Business for the Common Good 2023

Friday, Mar. 03 8:00 a.m.

DATE: March 3rd, 2023
TIME: 8:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M. (Mountain Time)
PLACE: The Grand Hyatt, Denver, CO
ONLINE: Worldwide

Business for the Common Good 2023

Business leaders need resilience, clarity, and practical tools to navigate the changing world of work. But what if principles that have guided leaders for millennia could speak to the marketplace today? Join Denver Institute for Faith & Work at Business for the Common Good 2023, an annual gathering of leaders passionate about applying biblical wisdom to modern challenges. This year’s themes include:

Reframing What Is and Imagining What Could Be: A Redemptive Vision for Work

Work plays a critical role in God’s vision of productive, flourishing communities, but how do we integrate biblical principles into today’s marketplace? Explore a framework for understanding our current business climate and spark your imagination for what faithful leaders could it help become.

Where Have All the Workers Gone? A Faithful Response to Workforce Pressures

The last three years have seen breathtaking shifts in the labor force. From pandemic labor shortages to the Great Resignation, and “quiet quitting”, leaders are left wondering how to find the workers they need to run their companies. In this session, we will examine factors affecting employee engagement, a vision for intentional hiring, and practical principles for supporting employees on the job.

Building Communities that Thrive

The built environment plays a critical role in a community’s flourishing. As Christians, how can we think holistically about our cities and the role organizations – specifically those in construction, real estate, economic development, or architecture/design – play in the common good? This session will discuss indicators of community health, the power of social networks, and opportunities to strengthen our cities through our work.

Navigating the Complexities of Values-Based Investing

Investment decisions provide powerful opportunities to further God’s redemptive work in the world, but to what degree is it possible to integrate our values in our portfolios? How do we engage corporations or funds that have become increasingly outspoken about values that do not align with our faith? Learn from expert fund managers and financial advisors as we wrestle with the challenges of faith-based investing.

Just Leadership: Stewarding Power & Wealth for the Greater Good

How do we leverage the positive aspects of power and wealth to fulfill a biblical call to justice? In this workshop-style session, David Spickard, former CEO of the global nonprofit Jobs for Life, will share four foundational principles you can apply to your own leadership.

BRING FRIENDS OR CLIENTS! FULL (8 SEAT) AND HALF TABLE (4 SEAT) SEATING IS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE.

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SPEAKERS

Alli Horst

Core Ventures

Alli Horst is the Director of Operations at Core Ventures, a Colorado-based recruiting firm that prioritizes culture fit for candidates and client organizations. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations, Alli is responsible for executing the business’s near-term goals and long-term vision. She started at Core as a Staffing Consultant, then as a Recruiting Manager. Now, as Director of Operations, she strategically guides the people and processes within the organization. Alli and her husband, Chris, live in Centennial with their four adventurous kiddos. They are both proud Taylor University graduates. As a family, you can find the Horsts playing outside, trotting the globe, or enjoying an alfresco meal with neighbors and friends.

Candace Chapman

Evansville Regional Economic Partnership

Candace serves as Director of Downtown Development for the Evansville, Indiana Regional Economic Partnership, a 4-county initiative promoting business growth and retention, community development, workforce development, and regional planning in southwest Indiana. Through her leadership over $70 million in public support has been secured for over $300 million in development since the start of the pandemic. Candace is also a CPA with a background in tax and corporate finance.

Dan Kaskubar

Spur LLC

Dan builds coaching cultures in companies and teams around the Denver metro area. He longs to see as many employers as possible spurring their employees on toward love and good work in Denver and beyond. Prior to founding Spur, he was the founding COO of Activate Workforce Solutions, PBC, a people-centered recruiting agency. He architected a workforce development model focused on coaching — and succeeded where others hadn’t in producing wins for workers, employers, and the community. ActivateWork continues to thrive and be recognized as a top brand in workforce development in Denver, launching the careers of many in our Denver community who are ready for a first opportunity or second chance, while tripling incomes, creating value for companies, building wealth, and leading to dignity through work.

Dan Owolabi

Branches Worldwide

As Branches Worldwide’s Executive Director, Dan leads a global network of high-impact, faith-driven entrepreneurs. He has extensive experience helping faith-driven business leaders develop influence with customers, colleagues, and their community. Prior to becoming Branches’ founding director, he served as a pastor at a megachurch in Ohio. Dan is the author of Authentic Leadership: How to Lead with Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Prove, and Nothing to Lose,  and is the co-founder of Owolabi Leadership.

