Professional Development Event Biographies

Wayne Visser
Founder & Director
CSR International

Dr. Wayne Visser is Founder and Director of the think-tank CSR International and the author/editor of ten books, including eight on the role of business in society, the most recent of which is The World Guide to CSR. His next book is called The Age of Responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the New DNA of Business (forthcoming in 2010). Other books include Landmarks for sustainability: Events and Initiatives that Changed Our World and The Top 50 Sustainability Books.

In addition, Dr. Visser is Senior Associate at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Adjunct Professor in CSR at the La Trobe Graduate School of Management.

Before getting his PhD in Corporate Social Responsibility (Nottingham University, UK), Wayne was Director of Sustainability Services for KPMG and Strategy Analyst for Cap Gemini in South Africa. His other qualifications include an MSc in Human Ecology (Edinburgh University, UK) and a Bachelor of Business Science with Honours in Marketing (Cape Town University, South Africa).

Dr. Visser has published widely on topics of sustainability and corporate social responsibility in academic journals, the popular press, books, book chapters, research papers, and research reports. He provides numerous resources for both academicians and practitioners through CSR International. For a full bibliography, go to www.waynevisser.com/cv_full_wvisser.pdf.

In 2010, Dr. Visser is on a 20 country ‘CSR Quest' World Tour, to share best practices in corporate sustainability and responsibility. As of August 2010, countries visited during this quest include Kenya, Turkey, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, India, UK, Belgium, China, Greece, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.

Wayne lives in London, UK, and enjoys art, writing poetry, spending time outdoors and traveling in his home continent of Africa.

David Oser
Former Executive Vice President
Chief Investment Officer, Treasurer of ShoreBank

David Oser is a former member of ShoreBank's executive management team. Until ShoreBank's recent closing, he had been employed by ShoreBank since 1976, during which the Bank grew from less than $100m in total assets to more than $2.5b. Oser managed fixed income investment portfolios for ShoreBank, its affiliates and outside institutional clients and has more than $800 million in assets under his management. He also manages the Bank's Treasury operations, consisting of wholesale funding and other borrowings totaling more than $1 billion.

Mr. Oser was a member of the Bank's Asset/Liability Management Committee, chaired the Risk Management Committee and represented the bank on the parent holding company Risk Management Committee.

From 1980 to 1994, he served as Controller of the Bank and the Corporation. From its inception in 2000 to February 2005, he was sub-advisor of the Domini Social Bond Fund (a mutual fund that grew to $65 million in assets).

Through many domestic and international consulting assignments, Mr. Oser has conducted risk management seminars for bankers in South Africa, Romania and the Republic of Georgia. He has provided technical assistance to banking and microfinance programs in Pakistan, Poland and Bangladesh. He has made numerous presentations to large and small groups on economic and investment topics.

Mr. Oser is a Director of Kashf Microfinance Bank in Pakistan representing ShoreCap. Domestically, he has managed investments and risk management programs for client banks in Arkansas and Kansas and conducted due diligence assessments of numerous financial institutions with special attention to investments and risk management.

Mr. Oser publishes a monthly economic commentary on his website: www.shorebank.typepad.com/the_oser_view. His views and comments are frequently quoted in newspapers and other publications.

In 1998 Mr. Oser was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Board of Trustees of the Wilmette Illinois Public Library District. He has since been re-elected to the Board twice by the voters of Wilmette. He is also a member of the Dean's Advisory Council of the Heller College of Business of Roosevelt University.

Mr. Oser received a BA from Carleton College and an MA from the University of Chicago. He is married and has four children.

Woodrow Clark
Clark Strategic Partners

Dr. Clark, a long-time advocate for the environment and renewable energy, is an internationally recognized author, lecturer and advisor specializing in sustainable communities.

He is currently on assignment representing the U.S. State Department to Africa and China to talk about climate change.

In December 2007, Dr. Clark was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with his colleagues in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC). His contribution was for work as the co-writer on Chapter 2 on Finance and Economics and the co-editor for Chapter 3 on Legal and Contracts.

In 2004, he founded Clark Strategic Partners (CSP), an environmental and renewable energy consulting firm using his political-economic expertise in order to guide, advise and implement public and private clients worldwide – specifically on sustainable development projects for communities. Prior to launching CSP, Dr. Clark was Senior Advisor on Renewable Energy, Emerging Technologies, and Finance to California Governor Gray Davis (2000-2003).

In 1997 Dr. Clark was appointed the first Research Director for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), establishing the economic and technical basis for renewable energy technologies to be commercialized in developing nations.

Dr. Clark currently serves and advises several boards and commissions, including the Minetta Institute Research Board (San Jose, CA); the Board of the National Building Museum's Green Building Committee (Washington, DC); an Advisor to the Foundation on Economic Trends, Global Sustainable Group (Washington, DC); the Board for the City of Santa Monica's Solar Program; and the City of Beverly Hills Unified School District's Citizen Bond Oversight Committee. Dr. Clark is a "Green Advisor" to the California Workforce Investment Board (WIB) and the Producers Guild of America (PGA). Recently Dr. Clark served as a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute and as a Board Member on the Alumni Association at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Clark has authored numerous books, journal articles and numerous mass media credits including articles, papers and documentary videos. His books include Sustainable Communities, Qualitative Economics: Toward a Science of Economics, and Agile Energy Systems: Global Lessons from the California Energy Crisis. His most recent publication is the Sustainable Communities Design Handbook (Elsevier Press) which came out in June 2010. He is currently working on The Third Industrial Revolution (Praeger Press) due out in early 2011.

Raed Elaydi
Amoco Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship & Management
Roosevelt University

Dr. Raed Elaydi is the Amoco Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Management in the Heller College of Business Administration at Roosevelt University. He received his PhD from Texas A&M University, Mays Business School and has been on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Penn State University.

Dr. Elaydi's research focus examines most notably the unprecedented human migration into urban slums. This seismic change in the size and scope of the world's population into urban areas creates many challenges and opportunities. His goal is to facilitate entrepreneurs, with a sustainability focus, in entering and developing viable firms to serve this growing market. Consistent with this goal, he has authored "Strategic Motivations and Choice in Subsistence Markets" in the Journal of Business Research and multiple case studies for GlobaLens on Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) issues.

Dr. Elaydi's presentations focus on People Planet Profit, linking local root causes of poverty to individual social entrepreneurial ventures. His interests include social entrepreneurship in subsistence markets, collaboration platforms for sustainable innovation, entrepreneurial opportunity for poverty alleviation, and innovation and reputation in p2p entrepreneurial ventures.

Dr. Elaydi has spent this summer working with his winning team of US and Indian (Vellore Institute of Technology) students to build a village solar-still that can provide 200k litres of clean water a day using only sunlight. The winning team, Team JAL, recently won the Acara Institute's 2010 Acara Challenge, the University of Minnesota's Acara Institute (see http://www.onebillionminds.com/2010/2535.html). Dr. Elaydi is also working with two other teams on 2 cent pocket-sized water purification systems and on slum sanitation.