Imagine a world where businesses align profit with purpose and where sustainability is not just a buzzword but a way of life. This is the vision that our guest, Winnie Mulamba, Executive Director of the For Good Movement in Florida, strives to bring to reality. Winnie's journey from Kenya to the United States and her dedication to sustainability and business management will leave you inspired and looking at the world through a unique lens.
Join us as we navigate through the workings of the Florida For Good Network and the B Tourism Collective, initiatives that Winnie is instrumental in. They are more than just organizations, they are communities welcoming businesses at different stages of their sustainability journey. You'll learn about the intricacies of transitioning systems and the importance of inclusivity. But that's not all; we also delve into the vibrant B Corp culture in Florida and how it’s being nurtured, one university, one student at a time.
Brace yourselves as we dive into the hard-hitting aspects of advocacy and stakeholder participation, and their indispensable role in shaping communities. Winnie presents a compelling case for the upcoming BLD Conference as a platform for fostering meaningful dialogues and collaboration. So, if you're someone who believes in the power of collective action and the vision of a sustainable future, this conversation with Winnie Mulamba is the perfect opportunity to get involved and be part of the For Good Movement.
For Good Movement in Florida Website
B Tourism Website
Jared Meyer's episode with Benn; Impactful Decisions
Are you a business leader in Florida seeking for a values-aligned community? Click the link to. Join - Florida For Good and get connected!
Are you interested in starting your B Corp journey or recertify your B Corp status? Sign up for our Spring cohort at the Business For Good Lab Program and get your impact assessment done by a team of student consultants and peer B Corp mentor for as quick as 8 weeks! **valued at $ 6,000** Sign up today, spots are filling up quickly!
Florida For Good is excited to invite you and your colleagues at the first ever in-person B Leadership Development (BLD) conference in the Southeast. This is going to be a great opportunity for your team members to join fellow B Corps and other mission-driven businesses to learn, connect and establish partnerships that support the growth of your business and positive impact work. You can learn more about the conference and get your tickets HERE.
Imagine a world where businesses align profit with purpose and where sustainability is not just a buzzword but a way of life. This is the vision that our guest, Winnie Mulamba, Executive Director of the For Good Movement in Florida, strives to bring to reality. Winnie's journey from Kenya to the United States and her dedication to sustainability and business management will leave you inspired and looking at the world through a unique lens.
Join us as we navigate through the workings of the Florida For Good Network and the B Tourism Collective, initiatives that Winnie is instrumental in. They are more than just organizations, they are communities welcoming businesses at different stages of their sustainability journey. You'll learn about the intricacies of transitioning systems and the importance of inclusivity. But that's not all; we also delve into the vibrant B Corp culture in Florida and how it’s being nurtured, one university, one student at a time.
Brace yourselves as we dive into the hard-hitting aspects of advocacy and stakeholder participation, and their indispensable role in shaping communities. Winnie presents a compelling case for the upcoming BLD Conference as a platform for fostering meaningful dialogues and collaboration. So, if you're someone who believes in the power of collective action and the vision of a sustainable future, this conversation with Winnie Mulamba is the perfect opportunity to get involved and be part of the For Good Movement.
For Good Movement in Florida Website
B Tourism Website
Jared Meyer's episode with Benn; Impactful Decisions
Are you a business leader in Florida seeking for a values-aligned community? Click the link to. Join - Florida For Good and get connected!
Are you interested in starting your B Corp journey or recertify your B Corp status? Sign up for our Spring cohort at the Business For Good Lab Program and get your impact assessment done by a team of student consultants and peer B Corp mentor for as quick as 8 weeks! **valued at $ 6,000** Sign up today, spots are filling up quickly!
Florida For Good is excited to invite you and your colleagues at the first ever in-person B Leadership Development (BLD) conference in the Southeast. This is going to be a great opportunity for your team members to join fellow B Corps and other mission-driven businesses to learn, connect and establish partnerships that support the growth of your business and positive impact work. You can learn more about the conference and get your tickets HERE.
Welcome to the responsibly different mini-series exploring the different B-locals around the United States and Canada. B-locals are placed-based communities of people that are using business as a force for good in their region. B-locals are made up of people and businesses that are helping to transform the global economy to benefit all people, community and the planet. Throughout this series, we will hear from different B-local leaders in their community and we will learn about the work they are doing and how others can get involved. In this episode, I will be talking with Winnie Mulumba of the Four Good Movement, based in Florida. Welcome, winnie, to responsibly different. We are so excited to have you on the show today and I can't wait to kind of dive into this conversation with you. Before we do dive straight into everything, I want to just take a step back and get to know you a little bit better and introduce you to our listeners. So, winnie, if you don't mind, who is Winnie?
