Green scene | Jay Friedlander heads up the College of the Atlantic's green business program
Photo/Sara Donnelly
Jay Friedlander got an early lesson on responsible entrepreneurship as a Peace Corp volunteer in the African country of Mauritania
The College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor is already one of the country’s greenest colleges — the environmental magazine Grist in August 2007 called it, in fact, the greenest — and now it’s bringing its sustainable state of mind to the business world.
This fall, the college will launch what it says is the first undergraduate green business program on the East Coast. The program will train undergraduate students on the basics of entrepreneurship with a sustainable and socially responsible bent. It’s the first business program the college has ever launched, and it chose one of Maine’s most famous socially responsible businessmen to lead it.
Jay Friedlander, the former chief operating officer of O’Naturals in Portland, earlier this summer accepted the position of Sharpe-McNally Chair of Green and Socially Responsible Business at COA. Friedlander had taught socially responsible business courses as an adjunct professor at COA — as well as at his alma-mater, Babson College in Massachusetts — and helped build O’Naturals into a successful company with franchises in 15 locations around the country (the company does not reveal revenue figures). The opportunity to teach students about responsible entrepreneurship, Friedlander says, fulfills a longtime goal.
“I’ve been a practitioner for 10 years,” Friedlander says, “and for me a huge part of it is essentially spreading the word. Most people start a business because they want to start a business, they don’t think about how what I’m doing is going to have a huge impact on the world.”
Friedlander, 39, has been preoccupied with the impact business has on society since he was a Peace Corps volunteer in his mid-20s. Friedlander worked in Mauritania, an African country in the Sahara Desert. Slavery had only been outlawed in the country in 1980, and Friedlander witnessed the redemption some residents found thanks to socially responsible business. “That’s when I decided I wanted to do business, because it’s all around you,” Friedlander says. “Business has a tremendous power to influence lives both positively and negatively.”
But in this age of green washing, when what’s touted as sustainable may in reality be irresponsible, is Friedlander essentially charged with the daunting task of teaching morality? Not exactly. Friedlander says the program will focus on creative decision making, encouraging students to consider more than just the bottom line — like, for example, when O’Naturals a few years ago switched to reuseable in-store cups after considering the environmental benefits as well as the money it would save by reducing trash hauling costs and paper cup purchases. “If you’re looking at a problem using one perspective, you’re going to only see one solution,” Friedlander explains. “Whereas if you look at it from multiple perspectives, you’re going to see opportunities you never expected.”
Friedlander is currently crafting the curriculum he’ll launch on the first day of classes on Sept. 11. The school expects more than 30 students will choose the green business track during its first year — all of the school’s 320 students major in human ecology and choose tracks within that major. “When I was in business school [from 1995 to 1997], people didn’t understand, they didn’t grasp it,” says Friedlander of sustainable thinking. But that sentiment has changed. Today, “there’s a huge interest at college campuses, with global warming and these massive environmental issues.”
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