The Fowler Center welcomed Megan Buchter as the new director of the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit Monday, Aug. 12.
Buchter has been part of the Fowler Center for more than 10 years. She first got involved with the center as a student volunteer while working toward her Case Western Reserve University undergraduate degree in economics. She participated in the Second Global Forum for Business as an Agent of World Benefit held in June 2009.
Then, Buchter returned to the Fowler Center as a graduate assistant while completing her MBA at the Weatherhead School of Management. During that time, she was named one of the inaugural Fowler Family Fellows, supporting the Third Global Forum and co-authoring the teaching case “Food Donation Connection: Profitably Scaling Food Waste Reduction.”
When Buchter returned again in October 2016, she became a contractor for the Fowler Center and helped build both the Fowler Center’s Global Forum Series on Business as an Agent of World Benefit and the acclaimed AIM2Flourish.com project, through which CWRU students and more than 10,000 MBA students from 85 countries are searching their regions for pioneering companies “doing good and doing well.” To date, more than 2,100 innovation stories of companies propelling the 17 Sustainable Development Goals have been published on the AIM2Flourish website.
Working closely with Chris Laszlo, professor of organizational behavior, Roberta Baskin and Claire Sommer, Buchter helped magnify and expand the initiative, which subsequently received an official United Nations “declaration of support” at a world summit sponsored by the UN Global Compact and its Principles for Responsible Management Education. Read an essay by Buchter describing the AIM2Flourish program.
Buchter now will hand over some of her AIM2Flourish work to the Fowler Center’s project coordinator, Ashley Stanley. Buchter also will join with David Cooperrider, the Char and Chuck Fowler Professor of Business as an Agent of World Benefit and the Fairmount Santrol – David L. Cooperrider Professor in Appreciative Inquiry; Ron Fry, professor of organizational behavior; and others—including the center’s team of advisory board executives and scholars—in advancing the strategic priorities of the Fowler Center in the areas of research, education, and applied work with local, national, and global companies.
Said Cooperrider: “I am thrilled that Megan Buchter—someone so actively committed to the Weatherhead School and our community—will manage the Fowler Center. Please join me today in welcoming her to Weatherhead in her new role. In addition, do not hesitate to drop in at the Fowler Center (on [the Peter B. Lewis Building] first floor) to introduce yourself and share your support or interest in perhaps becoming part of the Fowler Center’s overarching purpose to advance a world of ‘full spectrum flourishing’ … a world where business can excel, all people can thrive, and nature can flourish.”