Conscious Social Change Workshop
Aligning Ourselves with Our Mission – How can you be an effective leader of social change in the world and in your workplace? In an interactive workshop led by Gretchen Wallace, Tuck Alum and Founder of the social entrepreneurship incubator Global Grassroots, participants will learn a framework for mindful leadership. The workshop activities are designed to stimulate deep reflection and inner exploration on how we each can make a positive impact on the world whether we start a social enterprise or work within a large company. We’ll look at how social leaders and mentors have affected our lives and ask how we can pass on that impact to others, creating a community of mindful leaders working towards positive social change. Rather than focusing on external incentives that compel us to do good, this session will look at the internal motivations that make us change agents in the world.
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"Deepening personal consciousness and contributing towards the common good are both essential to social change." |
Session Chair: Merritt Patridge, T'13 How did you get interested in conscious social change?
In November 2011, during my first term at Tuck, I invited Gretchen Wallace, a Tuck alum and Founder and President of nonprofit Global Grassroots, to meet me for coffee in Hanover. I had read about her leadership and the work Global Grassroots in social entrepreneurship in post-conflict countries in the Upper Valley News, and as a 1st year student with interests in the global nonprofit sector, and I wanted to learn more. I immediately connected with Gretchen and the mission and guiding principles of Global Grassroots, especially the idea that deepening personal consciousness and contributing towards the common good are both essential to social change. What was the motivation behind organizing this session? Over the past year and a half, Gretchen has become a teacher and mentor to me. As student in her Conscious Social Change Practitioners course, I’ve deepened my self-knowledge and found understanding that I believe to be integral to my own ability to serve as a compassionate leader capable of making wise and mindful decisions. I’ve hoped to share this experience with Tuck and am humbled that it’s been invited into the context of the BSC, where students connect the principles of Conscious Social Change to their role as business leaders. |
Gretchen Wallace T’01 - Moderator
Founder and President, Global Grassroots Gretchen Steidle Wallace's inspiration for her work in social change first stirred in her as a child when her military family was transferred to the Philippines, where she discovered the difficulties of poverty. In 2004, Gretchen founded Global Grassroots, a Hanover, N.H.-based nonprofit organization, which she now leads, that seeks to catalyze the development of conscious communities of change agents in post-conflict countries who will work will work independently, collectively and systemically to advance social change for vulnerable women and girls. Gretchen holds a BA in foreign affairs in 1996 from the University of Virginia, where she attended as a Jefferson Scholar. She also holds an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College, where she helped to found Tuck's Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship, now the Center for Business & Society. |