Jerry Greenfield and his long-time friend and business partner Ben Cohen are the men behind one of the most talked-about, and least conventional, success stories in American business. Cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., Greenfield has helped to build a store front venture into a $300 million ice cream empire by making social responsibility and creative management strengths instead of weaknesses.

With his best seller, Ben & Jerry’s Double-Dip: Lead with Your Values and Make Money, Too (coauthored with Cohen), Greenfield created both a nuts-and-bolts guidebook to the promise and pitfalls of “values-led” business, and an inspiring wake-up call about the growing international influence of the “socially conscience” or “mission driven” corporation. Bringing all of this to life at the lecture podium, Greenfield’s presentation delivers a rousing tribute to America’s entrepreneurial spirit, full of anecdotes and radical business philosophy. It also addresses the great sense of fun that is the company’s hallmark, illustrated with the serving of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for the entire audience.

Jerry Greenfield was born in Brooklyn, New York, four days before his future business partner Ben Cohen. He grew up and went to school in Merrick, Long Island. It was there that he first met Ben in junior high school, and the two have remained close friends ever since. Greenfield graduated from high school with a National Merit Scholarship under his belt and enrolled at Oberlin College to study pre-med.

At Oberlin, Greenfield got his first taste of the ice cream industry when he took a job as a scooper in the college cafeteria. After graduation, he worked as a lab technician in New York and lived with his school buddy Ben in an apartment on East 10th Street. In 1977, with Jerry thoroughly sick of his occupation as lab tech, the two friends decided to fulfill a dream they both shared: running a food business together. The two eventually settled on ice cream, and after a bit of research (and a $5 Penn State correspondence course in ice cream making), opened Ben & Jerry’s Homemade ice cream parlor in Burlington, Vermont in May 1978.

Ben and Jerry soon became known throughout Vermont for their rich, unusual flavors and community-oriented approach to business. They sponsored a Fall Down Festival and a free outdoor movie festival, and celebrated their anniversaries with a Free Cone Day. Jerry began by making all the ice cream, but as the company expanded into new markets, he soon found himself handling everything from distribution to orientation to employee motivation.

Today a model for American business success, Greenfield and Cohen have been recognized for fostering their company's commitment to social responsibility by the Council on Economic Priorities (which awarded them the Corporate Giving Award in 1988 for donating 7.5 percent of their pre-tax profits to non-profit organizations through The Ben & Jerry's Foundation), and by the U.S. Small Business Administration (which named them U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year in 1988 in a White House ceremony hosted by President Reagan).

Broadening her international scope, President Robinson expands her leadership into other areas including business enterprise, corporate citizenship, and the broad reform of some of the world’s most prestigious organizations. She serves as Vice President of Club of Madrid, working to promote democracy worldwide. In business, she is one of five prestigious board members of the MasterCard Foundation, a newly established independent foundation focusing on microfinance, youth entrepreneurship and education. President Robinson was recently appointed to the UN Global Compact Board, a group of 20 global business, labor and social leaders working to advance ten universal business principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption for this large voluntary corporate citizenship initiative. With her emphasis on making human rights the compass which charts a course for globalization that is fair, just, and benefits all, she retains a high visibility on pressing issues such as global health, the battle against poverty, and supporting microfinance in many nations.

Robinson recently became a member of The Elders, a group of world leaders who contribute their wisdom, independent leadership, and integrity to tackling some of the world’s toughest problems with the goal of making the world a better place. This group of luminaries was founded by Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Based in New York, her work with Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative is supported by a partnership with the Aspen Institute, Columbia University (where she is a professor of practice) and the Swiss based International Council on Human Rights Policy. Its goal is to bring the norms and standards of human rights into the globalization process and to support capacity building in good governance in developing countries. The recipient of numerous honors and awards throughout the world, President Robinson is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the American Philosophical Society and is Honorary President of Oxfam International. She also serves on many boards including the Vaccine Fund, the Global Commission on Migration, the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, and the International Commission of Jurists.

Educated at the University of Dublin (Trinity College), King’s Inns Dublin, and Harvard Law School to which she won a fellowship in 1967, she holds honorary doctorates from over 40 universities around the world, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, London and Edinburgh. Continuing her educational experience, she now serves as Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa as well as a Council of Goodwill Ambassador.

As an academic, legislator and barrister, she has always sought to use law as an instrument for social change, arguing landmark cases before the European Court of Human Rights as well as in the Irish courts and the European Court in Luxembourg. In 1988, Robinson and her husband, Nicholas Robinson, founded the Irish Centre for European Law at the University of Dublin, since then, she has been Chancellor of the University.

The Penn State Altoona Distinguished Speaker Series are free and open to the public. Tickets are available at the Penn State Altoona Bookstore Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or at The Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts box office during posted hours, and at the door if not sold out in advance.

Penn State Altoona provides The Distinguished Speaker Series as a student and community service. They are partially sponsored by the Margery Wolf Kuhn Fund, the John and Ann Wolf Family Speakers Series Fund, the Sarah Simonton Fund, and the Student Activities Fee.

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