Mexican Grill, to discuss Agtools, an end-to-end supply chain solution tailored to the agricultural and food industries. A Microsoft Machine Learning and AI Award Winner, Agtools is a worldwide SaaS platform gathering real-time government and institutional market data for more than 500 specialty crops commodities to provide up-to-the-moment statistics — like time, cost, supply, demand, alternatives, and more — so that supply chain stakeholders can better manage decisions such as forecasting and purchase orders, seeding, harvesting and delivery schedules.