Our team at WU STaR has had a very busy summer. Back in July, together with our colleagues from the Network for Business Sustainability and IBES (based at the University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication), we cohosted a biennial global workshop for leaders of business sustainability centers from around the world. NBS currently has over 170+ member universities. The event also included a Multi-sector Dialogue Day, “Sustainable Transformation - Radical Change vs More of the Same?,” which attracted over 200 participants, and high-caliber speakers from the world of arts, entrepreneurship, business and academia.Video recordings of online sessions are now available on our STaR Videos page (redirects to YouTube). You can access it by clicking here.

• Introduction, with welcome addresses from the President Dr. Alexander Van der Bellen and Federal Minister for Climate Action Leonore Gewessler                        

• Art and Purpose: Enabling Radical Transformation? With Christoph Thun-Hohenstein/MAK Museum of Applied Arts and Tima Bansal/Ivey

• The New Inequalities, Is this the Business of Business? With Marie Ringler/Ashoka and Markus Scholz/FHWien

• Small Players Guiding the Way to Global Change. With Bas van Abel/Fairphone, Theresa Imre/markta, and Ian G. Hobday/Startup Gurus

• Innovations as a Driver for Sustainability, with Axel Kühner/Greiner AG and Jason Jay/MIT

• Panel Discussion, with Markus Urban-Hübler/Verbund AG, Alice Schmidt/Global Sustainability & Social Impact, and Fady Abdelmalek/Stats Perform

Event moderator: Katharina Moser

Event graphic recorder: Markus Engelberger

Following the NBS SCC event, we turned our full attention to our two ongoing projects here at WU:

• Inside Impact podcast, produced in close collaboration with the Social Entrepreneurship Center at WU, and

• STaR SDG Videos, with the help of 30+ volunteer students and faculty

Six of the Inside Impact episodes dedicated to Sustainability and Sustainable Development are already available online, and can be accessed via the podcast’s homepage (click here) and Spotify (click here). More details will follow soon!

The SDG Videos are still in the production stage, but we are delighted and happy about the active response from WU students, STaR Faculty Members, and STaR Intellectual Community affiliates. A huge thanks to everyone who has contributed!

In addition to these major projects, we are also already planning for our Fall events, including a panel discussion at the WU Matters, on December 1. With experts from SDGs Labs and UNIDO, we will discuss what fresh approaches are needed to inspire current and future entrepreneurs to act more sustainably. To download the event brochure and reserve your seat in advance, visit WU Matters website here.

We wish everybody - students, staff, and faculty - a great start into the new semester!