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you. Thank you for having me here, brittany. I'm really excited to have been invited to share my story and the work that I do with your audience. So this is a it's really an honor being here with you. Winnie is a girl from Kenya.
Speaker 1:I was born and raised in Kenya and this, just my life, is just like. There's so much that has taken place in my life, so I'm just going to try and summarize it all, but I'd love for you and your audience to know a little bit about me again before I guess we talk about the professional side of my work. So I was born and raised in Kenya. I completed my first undergraduate degree in marketing and commerce from a university in Kenya and you know I didn't think I'd be in the US at this time in my life, like 10, 15 years ago. If you told me you will be in the US working with a group called the Big Cup Movement, I'd be laughing at you because it was really unimaginable at that time in my life. But upon my graduation I was lucky enough to get a job with government agency in Kenya. It's an agricultural agency and during my time there is when I kind of like got sparked into wanting to understand more of what was happening in the world and just the things that we are doing to sustain our life here on earth. So, as I said, I was in the agricultural you know space in Kenya and throughout my time at the agency I really learned a lot about you know the food we eat, how it's grown, how it's transported all over the world, how much of what we grow can be affected by the climate, and you know how costly it is to have like healthy eating habits.
Speaker 1:So I started to question the dynamics of you know food production and I was more interested in the localizing of food production to some extent, because I know not everything can be localized, but I was more interested in that concept of like growing food where you're living and also giving people the knowledge and resources needed to grow food in their communities and are in their homes. So I thought that accessibility and close proximity to nutritional food had great benefits to any local economy, the environment and the well-being of the society. But the more I looked into it, the more I found out that food production was just like a huge global system that involved a lot of players, a lot of policymakers, and it was just not an easy like thing that you could just say, oh yeah, let me just grow food in my backyard and oh yeah, cool. But for us to like make the change, it had to be like a systemic change. And I realized I needed to learn more and educate myself about these systems and what it meant.
Speaker 1:And when I started doing my search on the internet, that's when I learned about sustainability and I was like, oh, what is that word? So I started doing more research on sustainability and what that meant and I was just like, oh yeah, what I want to do is basically self-sustainance being able to sustain our current living without necessarily impacting our future generations. And I continued to dig into it and I was like, yeah, I need to go to school, I want to go back to school and I want to learn more about this. So that's how I got myself into the US, because I applied for a program at the Patel College of Global Sustainability at USF, that is, the University of South Florida, and it's been a journey.
Speaker 1:Since. It's been an interesting journey and during my time there I graduated, went to school there and I graduated with my grad school, got my dual master's in global sustainability and business management and upon graduation I did work at USF as their assistant program director for sustainability, before moving over to the For Good Movement as the executive director. So that's my short story of who I am and how I got into the field of sustainability and why I'm in this pickup movement at this point in time. Wow, wow, wow.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Man, when I was in college and I was an undergrad, I went to a state university here in New Hampshire, but one of my semesters I did a summer course where I went over to the UK and I was my college co-hosted and co-taught this summer course with the University of Southern Florida and it was a sustainability course. What so? My whole head, like every, when you started talking about that, I was like well, I wonder if any of my professors are the same professors that Winnie knows?
Speaker 1:Maybe I you'd be surprised because I was really engaged and involved with my program at the Patel College and even not just that college but with other colleges at the university because the College of Business I was also engaged with some programs with them, college of Engineering because I realized sustainability is interdisciplinary and you know you just have to make these partnerships and make relationships with people in other disciplines. So naturally I found myself gravitating and finding like activities and events in all these other colleges and familiarizing myself with like other professors, so I wouldn't be surprised if I knew that professor or whoever was a program with you. That's so cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll have to connect offline about all that Mm. Hmm, awesome. Ok, so you mentioned that you joined the Four Good Movement, so I'm wondering can you give me a little bit of history about the Four Good Movement? How did it form? When did it form? What's the mission of the group? Yeah, let's start there.