Dave  Umphress

The Umphress Group

Dave runs businesses in the real estate space all gathered around their internal 501c3, Flourish Alliance. Coming out of a non-profit and education background, building impact-driven businesses has always been important to Dave, and in an industry full of brokenness, opportunities to partner with and/or contribute to human flourishing causes both locally and internationally, seem to show up every day.

David  Spickard

11 Ten Leadership

David Spickard is the founder and President of 11 Ten Leadership, a leadership development company based in Raleigh, NC, that works with CEOs and their leadership teams in companies with revenues up to $350 million per year to strengthen their leadership, culture, strategy, and impact. Previously, David was the President and CEO of Jobs for Life, a global non-profit organization that equips churches, community organizations and businesses to help people find and keep meaningful work.

Helen Young Hayes

Activate Workforce Solutions

Helen Young Hayes is a 20-year veteran of the financial industry.  As the portfolio manager of the Janus Worldwide and Overseas funds, she invested over $40 billion in global and international equities. Conducting detailed country, industry, and company analyses, Helen is regarded as a pioneer in bottom-up international investing. While at Janus, she was the Chief Investment Officer, heading up the 100-person asset management team. Helen has extensive nonprofit experience working with low-income individuals, serving on the boards of Mile High Ministries in Denver, Harlem Educational Activities Fund in New York, and Children of Hope in Kenya. She founded Activate Workforce Solutions to alleviate poverty through creating pathways to employment.  Helen graduated with a degree in Economics from Yale University.

Jervis DiCicco

ProsperBridge

Jervis DiCicco is the CEO and Co-Founder of ProsperBridge, a Public Benefit Corporation funded by nonprofits.  ProsperBridge partners with employers to give EVERY employee the ability to thrive.  In its short history, ProsperBridge has already helped eliminate hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, helped people save thousands on things they need, improved retirement savings, and helped people choose and use benefits more impactfully. The ProsperBridge model combines high-tech and high-touch to help organizations create a more equitable ecosystem where everyone has access to progress. Jervis’s ultimate goal is to help redesign work to be an activity that empowers well-being instead of extracting it.  He spent over 13 years working with individuals, families, and small businesses to create custom financial plans, increase retirement income, and optimize tax savings.  Through personal and professional trials, Jervis learned how the financial system is failing nearly everybody and researched solutions on how to build a model that would empower more people to thrive.  This work revealed that employers had the ability to leverage solutions–both for organizational and individual well-being–that could provide alternatives to the broken system.

Kenman Wong

Seattle Pacific University

Kenman teaches and researches the areas of business ethics and market-based methods to alleviate global poverty. He is the co-author or editor of three books, most recently Business for the Common Good: A Christian Vision for the Marketplace. His articles have been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Markets & Morality and Christian Scholars Review. Prior to becoming a professor, he was employed with Accenture.

Rachel  McDonough

Wealth Squared

Rachel is a Certified Financial PlannerTM professional and a Certified Kingdom Advisor. She is passionate about helping both investors and other financial advisors integrate their Christian values into their investment and financial decisions. Rachel founded Make Your Money Count, LLC in 2009, the year that she first learned about Faith-Based Investing, with the goal of helping Christian investors transform their investment portfolios into a tool that advances kingdom values and human flourishing. From 2013-2021 she was listed as a “Five-Star Wealth Manager” and in 2009 was named one of the Top Women in Finance by Finance and Commerce Newspaper. In 2022 she was awarded the Larry Burkett Award by Kingdom Advisors, an annual award given to one advisor whose work displays Kingdom impact and professional excellence.

Tim  Mcready

Brightlight

Tim is Chief Investment Officer of Brightlight, leading all aspects of Brightlight’s impact investment strategy across multi-manager and single sector portfolios and working with investors to help them allocate capital into impact and faith-driven investing.  Tim led the formation of Brightlight as it spun out from Christian Super, an Australian Pension Fund, having joined Christian Super in 2005 and been responsible for managing the internal investment team and working with the Investment Committee and external specialists to oversee Investment Strategy. Prior to working at Christian Super, Tim was an Actuarial Analyst at Aon Consulting.  He holds a B Com (Actuarial Studies) from Macquarie University and a Masters of Divinity from the Australian College of Theology, and is a Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA).