Our programs for corporate citizenship practitioners, managers, and leaders are designed and taught by experienced business leaders, corporate citizenship peers, and top faculty from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.

Katherine V. Smith

Katherine has been executive director of the Center for Corporate Citizenship at the Boston College Carroll School of Management for more than a decade, assembling a marvelous team to serve a vibrant community of members. She also serves as faculty at the Carroll School of Management where she teaches "Business in Society." Katherine has worked with public-private partnerships for more than 30 years. Prior to her current role, she served as AVP of Research at Brown University, and the COO of the University of Massachusetts Foundation. She has unique experience driving large scale social impact initiatives and joint research projects that explore the intersection of neuroscience, equity, and education. Katherine is the co-author with Dave Stangis of '21st Century Corporate Citizenship: A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and to Your Business’ and “The Executive’s Guide to 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: How Your Company Can Win the Battle for Reputation and Impact.”

Nelmara Arbex, PhD

Nelmara Arbex is a partner at KPMG, Brazil.  Trained as a physicist, Nelmara left her academic carrier to tackle concrete problems in business. She started her career as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Co in 1999. She has worked in the sustainability and business field since for companies such as Instituto Ethos and Natura Cosmeticos, in Brazil, and the Global Reporting Initiative.  As GRI Deputy Chief Executive she led the multiple projects including the global multi-stakeholder consultation process involving thousands to create GRI G4. She was also part of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) Working Group, which developed the IIRC Framework. Later, as GRI Chief Advisor on Innovation in Reporting, she led the Sustainability and Reporting 2025 project, focusing on the future of sustainability and corporate reporting in the next decade. Nelmara is a frequent speaker at events around the world. She has produced and co-authored several publications and articles. Her PhD degree in theoretical high energy physics is from the University of Marburg, Germany and her postgraduate degree in Sustainability and Business is from the University of Cambridge, UK. Nelmara is Brazilian and lives in Amsterdam and Brazil.

Nancy R. Dunbar, PhD

Nancy Dunbar, Emerita, Brown University, studies and teaches persuasion, public speaking, and rhetorical theory and analysis. A Brown University faculty member since 1982, she chaired the department of Theatre, Speech, and Dance for five years before moving to University administration, first as Dean of the College and, for 12 years, as Associate Provost. She has led implementations of enterprise management systems, overseen planning for academic space, and developed programs of academic department review and institutional assessment. As a member of the consulting team at Dynamic Communication, Nancy provides communication training programs to academic, nonprofit, and business organizations.

Rebecca Leonard

Rebecca Leonard has a love of building meaningful brands that has driven her 25 year career in communications and corporate responsibility. As Managing Principal of Purposeful Projects, she develops strategies, campaigns and activations for brands on their citizenship journey.  Prior to launching her company, she held numerous roles at The TJX Companies, including head of public relations, community relations and the TJX Foundation.  She also led development, activation and measurement of social responsibility strategies as well as several multi-brand integrated marketing campaigns to support the enterprise.

Earlier in her career, Rebecca worked in brand development at The Boston Beer Company, driving brand-building and sales initiatives for Samuel Adams and Twisted Tea.  She also held progressive roles in marketing agencies, from Field Manager to Managing Director, and worked on brands such as Snapple, Universal and AT&T.  She studied economics at Loyola University of Chicago and attended the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship Leadership Academy.

Susan L. Santos, PhD

Susan Santos is an expert in risk communication and risk assessment. She brings extensive hands-on technical experience with years of research and implementation aiding clients with strategic design, comprehensive implementation, and expert evaluation of health, safety, and environmental issue-oriented risk communication programs. Currently, she is executing intervention strategies for communicating hazardous waste cleanup programs, food product safety issues, military deployment related risks, and decommissioning a nuclear reactor facility, and is engaged in developing crisis communication and evaluation programs.

Dave Stangis

Dave Stangis is a growth-oriented C-suite executive with broad experience in multiple sectors. Dave acts currently as Chief Sustainability Officer at Apollo Asset Management.  As Vice President, Corporate Responsibility and Chief Sustainability Officer for Campbell Soup Company (NYSE: CPB), he reported to Campbell’s President and CEO. He has designed and implemented world-class reputation & stakeholder management functions in high-tech and food systems, for two very different Fortune 500 corporations with board and executive team partnership. He led both Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Campbell through strategic evolutions to global benchmarks in purpose, corporate citizenship, communications, sustainability and transparency.

At Intel, he worked directly with the Board of Directors to establish governance processes and visibility to citizenship and sustainability. He served as counselor to the board on topics ranging from toxics and community impacts to business operations in China and Israel resulting in more predictable planning and growth. He managed major activist campaigns against Intel and directly managed negotiations with proxy resolution filers to resolution or withdrawal.