Speaker 1:Okay, good. So the For Good Movement was founded by our chairman, jared Mears. He actually prefers to be seen as a co-founder because there have been other key people that have been involved in shaping the organization since its inception and he considers all these people, including him, as co-founders of the movement. So Jared was inspired to bring the Bicop movement to Florida. After he got his companies certified as Bicoporations, he thought that it would be great to have a local resource center that educated and connected businesses with all things Bicops sustainability, resiliency and values alignment. At the time, there was no statewide organization that supported businesses in aligning their profits with purpose. So For Good Movement was therefore established as a nonprofit in 2018 to support business communities in Florida that wanted to be more responsible by using business as a force for good and assure stakeholders of their accountability, transparency and reliability of balancing profits with purpose. So yeah, so that's how we were formed.
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned. You mentioned when you all started. But I guess I'm just curious, how many members do you have and, like, how many people are on staff?
Speaker 1:The businesses that have signed up to become members of Florida for Good. We have about 550 businesses that have signed up to be like a part of Florida for Good. But when I talk about membership, you know it's there's one thing to be a member and there's one thing like to say we have, you have a community like. You have an engaged community. In terms of our structure, we are formed. We are unique in the sense that we are unlike most big locals. We received some seed money from our founder to support the establishment of organization when we formed. So it made sense for us to be incorporated as a nonprofit, since we also wanted the allowance to grow the organization and the ability to receive funds as we expanded our program offerings. So our structure is quite unique in the sense that we have two main initiatives under the nonprofit one is regional based initiative and the other is a global initiative. So, in terms of structure, we have a board of directors that oversee the overall strategic decisions of the organization. Then we have a small operations team of staff that oversee the day-to-day runnings of the organization and then, lastly, we have our greatest asset, which is our regional leaders that oversee the local development and growth of our initiatives in Florida and across the group, the globe. So let me speak a little bit, a little bit more about that. You know the regional leaders and how they differentiate from each other, from the local initiative and the global initiative. As I mentioned earlier, we have those two initiatives, so one is called the Florida for Good Network and the other one is called the B Tourism Collective.
Speaker 1:Both of these initiatives are another for good movement umbrella and the Florida for Good Network, like the name suggests, is a regional based network specific to the Florida market. The network does educate and support all kinds of businesses based in Florida in aligning their profits with purpose. The network has chapters across the state which are led by our regional leaders. Again, these are our MVPs because they do this on a volunteer basis. So, for example, you know if you're a business in Miami region and you'd like to get connected to our chapter in Miami, you know we would connect you to them and they will help you like figure out any resources that you need in that region, any events that are taking place in that region in regards to responsible businesses, and they'll just plug you to all the types of resources and needs that you want to elevate your businesses when it comes to, you know, doing good.
Speaker 1:And then the second initiative is an industry specific network called the B Tourism Collective. So this is a global network of travel and tourism companies as well as other conscious travel organizations that take collective action for environmental and social justice. So this network is specific to the tourism industry, unlike the Florida for Good Network, which is regional based, and the B Tourism Collective is also also has global operations. So that's how they differentiate from each other. But both of these initiatives are led by our regional leaders who, again, as I said, do this on a volunteer basis. So that's kind of like how we are structured so the board and we have the small stuff and then we have a big group of regional leaders helping us to do that grass level type work.
Speaker 2:And I'm curious because hearing, hearing you talk about the for good movement and you're specifically saying, like not everybody is a B Corp. So I'm just curious, like in in this movement, if you had to guess, like would you say, 50% of the active members that you're working with are they B Corps? Like, what's that ratio?
Speaker 1:So our B Corp numbers aren't like. Their ratio is really small in comparison to the people that are in our network. Because I want to remind you that, however much our focus is on like B Corp growth and B Corp movement, we also understand that not every business is in a position to like just come right in and get B Corp certified. We understand that the B Corp process can be lengthy for some businesses depending on the resources they have. So what we do as Florida for good, which is the regional network, we welcome any type of business, no matter where they are in their B Corp journey. So if you are a business that is not yet ready to certify at any point in time, but do believe in the ethos of you know stakeholder governance, then you are welcome into the club, I may call it. So the idea is just to be in community with one another, because the moment we in community with one another, you get to still get to learn, you still get to share ideas on what it means to be a stakeholder. You know to have those stakeholder governance models and we know that the more education, more awareness will eventually get people there. Everybody has different like acceptance levels or change levels. So some people get to like change quick when they are transitioning from one system to another. Some people take time before they can accept the change and change. So we acknowledge that is also possible in businesses and that's why we give businesses time. We just want them to be in community and then it can take them a month, it can take them a year to like get there. Some will just be in community and will never certify.
