David Batstone is a professor of Ethics at the University of San Francisco. He is the founder and president of Right Reality, an international social venture firm. Batstone has authored seven books, the two most recent being Not For Sale (HarperSF) and Saving the Corporate Soul (Jossey-Bass). He was a member of the founding team of Business 2.0 magazine and served six years as executive editor of Sojourners magazine and founder of the SojoMail e-zine. He currently serves as a senior editor of Motto magazine. He has contributed articles to the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, and SPIN. He is the recipient of two national journalist awards and was named National Endowment for the Humanities Chair at the University of San Francisco for his work in technology and ethics. During the 1980s, Batstone founded a non-governmental agency dedicated to economic development and human rights in Latin America.

SPEECH TOPICS

The Transparent Corporation
The speech delivers six steps to infuse your corporate culture with trust. It features transparency in relationships to shareholders, to employees, and to the general public. Transparency is the hallmark of an enterprise that has integrity. Firms that present truthful information, operate openly, and stand behind their word make their risks more manageable.

Becoming a Trusted Leader
Directors who fail to direct and managers who fail to lead are at the root of what ails the corporate world today. A recent survey of thirteen thousand workers in all major industries show that fewer than two out of five employees trust their senior leaders. Unless a company can resolve the crisis of confidence among its employees, it has little hope of restoring the trust and confidence of investors and customers. This speech features the crucial steps to becoming a trusted leader.

Why is it so Hard for Companies to Make Promises They Can Keep?
In a service economy, the gap between promise and delivery is glaring. Customers these days frankly do not expect for the company to care for them beyond the transaction. So how can a company make promises it can keep? This speech features "the promise," and how core it is to the business operation. When a company makes the credible promises, workers actually perform better; they feel empowered to match their skills with the company's goals.

What Will Globalization Mean for You and Your Company?
The critics of globalization see lots of gloom on the horizon: none more so critical than the outsourcing of American jobs. If the business enterprise is to make a convincing retort, it will come from the transfer of skills and infrastructure that makes tangible social improvement a reality. This speech features best practices in globalization that create both opportunity and wealth.

Rekindle Inspiration at the Workplace
How do you inspire your workforce? The conditions are not favorable: pension funds are underwater, stock options have disappeared, and health benefits are diminishing. This speech focuses on overcoming low morale and guiding workers to a significant and productive career. Once workers feel like valuable team members, they start to view their own personal success as part and parcel with the company's success.

Coloring Your Company Green
The growing movement of "green" (and organic) consumers want to know whether a company's products, its manufacturing methods, and its policies respect the integrity of the environment. This speech illustrates how an enterprise can convert ecological principles into viable business models.

Turn Your Company Into a Community Treasure
This speech shows how critical it is for a company to develop a strategic plan for community engagement. A substantial body of research shows the importance to consumers of a firm's engagement to their community. Three areas of a return on community engagement are worth tracking: 1) the tangible benefits of community-based programs sponsored by the company; 2) the direct business benefits that result from community-based programs; 3) the correlation between invested resources and corporate goals.