For a week in mid June, Hibernia College President, Dr. Seán Rowland, joined his fellow Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalists for an intensive international retreat. The retreat combined high-level strategic learning with meaningful action by going to Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, where Ireland’s foremost entrepreneurs helped local people to develop the sustainable businesses set up by last year’s finalists. One of the projects involved fixing a weir that had fallen into disrepair to enable residents of the village of Dubreuill irrigate their fields and potentially triple their crop output.

To complement the hands-on initiatives in Haiti, the finalists also travelled to Miami for a series of ground-breaking presentations on environmental corporate social responsibility led by Kellie McElhaney, Executive Director & Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Center for Responsible Business at the University of California Berkeley. These sessions highlighted the enormous strategic and economic value of ‘Green Business’, and encouraged participants to place eco-friendly practice at the core of business operations.

Dr. Rowland, who was greatly impressed by the leadership role taken by Ernst & Young in the field of corporate social responsibility, commented “It was a pleasure to travel and work with the other finalists. The discussions and seminars led by Professor McElhaney were both thought provoking and highly informative, while the people we encountered in Haiti were truly inspirational. I returned from the trip fully invigorated and look forward to the future challenges and opportunities that my involvement with this project will bring”.

Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalists in Miami