Speaker 1:It's not what we want, but we understand the challenges that each businesses face and then we also had to do that because our market in Florida is kind of like different, you know, like in terms of like just the, the political environment, the business environment.
Speaker 1:It's unique in its own way. So we don't want to be an organization that is pushing away people because they don't meet, you know, they are not like at a certain level because, again, as I said, everybody has, you know, their own resources and everybody comes in at different levels and we want to be able to be welcoming to all. The only underlying factor here is we all agree that, yes, stakeholder governance is a thing. We all agree that we need to change our economic system to be more inclusive, to be more regenerative and to be transparent, and we need business leaders to be accountable. So we have those principles that we all agree on, which are similar to the B-COP principles, but when it comes to certification, yeah, the numbers do not line up because we have a membership of about 500 businesses, 550 businesses, but we have about 45 I want to say maybe 45 48 businesses in Florida, b-cops in Florida right now.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, very cool. Thank you for sharing all of that. I think I think it's interesting. Everything you're saying about, yeah, the B-COP certification is quite hard and daunting and it involves a lot of work, and acknowledging that I think is really important, and acknowledging that, as much as some businesses might want to go through it and become certified, it can be a really daunting task for them. So I think it's cool that you, that the for-good movement in Florida for good is still welcoming and inclusive and lets those people into the community. So, yeah, well, very well said. Thanks, winnie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also want to remind you that we've been in existence for five years now. So I think you know we evolve. I think we will continue to evolve as an organization too, and as things become, depending on how the current trends and the market trends are going to. You know, organization change, organizations do change and you become maybe more stringent or you become more, so it allows us to be able to also like shape ourselves and dictate the direction you want to grow as an organization and the members we want to like have in our community, because at this point in time, I think having to have all these voices from like different kinds of businesses is also helpful to like dictate how organization is going to grow Cool yep.
Speaker 2:So I guess, like speaking about the organization growing, I'm curious to just understand a little bit of like the culture in Florida and how the four good movement interacts with the different regions of Florida. I will completely own right now that I'm not a Florida junkie. Like some people on my team are really into Disney, so they care so much about Florida. They could name every single town and every single city in Florida, but I can't even tell you the difference between where Tampa is and where Miami is. So I apologize for the lack of my Florida knowledge here. But I'm just curious, like from your perspective, and like I think this question can be answered in so many different ways Because it also depends on, like, how you interpret the word community. But I'm really curious to understand, like what does community mean to you and to the four good movement? But then also, how does the community look different in the culture in those communities, look different for different regions in Florida?
Speaker 1:Okay. So yeah, those are two big questions and loaded ones, so I'll see if I'll do my best to answer that. So let's talk about the community in Florida Currently, the current Bico community and culture in Florida. As you said, yeah, florida is very, very, very huge. It expands like miles and miles, miles away, and what is happening in North Florida and what is happening in South Florida and Central, it's just so different. And that is why we have our original networks, because there is no way we would have been able to like say that we are serving our community by just having organization centralized at, you know, just the headquartered somewhere and having everybody living in one space and trying to serve the entire Florida. That I think that would have been deceiving ourselves and just the work that we do. So our structure, the way it's set up, and having this regional chapters is really helpful because these are people that live in that community or in that region. These are people that have businesses in that community. So chances of them understanding what's going on in the area, putting events in the area, is just way easier and having that close knit community and understanding their needs and interests is way easier. So the chapters have been set in a way that if a business, say, for example, is set in Orlando and they want to be in community with Florida for good, we're like, yeah, you'll join the umbrella of Florida for good, but we encourage that business to get more connected to the chapter in Central Florida Because through that, these are the people who are putting together events. These are businesses that are in the same region as yours. So you are experiencing either the same challenges to some extent, you have sort of like the same policymakers to some extent at a local level. You know the type of like, even marketing, that you could do collectively, the type of events that you could do collectively. So that is how we have managed to like run our programs throughout the state just through this regional chapters. Again, that's why I call them the MVPs, because without them I don't think we would really be meeting the. You know our goals, our vision and vision.
Speaker 1:And when we now talk in general about the Bicop community culture in Florida, in my own opinion I think the Bicop culture in Florida is still at its infancy stage. We still have a long way to go to embed and cultivate the culture of stakeholder governance into our business systems as well as have it as part of our state's mission, like you know, where the state of Florida says that, yes, you know, 10% or 20% of our businesses, or 100% of our businesses are responsible businesses. So we still have a long way to get there, I think. But about and also mentioning that our organization has also been in existence for five years and throughout this period we have supported over 200 plus businesses in conducting their business impact assessment. So this is to show that I have a much.
