Co-Sponsors:
Jerry Greenfield
“An Evening of Entrepreneurial Spirit, Social Responsibility, and Radical Business Philosophy”
Jerry Greenfield wanted to be a doctor. Ben Cohen wanted to be a potter. Today, Greenfield and Cohen’s names are synonymous with socially responsible business and all-natural ice cream in innovative flavors through Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. They are behind one of the most talked-about, and least conventional, success stories in American business.
Beginning with one ice cream shop in a renovated Vermont gas station in 1978, Ben & Jerry’s celebrated more than $237 million in sales from nearly 200 shops and a vast array of products sold in grocery stores and other outlets by 1999.
In Greenfield’s best-seller, Ben & Jerry’s Double-Dip: Lead with Your Values and Make Money, Too (co-authored with Cohen), he created both a nuts-and-bolts guidebook to “values-led” business, and an inspiring wake-up call about the influence of the “socially conscience” or “mission-driven” corporation.
Greenfield got his first taste of the ice cream industry in college when he took a job as a scooper in the cafeteria. After graduation, he worked as a lab technician in New York and lived with Cohen, his friend since junior high school, until 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 correspondence course in ice cream-making), opened their first ice cream parlor.
Today, their ice cream empire is 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 and by the U.S. Small Business Administration, which named them U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year in 1988.