In order to run companies sustainably, business leaders must have an awareness of human rights and corporate social responsibility issues and an understanding of how to confront them. Students in MBA programs across the country have recognized these as permanent features of a globalized business landscape. Yet there are still far too few outlets for students to gain practical experiences in corporate responsibility, including sustainability and human rights issues.

To address this gap, USCIB has partnered with the NYU Stern Business School to offer a summer fellowship program to students seeking professional learning opportunities in corporate responsibility, sustainability and human rights. USCIB is inviting member companies to participate in the 2nd year of the Business & Human Rights Summer Fellowship for Summer 2016. The fellowship program matches talented NYU Stern MBA students interested in corporate responsibility with USCIB members willing to provide a hands-on summer internship opportunity.

The fellowship also has a training component in which USCIB and Stern will cover major corporate responsibility and human rights issues and related skills, like human rights due diligence and corporate reporting. The training will introduce the fellows to expert practitioners so fellows can provide even more added value to companies upon arriving at the start of the summer.

Last year, two fellows interned with USCIB members PepsiCo and DirectTV Latin America. The fellows discuss their experiences in blog posts here and here, as well as in the video below:

The fellows had very substantive experiences, completing tasks through their internships that contributed directly to key business operations and strategy in the area of CSR, sustainability and human rights, which included:

• Developing more than 100 indicators tracking Public Relations, Institutional Relations, Anti-Piracy and Corporate Social Responsibility for a metrics dashboard created to quantify team’s impact across 10 countries in the quarterly management report;
• Creating a business case for a company educational initiative to transition into a 501c(3) entity. Built financial model and offered recommendations in areas of costs, new markets entry and partnerships;
• Analyzing inter-departmental work flows at the corporate and country operational level to forecast team budget until 2020 and propose plan for sustained growth;
• Developing metrics and reporting on new corporate function dedicated to supply chain visibility and responsible sourcing;
• Managing external relationships and produced guidance materials for internal stakeholders to facilitate change management agenda in global procurement and operations; and
• Identifying and recommended sources of competitive advantage through benchmarking analysis of strategic peers and buyers on voluntary reporting and publicly disclosed sustainability efforts.

Companies willing to host a fellow for a 10-week, paid position working on corporate responsibility, human rights or sustainability issues should contact Ariel Meyerstein.

More information is available in this FAQ about the fellowship.