Speaker 1:You know the certification levels, like when you look at the number of Bicops, that we have grown since our inception, which the number grew from 11 to 48. Right now, currently, we're at 48. The number of businesses that have undergone the business impact assessment is way higher than that. We have 200 plus businesses. So I think that's already you know we are walking in the right direction.
Speaker 1:It's as I said businesses get to that certification point at different levels and at different stages.
Speaker 1:So some people might take the business impact assessment and they're like I want to certify immediately, and some are like, oh, we still need to do a little things in-house before we can even get to the 80 point mark so that we can certify by just knowing that the numbers have continued to grow, the numbers of businesses that are just starting to just use the assessment to understand where they are at in the process, is amazing.
Speaker 1:And then we have also educated and trained over 300 students from various universities in Florida about Bicops and how to conduct an assessment. So that's again the green workforce development that we are doing here in Florida, because these students will have to get employed somewhere. These businesses that we want them to become Bicops or we want them to be more responsible, will need employees that also have the same values. So I think we are at the inception stages, but I think we are walking in the right direction, because we are slowly building those blocks needed to have that ecosystem that is considered, you know, like a pickup community. So, yeah, that's where we are at.
Speaker 2:You said that you all are helping companies get certified to become B Corpse and I'm just wondering Does that mean that you're putting like staff time behind businesses to get certified? Like are you helping them? Are you giving staff to these companies to help them complete the assessment?
Speaker 1:What we do. We have an amazing collaborative program with universities here in Florida to do that work and this is how it works. So we have this thing called the business for good labs and business for good labs. I think I don't know if other states have this. I think North Carolina has something similar to this. I want to say Georgia too, but here in Florida we have the business for good lab program, which is a partnership between Florida for good and universities.
Speaker 1:Here in Florida, our flagship program has been with UF, that is, the University of Florida, and we have been in partnership with them on, I say, since 2018. And when we first started, the idea was businesses need to have their assessment done, they need to understand their impact, and it's a lengthy process to go through the business impact assessment and some businesses really don't have the staff, the resources, the expertise. It's just another additional layer that might hinder a business from going through that process. So through this partnership with the university, we allow businesses to apply to join the program if they're interested in going through the business impact assessment. So if they're interested, we will have them apply into the program. Once you apply into the program, you will get into a class and this class is a for credit class at UF and students again will sign up for the credit class. It's under their entrepreneurship program at UF and students will get matched up with these businesses that are interested in doing the impact assessment. So the first half of the class is where students get to learn about what are BCOPS, why do we need responsible businesses in our communities? What is reporting, sustainability reporting, say. They learn all these things related to BCOPS, work related to reporting, related to sustainability. And then the other half of the class is where now they get to work with the businesses to conduct the actual assessment. So I call it. It's a closed loop system, because the students get to that knowledge and then they get to apply their knowledge in real time and then the businesses get the help that they need to go through the assessment and then they get to work with the students and these are the same people or kind of like the group that will be looking for jobs. So it creates this relationship. It's an ecosystem of relationships and knowledge sharing and learning, and then it's intergenerational as well. It's just so valuable just having all these people in one space, having to help one another in one way or another to improve the business processes and to improve the business's impact in the community.
Speaker 1:Another group of people that is also invited to this program is mentors. So we have peer mentors, and peer mentors are either consultants they are either BCOPS consultants I mean they are either businesses that are already BCOPS or alumni student alumni that have graduated from either the program and they were maybe sustainability graduates. So these people are welcome back as mentors into the class and what they do is they fill in the gaps because, as I said, this is like a. It's a huge effort just having to go through the assessment.
Speaker 1:So having a student and having a peer mentor and the interested businesses working together is just again a closed loop system, because if a business has a question as to why, why, how should I do this? Do you have anyone in the industry who's done this before? Assuming you're, you know, assuming you're recommending a certain practice, then the peer that's where the peer person comes into play, because they will you know if they're in the same industry, they will be able to tell this interested business on oh yeah, this is how we did it, or this are the challenges we experienced, or this is how you can go about it. So it also helps to reduce the number of challenges and, just like, elevate this interested business into another level at a very short period of time.
