The University of Oregon is a hub of innovation and intersection, where the business savvy meets the environmentally-minded. There’s no better example of this than the Center for Sustainable Business, housed in the Lundquist College of Business. For nearly three decades, the center has been developing leaders who can balance profit, people, and the planet.
Miranda Menard, James Schulte, and Guru Larson are three of the UO’s sustainable business success stories. These Oregon alumni bring the values of corporate responsibility and environmental stewardship to the work they do in corporate sustainability. From managing over 16 million feet of Nike real estate to developing business cases for sustainable initiatives, these Ducks are changing the present to ensure the future.
Miranda Menard, BS ’18 (environmental studies, planning, public policy and management), MBA ’21, MCRP ’21
Senior Program Manager, Energy & Sustainability at CBRE
Miranda Menard’s mother was an environmental engineer who spent her career cleaning up radiation contaminated water, so she grew up with a love of science and an appreciation for the relationship people have with the world around them. When it came time for college, Menard combined her passion for the environment with her people skills, double majoring in environmental studies and planning, public policy & management. Working in the public sector after graduation, she felt that she wanted to make an even bigger impact through her work and pursued an MBA.
“I realized in my MBA program that big business is where a lot of the money and a lot of the influence is, so I really went into the corporate social lane because [sustainability professionals] are able to be those influencers,” she said. “The impact that we're able to have is significant compared to what I was able to do in some of my previous roles simply because of the scale at which we're working at and the resources that we have.”
After graduating with her MBA and master of community and regional planning, Menard started working for CBRE, where she leads sustainability strategy and implementation across Nike’s 16 million+ square feet of real estate. Through this work, she has learned that strong regulations help motivate companies to support sustainability initiatives.
“There are so many people and companies who want to do the right thing, they might just not know how and where to start . . . Saying, ‘Hey, this is a building performance standard that we have to fall under. It's the law,’ really helps us move the work forward,” she said.
Ultimately, she said it comes down to the people doing the work every day to ensure a better future for all.
“There are so many professionals who have dedicated their careers to corporate social responsibility, be it sustainability, [diversity, equity, and inclusion], whatever the case may be. There are so many people who are like, ‘This matters . . . I'm going to figure out how to push this work forward,’ and that's really inspiring to be around people who want to get the job done,” she said.
While Menard leads the way for sustainability across Nike’s business, she also makes time to support her community, serving as alumni engagement chair on the UO Black Alumni Network board. Working and volunteering with a service mindset, Menard’s drive to work in corporate sustainability comes from an innate sense of obligation to the people and world around her.
“Corporations are a pillar of society. Therefore, I truly do believe it is our responsibility to act with care in how we're operating in said society,” she said.
James Schulte, MBA ’24
Sustainability Program Manager at Columbia Sportswear
When James Schulte was thinking of going back to school for his MBA, he wanted to dig deeper into the intersection of business and sustainability. Now, as sustainability program manager at Columbia Sportswear Company, he guides sustainability programs through implementation, making the business case for each opportunity to go green.
“I really believe that there can be a path forward where businesses can continue to grow while being better stewards of the environments in which they operate in, and I'm trying to just add more and more momentum to that intersection,” he said.
Schulte has spent his life in the outdoors connecting with the natural world, hiking, camping, and even working with an ocean conservation group as an undergraduate student. Those experiences molded his passion for the environment.
“I'm a big believer in the old saying, ‘We protect what we love.’ I have fallen in love with so many outdoor spaces around this planet, and I really believe that we have the responsibility to protect our natural environments to make sure that future generations can do the same,” he said.
In his work, that looks like tracking and engaging with sustainability-minded public policy and regulations across North America, co-directing Columbia’s global impact reporting, and structuring programs to deliver cost savings with positive environmental outcomes. Schulte said that internal education across teams is necessary for these bodies of work to land successfully and create meaningful change.
Questions like “How do we want to go above and beyond the required regulations in order to resonate with our consumers [and] be ethical stakeholders?” are on Schulte’s mind. He’s constantly thinking about how to go beyond compliance and future-proof the business.
As he looks to the future, Schulte has a wish list. His dreams include more companies achieving carbon negative emissions by durably removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing waste production and water consumption, and transitioning product packaging from single-use plastics to compostable or biodegradable alternatives. He recognizes that most sustainability teams dream of similar goals, despite available technology and time constraints. He said working toward them, however, is crucial.
“Most of these environmental impacts are inextricably intertwined with the human impact and the human experience . . . [and] ultimately it's people that bring our products to life,” he said.
Guru Larson, BA ’05 (journalism), MBA ’09
Director of Sustainability at Columbia Sportswear
Growing up in Oslo, Norway, Guru Larson could cross country ski from her back door into the forest just beyond her house, venturing out for hot chocolate and waffles in a warming hut on the ski trails. In the summer, her family would go out to cabins, camp, and swim in lakes, enjoying the outdoors.
Her passion for business sustainability, however, was sparked during a summer job at BP in their Oslo office when the company was beginning to transition to renewable energy sources. It was the exposure to those initiatives that drove her to return to the UO to pursue her MBA with a focus on sustainable business.
Her first project in the MBA program was researching and working on sustainable packaging for Clif Bar. After an internship with a technology consulting company, she realized that she wanted to work in an industry that connected to her personal interests, which took her outdoors.
In her work with Columbia Sportswear and its brands, Larson has supported efforts that directly benefit not only consumers and the business, but the communities where production happens, including through a water tower program keeping water clean. She has worked for Columbia for over a decade.
“I'm really proud of some of the programs that Columbia has supported that work directly with our factories . . . especially those focused on getting clean water for those communities. Those are really light-lift, easy solutions that are not expensive. They require very little maintenance, and for 10 years, over 200,000 people every day get clean water because of these towers,” she explained. As fresh water access and climate change impact resource accessibility, the impact of the program has compounded and “gotten even more important since the program started,” she said.
Through strong partnerships, Larson is thinking not just about immediate opportunities for impact, but also the long-term potential for more sustainable corporations.
“Sustainability is one of those interesting areas where you are thinking long term. Businesses obviously do long term planning, but there is a lot of focus on your one to three-year goals, whereas the nature of sustainability is looking broader. That puts you in a different mindset, and I think that perspective is helpful when you're starting to think about global potential, global risk, and disruptions,” she said.
She said she hopes changes in regulations, as well as wider integration of sustainability efforts into corporate structures, will continue to strengthen the work, especially as the present reinforces the need for future-proofing.
"The more that there is turbulence in the macro environment, it underscores what resilience actually means . . . The further along that we come in these crazy, turbulent times, the more we're understanding why we started this work in the first place [and] how important it is to be considering all these externalities in your business operations,” she said.
For Larson, the north star of corporate responsibility is doing right by people and the environment.
“I think we have a responsibility to be doing the right thing and making responsible choices as a business and managing our impacts in a responsible way,” she said.
—By Sarah Bathke, BA ’25 (journalism), UO Alumni Association communications generalist