Future 500 Corporate Working Group June 4th - 5th, 2025 | Detroit, MI
——— In Person ———
Where: Detroit Foundation Hotel, 250 W Larned St, Detroit, MI 48226 / Special Room Rate $339(+taxes & fees)
When: June 4-5, 2025
We begin with an optional casual dinner on the 3rd for those arriving in time. The formal meeting begins with breakfast on the 4th, concluding at noon on the 5th.
Registration: Register here. Complimentary for Future 500 members. Registration price increases April 30th.
Who: Executives from Future 500’s Corporate Affinity Network (CAN) and other select corporate sustainability leaders and advocates.
What: Future 500 has conducted this intimate working group for over ten years. Our discussions are confidential, facilitated under the Chatham House Rule, and designed to foster constructive engagement between companies and advocates to illuminate important issue trends and best practices that inform business strategy and competitiveness on sustainability.
Our working group seeks to empower our delegates to speak up, teach others, respectfully disagree, and ask tough questions. Please bring your ideas and challenges, and come prepared to participate actively.
Dress code: Business casual with an emphasis on the casual.
——— Agenda ———
Tuesday, June 3rd
6:00 pm Casual dinner for all participants in town, if you would like to attend, please RSVP to ……………….gryan@future500.org. Location TBD
Wednesday, June 4th
8:15 am Networking breakfast
9:00 am Welcome, Ground Rules, and Goals
9:15 am Introductions & Networking Activity
10:15 am Future 500 Environmental Justice Phase II and Greenhushing Research
Future 500 is progressing the second phase of environmental justice (EJ) research, focusing on community advisory panels (CAPs) and politically durable language. As state regulatory approaches shift toward EJ, we are researching how companies and communities continue progressing important facility and site-level engagement without inviting political scrutiny.
In this session, the Future 500 team will update the group on our ongoing EJ research findings and its interrelationship to greenhushing, sharing insights from our interviews of corporate leaders, NGO activists, and investors. We’ll also explore the effects of changing terminology on corporate greenhushing. Open discussion to follow.
Participants will delve into rapidly evolving social and environmental stakeholder dynamics that pose new risks and opportunities for companies, from changing investor expectations to political and NGO advocacy shifts around the role of business in society.
As always, these sessions bring together corporate sustainability leaders and NGO stakeholders to bridge understanding across critical issues and work towards building trust. Participants will join in the following small-group, Chatham House Rule sessions:
12:00 pm Lunch
1:00 pm Climate Philanthropy's Evolution: Where is It Headed? What have Funders Learned? And What Does ……………… That Mean for Business?
Speaker: Mijo Vodopić, Senior Program Officer at the Macarthur Foundation
Mijo will share his insights from 16 years of grantmaking to civil society at one of the country’s most established and strategic climate protection funders. He'll share what funding strategies he has found most effective, how funders are adapting to a rapidly changing geopolitical world, and how that can help inform business planning.
12:00 pm Break
2:40 pm The Rights of Nature: Creating frameworks to align people and planet
Speaker: Missy Lahren, Board President at Earth Law Center
We live in a world governed by laws regulating the marketplace while seeking to minimize the harm business can impose on nature. The frame seems to pit jobs vs. the environment, people vs. trees, and fishermen vs. fish. But is this a false, binary choice? How can we ensure that humans and nature flourish together?
In this session, we will hear Missy Lahren, Board Chair at Earth Law Center, an innovative group working to "align our laws with Nature’s laws." They represent and defend nature worldwide, co-drafting legal instruments that recognize the rights of nature. Missy is an expert on Rights of Nature and nature-related expertise on corporate boards, grounded in the legal and movement-building aspects, representing and defending nature worldwide, co-drafting legal instruments that recognize the rights of nature. She will share evolutions in related policymaking, the Center’s priorities, and view of the future. Fun fact: She is also an accomplished documentary filmmaker!
4:00 pm Debrief & reflections 4:30 pm Adjourn
6:00 pm Cocktails followed by networking dinner -- Location TBD
Our working group participants and speakers are invited to gather with Future 500 staff and other notable local stakeholders in our network for a casually fun evening of multi-sector, interactive networking, and dialogue. Time to unwind, have fun, mingle, and engage. As with our past working group meeting, seeds for common ground solutions invariably emerge from our meals.
Thursday, June 5th
8:00 am Networking Breakfast 8:40 am Reflections on dinner and Day 1 9:00 am Investor Engagement: Enduring approaches for a dynamic landscape
Speaker: Erica Lasdon, Director, Climate Change and Environmental Justice, Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
Regulatory uncertainty is challenging investors and companies alike as they navigate the landscape of corporate sustainability disclosure. In the U.S., the federal government seeks to weaken regulations relating to material, social, and environmental factors, but state-level activity varies dramatically. In other countries, governments continue to maintain or advance regulations. Given the dynamic landscape, how is investor engagement shifting in the U.S. and abroad? In this session, we will hear from Erica Lasdon, Program Director for Climate and Environmental Justice from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a coalition of faith-based investors that helped pioneer investor-corporate engagement. The coalition proactively engages and collaborates with the leaders of companies in which they invest to understand and address the company's full impact on society in pursuit of superior, long-term shareholder returns.
10:30 am Debrief, reflections & concluding comments
11:15 am Adjourn