Speaker 2:That's really. It's really cool to hear you talk about that. Here in New Hampshire, the University of New Hampshire has a we call it the B impact clinic, but it's basically the same thing that you're describing, and this upcoming fall, I'm going to be one of the peer mentors for it, so, or the business advisor for it, I should say so it's interesting hearing you talk about it from your perspective and it will be cool to this will be my first time being a business advisor for it, but it almost is making me think like, wow, there's so many more of these out there than I think I've realized and there's probably so many business like mentors and advisors that, like, we should all get together and like, start a group in the beehive and like and help each other out, because that would be really fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's actually. I think I don't know if there's a business for good lab like beehive group. I think be academics, be academics with qualify as the group for that. I think there's a be consultant group or I don't know if it's still active. But yeah, I just again think, oh, there's just so many resources out there and there's so many things that we could all share from one another and from different regions. But sometimes I think it's human nature, we just fall into our silos, Like. I think we as a beehive movement try, try, really, really hard not to walk into the back in silos but we are not like, we are not removed from it. To some extent. Yeah, Getting into our silos and still doing things like differently or not differently, but doing things like in an individual manner still like exists within, even within the pickup movement and I don't know if it's by nature. I struggled with that because I don't know if it's by nature or it's just.
Speaker 2:You mean you struggle with the idea of working in a silo, or you only work in a silo in some times. You struggle with going outside of the silo.
Speaker 1:No, I struggle with the idea that silos exist.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:And even within the beacop community, I can see how that we try so much to eliminate it, like we try so much to work in silos. That's why we have all these groups and we have all this like, yeah, the behave groups and networks. But I think to some extent we still fall short of working in silos, because a good thing is the example of business for good labs, like I think most almost all below calls should somewhat have something like that, because it's just, it's just one way in which you get more businesses like engaged, because now you're not just stressing on like, oh, who's going to help these businesses do their BIA and we don't have the staff to support them. So, yeah, I think all below calls should have like a university that they are working with, either just for the research purposes of it, the academic side of it, or just to support businesses.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, it isn't like. You do bring up a really interesting point though. So I don't know if you know this about me, but I've, for my for almost my entire professional career, I've only been in the B Corp space community. So I don't really know of a business community that isn't collaborative and isn't like, willing to share best practices. And sometimes when I'm working with colleagues that are new to the B Corp space or have worked at businesses that aren't B Corp minded, I don't want to say they second guess me, but sometimes it's like, oh, you think somebody will share that with us, a handbook on zero waste practices and I'm like, yeah, somebody will share that with us.
Speaker 1:What do you mean?
Speaker 2:So it is a really interesting conversation and I do see it coming up in my community in my life quite often right now actually, where it's like I am so collaboratively minded and I think the B Corp community is kind of like I'm using air quotes here but like I think kind of like wrecked me in the way of like I think the B Corp community has taught me that you, if you just ask like people will collaborate with you. So I am always just asking Exactly.
Speaker 1:And then I get buffled when people don't ask or when things are yeah and it's like why didn't you ask?
Speaker 2:me for help. I would have helped you, so that's really fun. Okay, so I do want to get back to one of my earlier questions, that I asked you too many questions at once and it's totally my fault. But I am wondering what does the word community mean to you? Can you explain maybe, your definition of community?
Speaker 1:So I believe that we are better together than we are alone. From a very personal and basic level, I have grown up in different environments, like in Kenya, here in between Kenya and here. I don't know like I've just grown in so many different environments where the community has taken care of me, like literally I say I'm a child of the community. I have lived in a number of different places and I managed to navigate most of these places not only because of my own doing, but because of the people I have met along the way. So I have been, you know it's either been my blood relations that have, you know, helped me through the way, but majority that I have met have been people that you know I just met along the way and had no relations with, but somehow we shared the same values and or maybe life stories and then these people became either my acquaintances and maybe it that's why it ended, but somehow they impacted my life or some of it grew into like friendships and they became even family. So I think people should seek and develop communities that align with their values, like it should be a constant thing that you're doing in your life. We all have, you know, common things that we care about from a personal level or a professional level. So when we develop communities that acknowledge and support these values that we care about, then we are just doing ourselves a huge favor, really, by lightning you're lightning the stress loads that we face every day, just by existing in the world, you know. So I think the Bicop community, you know, is a great community to be in, and the beauty about being in a community is it requires the participation of all stakeholders for it to really be transformative and successful. So you know, it can be one sided everyone has to be involved, everyone has to be engaged and everyone has to want for the community to grow. So yeah, that's how I sit and I always seek to be in the community. Everywhere I go I seek for community because I think that's what develops me and I think everyone should be seeking that.
