Leading Change Dinner: April 27, 2010
Leading Change Dinner: Responsibility in a Flat World
Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Time: 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: Microsoft Campus, Redmond
Dinner will be served.
Guest Speaker: Dan Bross, Senior Director, Corporate Citizenship at Microsoft
Tickets will be available on Brown Paper Tickets soon.
Topic Summary — Clearly, today’s economic and social challenges are beyond the ability of governments to solve and will require a cross sector response. Business success in our flat, interconnected, multi-cultural world will require forward looking, socially aware leaders. Leaders who recognize the opportunity to increase business value by addressing social challenges. As the role of business in society, particularly in the US, evolves beyond Friedman (Milton and Tom), corporate leaders need more than the basic toolbox of traditional business skills—finance, marketing, human resources, strategy. Successful executives will need creativity, empathy and context to help their businesses compete and grow across multiple cultures and geographies.
DANIEL T. BROSS — Career Profile
Dan Bross, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Corporate Citizenship, has over twenty-five years of experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. With a background in public policy, government and public affairs and corporate reputation management, Dan has led government affairs and policy teams at both the federal and state levels for two Fortune 100 companies. His corporate experience includes strategic planning; policy development and advocacy; grassroots program development and management; strategic relationship identification and engagement; and investor relations.
Since joining Microsoft in 1998, Dan has held positions of increasing responsibility and scope, including Director of State Government Affairs, Director of Business Affairs and Policy Communications, Director of Strategic Community Engagement, and Director of Corporate Citizenship. In 2003 he was appointed to the newly created position of Director of Corporate Citizenship and played a key role in managing a cross-company strategic planning process to develop Microsoft’s Corporate Citizenship Initiative. The initiative, one of the company’s key global business strategies, is designed to ensure that Microsoft provides products, advances policies and delivers programs that create opportunity, improve quality of life and contribute to sustainable economic and social development.
Today Dan and his team are responsible for citizenship strategic planning and program development; field readiness and training; marketing and communications; business integration; and stakeholder engagement. Closely related to his citizenship responsibilities, Dan also manages Microsoft’s strategic relationship with the World Economic Forum.
In addition to his corporate experience, Dan has significant management and program development experience in the nonprofit sector. During his tenure as Executive Director AIDS Council, the nation’s leading AIDS advocacy organization, he chaired a broad national coalition of health and human service organizations and non-governmental organizations and served as an advisor to President Clinton’s Domestic Policy Advisor on the structuring and staffing of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Catawba College in Salisbury, NC and a master’s degree in Public Administration from the George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Dan currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Catawba College; the Steering Committee of the World Economic Forum’s Global Corporate Citizenship Initiative; the Board of Advisors of the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College; the Board of Directors of Net Impact; and is a Visiting Professor of Practice at Simmons College School of Management.