Dave advises leading companies on ESG, technology, reputation and resiliency strategies. He has experience in all media situations and is a subject matter expert in Risk and Reputation Management, Communications, Strategy, Public Affairs, Crisis Management, Operations, Biotechnology, InfoTech and Philanthropy.

Rob Vallentine 

Rob worked at The Dow Chemical Company for more than 30 years, beginning his career in sales and then moving to marketing and public affairs.  As president of The Dow Chemical Company Foundation, Rob provided strategic direction for Dow's philanthropic priorities around the world. He managed implementation of the Foundation’s $40 million annual charitable contributions, with a keen commitment to education, sustainability and community development. Rob has spent the last decade with the company focusing on building resilient, inclusive and sustainable communities around the world.

With a Bachelor of Science in Business from Southeast Missouri State University and an MBA from Drake University, Rob has served on the boards of the United Way of Midland County, the Delta College Foundation and Hidden Harvest. Rob currently serves on the boards of directors for the Council of Michigan Foundations, Great Lakes Bay Regional Alliance, Detroit Economic Club and the Chemical Educational Foundation. He also serves as a community director at Chemical Bank. 

In addition, Rob serves as an executive coach for Creating Our Best, a company focused on maximizing organization strength through personal development, and he is serving as a teaching fellow for Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship. Rob is a certified LivingWorks trainer for SafeTALK suicide prevention and serves on the Steering Team for the Great Lakes Bay Region Mental Health Partnership.

Rob is on a mission to make a positive impact on the world and create positive social change, advancing LGBTQ, mental health, autism and youth empowerment.

Boston College Faculty

Andy Boynton, PhD  

Andy Boynton is Dean of the Boston College Carroll School of Management, the author of several books and co-creator of DeepDive™, the world’s leading methodology for helping executives harness the power of teams to significantly improve problem-solving speed, innovation, and results. Prior to joining Boston College, Andy was a professor of strategy at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland for 10 years. At the IMD he led a faculty team and was program director of one of the world’s top ten Executive MBA programs, as recognized by BusinessWeek.

He has recently launched new research projects to explore how distinguished experts from a variety of knowledge-domains work with ideas to achieve professional success and improve their effectiveness in social networks. His latest book, The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen (Jossey-Bass), is based on this research and is co-authored with Bill Fischer and William Bole. He has published extensively on factors underlying high-performing teams across a variety of disciplines, including art, science, exploration, and design. His previous books include Virtuoso Teams: Lessons from Teams That Changed Their Worlds (Financial Times-Prentice Hall) and Invented Here: Maximizing Your Organization’s Internal Growth and Profitability (Harvard Business School Press). He is a 1978 graduate of Boston College. Andy earned his MBA and PhD at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has served on the MBA faculty at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business and at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. In addition to his publishing career and role as Dean of the Carroll School of Management, Andy has more than 30 years of experience speaking and designing powerful executive education sessions and seminars for firms around the world. He is often utilized by organizations looking to build more innovative and effective teams and his articles in this area have appeared in elite management journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and The California Management Review.

Michael Pratt, PhD 

Mike Pratt is the Boston College Carroll School of Management O’Connor Family Professor and PhD Director, Management and Organization Department, as well as a fellow for the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics. Prior to joining Boston College, he was a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Illinois. His research interests include how individuals connect with the work that they do, as well as to the organizations, professions, occupations, and other collectives in which they find themselves. Theoretically, his research draws heavily from theories of identity and identification, meaning, emotion, intuition, and culture (e.g., artifacts). Methodologically, while he has published work that utilizes lab research and surveys, much of his work is ethnographic or otherwise qualitative in nature.

Questions posed by his current research include the following: “When group conflicts about interests (what groups want) change to conflicts about identity (who we are), how are such seemingly intractable conflicts resolved?” “How do organizations, that are beholden multiple stakeholders, not only create multiple identities in service of these stakeholders, but also integrate these identities into a dynamic whole?” “How can individuals and groups who experience ambivalence, transform that ambivalence into commitment, trust, creativity and wisdom?” And “how do individuals approach their work (e.g., as a vehicle for attaining money, gaining achievement, creating community, serving others, and/or honing a craft), and what difference does this make in terms of how they perform their jobs?” His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various magazines and books. He also has co-edited a book Artifacts and Organizations: Beyond Mere Symbolism (with A. Rafaeli, 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Dr. Pratt was a recipient of the 2007 Best Paper Award for the Academy of Management Review (with Erik Dane). He has served as qualitative associate editor for the Academy of Management Journal and Division Chair for the Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division of the Academy of Management.