Speaker 2:And that was put so gracefully and I love that answer. That was so perfect. Winnie, I'm not now that we all kind of understand what community means to you. I'm curious to hear, as a community, are you all having any hard conversations? And I guess, like, if you are, what are those conversations look like? What's challenging you to grow as a community more together?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a we're having. Actually, lately we've been having to do that because, being that, you know, we have been in existence for five years. Typically, you know, you tend to revise your strategic plan every five years and look at like, oh, what are we going to do in the next five years? What's our long term goal? So we are in that state where we are trying to identify how we want to grow, where we want to go, what we want to do, who we want to involve, and that is usually like a really intense process because it involves a lot of players and you have to have hard conversations as well, like who do you really want to be in our community? What type of things do you want to continue doing?
Speaker 1:And one of the things that we really have had to like talk about over the past few years has been policy advocacy.
Speaker 1:This is something that we really didn't used to do a lot of in the past, but it's something that we've gotten to like do to be heavily involved with in the in the near in the recent past.
Speaker 1:So you know, traditionally businesses have been known to stay away from advocacy.
Speaker 1:They want to do things, and you know, and then government is usually on the other side.
Speaker 1:So it's usually, like you know, it's working in silos, but in the light of, you know, current trends and just where the world is going, we've had conversations as an organization to determine how far we want to get involved with policy advocacy, because we understand there's still some you know business leaders that really don't want to do anything with policy advocacy, but we also know there are some interests in the business community to really get engaged in the local policy, because we know that policy really dictates some of the things that businesses do and the progress that businesses can make in the space of, you know, sustainability, esg, resiliency, just all that altogether, equity, justice, and that's all we are advocating for.
Speaker 1:So this is still like a hot topic for us and I'm sorry I don't really have like a direct answer on like oh, what are we going to do and where are we going with this? But we will continue to determine where to draw the line as things progress, because we want to make sure that we are balancing the interests of, you know, our community and you know the interest and needs of our community. So I think the policy advocacy would be the area in which we really have to like figure out what direction we want to go with that as an organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I guess I'm just curious, and I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this, but I'm curious. You're saying, you're saying we keep having these conversations, and when you say we, does that mean, like the staff members, the board members, the members of the four good movement, like all that?
Speaker 1:altogether like all stakeholders. Yeah, the community, because you know it's it is a community decision to some extent, like as management or the board, can dictate the strategic direction that we want to go. But because we are a member organization, we also have to consider what our members want and where their interests are. So, as I said, you know, getting into advocacy work isn't really like what traditionally businesses have been doing in the past. So how do we also educate and train business leaders to be more into like the advocacy work? How do we make them see advocacy as something that is not like an additional work but is part of that business? It's part of business.
Speaker 1:So it's just another way of looking at advocacy from even not the conventional way of like, you know, doing advocacy where we want to stand. We can go out there and stand with placards and do all that. It's just we have to also redefine what advocacy means to us as an organization and to what extent do you want to be involved with and how do you want to do it. How do you want to train our business members to like be a part of it? So it's, I think it's a whole beast in its own and we have to be careful on how we want to address it, hmm.
Speaker 2:Very, very well said. Yeah, I like that approach. I like what you're saying. I agree with all of the words that you're saying, and I might have lied, because I said that that was the last question that I was going to ask you, but hopefully this is a really easy question. Um, what am I correct in thinking that you will be at the B Corp leadership development conference in the Southeast?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I will be there. I'm excited for it.
Speaker 2:And am I also correct in thinking that you are on that planning committee?
Speaker 1:Yes, I am, and it's been an amazing time to just be with other people in community from other states.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, so for those of you listening that maybe don't know what we're talking about, there's a BLD business leadership development conference and it will be on September 21st and 22nd in Rowley, north Carolina, and Winnie. Can you just actually can you give me like a little overview, like who are the, who are the other states that are helping plan this and like what is that partnership like working with multiple different B locals to plan one conference?
Speaker 1:So this is my second time working on the planning of the conference. Last year we did it virtually. Surprisingly, it's been smooth, like working with the other planners in the planning of this. Last year it was virtual, so I think there was the technicalities or the involvement of things a little bit less than how it's going to be this year because we're doing it in person this year. So I think the technicalities are way higher, the expectations are way higher and just the coordination and the logistics can be a little bit stressful. But really I haven't seen that with the group.
