Alumni Profiles

The Sustainable Enterprise Program at UNC Kenan-Flagler attracts the highest caliber students from around the world and helps them become innovative and successful business leaders.

Get to know more about our exceptional alumni by reading their profiles.

		Deb Parsons (MBA 2006) Deb Parson’s career took her from Bain & Co. to The North Face to Intuit before she came to UNC to earn an MBA. Now as vice president of operations and business development at Good Capital in San Francisco, she is part of a team raising  money for a $30 million Social Enterprise Expansion Fund to provide capital for projects in work force development, fair trade, health care and education. In its young life, Good Capital has already been featured in Forbes and Inc. …more
		Evelyn Contre (MBA 2006) Evelyn Contre (MBA '06) has effectively knit her passion for sustainability with her work in the real estate sector to bring competitive advantage to her clients. …more
		Lisa Shpritz (MBA 2005) Lisa Shpritz is senior VP of Corporate Workplace for Bank of America (BOA) in Charlotte, North Carolina, Lisa is LEED-accredited and has played a key role in BOA plans for a platinum-level LEED building in New York City. As manager of the Environmental Risk and Sustainability Group, she also leads recycling, compliance and green cleaning —concerns that cut across the whole company and its offices around the country. Lisa also serves on the board of the U.S. Green Building Council. …more. View a 2-minute video profile of Lisa Shpritz. …more
		Fernanda Abbud (MBA 2004) Fernanda Abbud is advisor to the executive president at the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) in Brazil. Part of her work is with the technical chamber of sustainable finance, which includes the 6 largest financial firms in Brazil. BCSD Brazil works with large companies that that make up 40% of GDP in Brazil. BCSD also leads a group of 60 councils like it that span the world. …more
		Maia Blankenship (MBA 2004) Maia Blankenship is the director of National Partnerships and Investments at College Summit. The nonprofit’s goal is to grow the numbers of low-income students across the nation who will go to college. She works with foundations and private investors and manages a $15 million fund. She earned her BS from Spelman College and consulted at Ernst & Young before the chance to work on an MBA project for the Education Entrepreneurs Fund helped her find her niche. …more
		Brad Sparks (MBA 2004) Brad Sparks is director of the Global Green Initiative at KPMG International. He says that the chance to go to 4 different continents, including internships in South Africa and Thailand gave him the global experience he sought from a business school. And he credits the UNC Kenan-Flagler network with keeping him well connected within the larger corporate sustainability movement in the U.S. and around the globe. …more
		Lindsay James (MBA 2003) Lindsay James is the manager of Sustainable Strategy for the commercial flooring division of Interface. After reading Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce, she chose to pursue a career in business to be part of the change she wanted to see. She chose to earn her MBA at UNC because of its Sustainable Enterprise program.  She says Interface has seen the payoffs of a sustainable approach in decreased costs, growing sales and the lowest workforce turnover rate in the industry. …more
		Tucker Bartlett (MBA/MRP 2003) As director of Commercial Real Estate Development and Lending at Self-Help Ventures Fund, Tucker Bartlett handles $55 million in building projects and $50 million more in loans for commercial real estate in low-income areas . He says that while most invest with profits in mind, when you link low income people with the capital markets, good things happen. A 2-year tour with Peace Corps working on micro-savings and micro-loan projects led him to get his joint MBA and MRP degree at UNC. …more
		Kenneth Ho (MBA/MRP 2003) Kenneth Ho is a senior associate for Cherokee Investment Partners, LLC in Denver, CO. The $2B private equity fund buys and redevelops brownfield sites. After earning a degree from Stanford in urban planning and working in that field for a few years, he says he came to UNC Kenan-Flagler to earn a joint MBA and master’s degree in regional planning because it was one of the first schools to have a center devoted to a triple bottom line. …more
		Bruno Erbisti (MBA 2002) Bruno Erbisti handles the Bioenergy Development Fund(BDF) at BDF Management. The private equity fund invests in the sugar, ethanol, and biodiesel industries in Latin America. Before BDF and after he earned his MBA at UNC, Erbisti managed the $100 million SRI fund at ABN AMRO in Brazil. Not only was it the first SRI fund in an emerging market, but it outperformed the market by 25%. He says that for him, to be in Brazil at work in biofuels is to be on the forefont of change. …more
		Valerie Cook Smith (MBA 2002) Valerie is a Vice President of Environmental Affairs for Citigroup, responsible for the environmental and social responsibility of Citigroup’s various business units. …more
		Brian Chossek (MBA 2001) In his senior year of college, Brian Chossek asked himself how he could make money and do something good for the world. By the age of 31, he was the president of Seven Oaks Ranch. The 12-acre ranch in California grows and distributes organic produce. One of their products is the Garlic Gold® brand. Ode magazine  named Seven Oaks Ranch one of the Top 20 Organic companies. …more
		Chris Strausz-Clark (MBA 2000) Chris is a Senior Financial Analyst at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is responsible for supporting the financial and business planning efforts of the Pacific Northwest and Global Libraries grant programs. …more
		Henry McKoy (BSBA 1995) BASE Advisory Board member and Kenan-Flagler alum, Henry McKoy (BSBA '95), had the good fortune to travel to Washington, D.C. earlier this spring to meet and speak with President Barack Obama. …more
		Eric Rosenbaum (MBA 1984) Eric Rosenbaum is chief operating officer (COO) of Women In Need (WIN), a $36 million operation that is one of New York City’s largest non-profit providers of family homeless shelters and supportive housing. He honed the leadership skills he gained as an MBA, during 9 years at Colgate, where he helped to build the firm’s global supply chain. WIN’s 350 employees run a host of self-help services from on-site day care to job training. …more

Student Profiles