Bill Kramer, president of The Global Challenge Network, is scheduled to speak Monday, Oct. 20, as part of the College of Business Sustainable Enterprise Speaker Series.

Note to Editors: A photo of Bill Kramer is available with the news release at http://www.newsinfo.colostate.edu/.

Bill Kramer, president of The Global Challenge Network, is scheduled to speak Monday, Oct. 20, as part of the College of Business Sustainable Enterprise Speaker Series.

Kramer, the principal author of "The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid," will speak at 7 p.m. in Room 228 Lory Student Center. He’ll discuss ethical problems faced by businesses when they engage – or fail to engage – markets in low-income communities.

To RSVP, go to http://biz.colostate.edu/rsvp/kramer.aspx.

The Global Challenge Network is a consulting and executive education and training company, a network of organizational process experts who deliver a wide range of education, training, workshop and executive coaching services.

Kramer is a senior associate of the IESE Platform on Strategy and Sustainability in Barcelona. He also worked with the World Resources Institute from 2001 to mid-2007 as director of education and training for the markets and enterprise program, deputy director of the Development Through Enterprise Program and senior fellow.

In December 2004, Kramer served as director of the seminal conference on business engagement in low-income markets titled "Eradicating Poverty through Profit: Making Business Work for the Poor."   

Kramer also founded The Knowledge Initiative Inc., a non-profit organization examining the relationship between new knowledge creation and economic development.  Through The Knowledge Initiative, Kramer completed three years of field work in South Africa, the Ivory Coast, Kenya and Central Europe.

Kramer began his work in the non-profit arena following a 30-year career as an entrepreneur, building businesses in bookselling, book distribution and publishing. For more than 50 years, he managed and owned Sidney Kramer Books, which has been the world’s leading bookstore for politics, economics and area studies. Kramer then founded Kramerbooks & afterwords, a bookstore/cafe that opened in Washington, D.C., in 1976.

During the dot-com era, Kramer was principal in companies that produced Web-based applications for colleges and universities, including Web portals, e-procurement, digital printing and publishing, and course management tools.

Kramer has taught sustainable development at the University of Maryland Graduate School of Public Affairs and has been a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities around the world. His numerous articles include recent work in the MIT journal, Vodafone’s Corporate Responsibility Dialogues and the Kennedy School of Government.

The speaker series gives students and campus community an opportunity to learn from sustainability experts from around the globe. In fall 2007, the College of Business at Colorado State began offering an 18-month master’s degree in Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise that teaches students to use entrepreneurial, sustainable approaches to solve global challenges in energy, agriculture, health, environmental management and economic development.

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