Speaker 1:I feel like every time we met we knocked a couple of things off our checklist and I think also meeting early enough, like we started doing the meetings, I want to say, in December last year.
Speaker 1:So understanding that we are all volunteers and giving ourselves all this time I think was helpful because we met on a monthly basis and you have time to do your other things, your primary job, and then we had an extended time to work on this.
Speaker 1:So I think that was really considerate for our chair and just the entire planning committee to be available over this time frame planning time frame and then the groups that are involved or the states that are involved are we have Bilokul Georgia, we have B Tennessee, we have Bilokul Asheville, we have Florida for good and Bilokul Mid-Atlantic, and then states like Alabama, kentucky, south Carolina and Louisiana are also involved, but I don't think they have like Bilokul chapters in those states, but we have a couple of B-cups in those states that are also involved. And then obviously Bilokul Triangle is the hosting Bilokul, so they have been heavily involved. Actually, I think the heavy lifting has also been done by Bilokul Triangle, just because they are the ones hosting. So having to figure out how people are going to move around, where are people going to eat, where are we going to do activities and sightseeing and all that good stuff is heavily done by them.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, Cool, and what's your role and responsibility for the conference?
Speaker 1:So I was in the steering committee. So our main job really was just determining how the event was going to look like, like what we wanted the event to look like in terms of the agenda, and then the type of speakers we wanted to bring in, the type of like things we wanted to talk about, and then also sponsorship and tickets and how do we market. So just the overall like designing of the event is what I was involved with with the steering committee and ensuring that you know we are checking all the boxes that we want to ensure that you know the event turns out to be like a great experience for everyone that attends. And then we had a separate committee, which was now the hosting committee, that were also doing huge heavy lifting on the logistics and things that have to take place over there. So it was split into two committees, but I think it was very impactful.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. When is there anything that you are hoping to share that I didn't ask you, or that you want to talk about before we say goodbye?
Speaker 1:I just want to say that I think we covered most of the things really, and I just want to say that it's going to take and I've said this before it's going to take all of us to like grow this pickup movement. You know, I keep asking myself all the time like where are we going to be, like, in 10 years? Where are we going to be in 20 years? And it's daunting to like think of it that way because it's like just do what we can do right now, don't think about you know that's too far out, don't think about that. But I think we need to. Everyone in this movement really needs to. You know, ask themselves like where do we want to see ourselves? Because we don't want to get watered down. We want to maintain the credibility of the B-COP status and I know for a fact, as we continue to gain momentum and people continue to learn about the B-COP status and just learn about what B-COPs are, we are going to get more interest from the businesses because and from the business community, because the consumers are already demanding for sustainable products and the consumers also know that there's greenwashing out there and they don't want to be a part of that. So verification is going to continue to be very key into how we are going to like grow as an organization or as a movement.
Speaker 1:So I think we just need to ensure that you know we are protecting the credibility of, you know, the B-COP status. We need to ensure that you know we are thinking about where we want to be, because we don't want to water down the status of this, you know, of this movement, and we are going to get corporations, large corporations. We are going to get like all types of businesses who want to be a part of this. That's just my vision, that's just my utopia world out there and I'm thinking for us to get there. We, you know the evolution of standards. We need to be a part of that.
Speaker 1:It's going to take all of us to like look at what's currently there, what's how the assessment looks like right now and how we want it to be like 10 years from now. We want to ensure that it's constantly evolving with the current trends and the market trends. So, and it's going to take all of us again. So I just, you know, want people out there that are part of this movement to constantly ask themselves that, like, where they see this movement going in the next 10 years to ensure that we are really moving towards the right direction. And then, for those who are not part of the community, you're missing out because you don't want to join in when it's too late, you know. So join us now and let's walk together to make you know our economy better. You know, we make it equitable, we make it regenerative, make it like shareable with everyone.
Speaker 2:Winnie, very well said, very well spoken. I completely echo everything that you have shared with us today. So thank you so much for joining us and leading by example how to be responsibly different with the four good movement in Florida.
Speaker 1:Aw, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure and you are such a great host too. I feel like we were just chatting like friends here, like I started off feeling like I was really on the edge, but I feel like I had to tell myself Winnie, it's Brittany, like you, you know she's just like someone like you, like she's human, Just talk, you know Right.