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Traditional MBA programs often focus only on the bottom line: how can an MBA help a company make more money? At Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI), however, the focus is on creating leaders to “build enterprises that are economically successful, socially responsible and environmentally sustainable.”
BGI was founded in 2002 by Gifford Pinchot and his wife, Elizabeth, in partnership with Dr Sherman Severin. Pinchot is a well-known entrepreneur, speaker and author. He also happens to be the grandson of “The” Gifford Pinchot, who was the first chief of the National Forestry Service, and widely considered as the father of American conservation.
“I grew up where conservation of natural resources was considered the thing to do,” said Pinchot. “I believe it is my role in the world.”
The Pinchots started Bainbridge Graduate Institute out of a desire to help guide the next generation of leaders.
“I’ve spent 25 years teaching leaders to be more innovative,” said Pinchot. “I was concerned that at a time when we have serious problems in the world that these issues were being treated too lightly. We started the school to train the leaders of the future.”
BGI is one of only three MBA programs in the United States that offers a program focused on sustainability and environmental responsibility. Some mainstream MBA programs do offer electives in these topics, said Jill Bamburg, BGI’s MBA program dean, “but there’s nowhere near this focus.”
Pinchot agrees. He’s working with a number of business schools around the country to help them incorporate more of these elements into their programs.
“We don’t just want to educate our students,” he said. “We want to educate the other schools, as well.”
BGI offers an executive MBA program designed to accommodate students with full-time jobs. Students meet for once each month at IslandWood for weekend intensive sessions. The weekend sessions are then supplemented by distance learning coursework each quarter, such as teleconference or Web-based lectures, student projects and so on.
Although it sounds like a fairly light time commitment, the institute’s MBA program is as rigorous as they come.
“The intensives are really intense,” said Bamburg. Intensive weekends run from noon Thursday to noon Sunday, with all-day classes and community activities in the evening.
“No kidding, it’s not easy,” said BGI student Stuart Stranahan. Stranahan is a former career firefighter who came to BGI’s program to help him with his goal of starting and running a start-up biodiesel company.
The MBA in Sustainable Business curriculum focuses on four “centers of excellence.” There is the core MBA curriculum, into which BGI incorporates environmental and social considerations. Then there are the sustainability course requirements and required coursework on entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship — the concept of applying entrepreneurial innovations within a larger corporation, a term first used by Pinchot that is now found in many dictionaries. Finally there are the leadership and management course requirements, on which BGI MBA students spend about 25 percent of their time.
“We think that’s really important,” said Bamburg, noting that one critique of many traditional MBA programs is that they spend too much time on analysis and not enough time on teaching students how to lead people.
The MBA program can be completed in two or three years and costs roughly $20,000 a year, not including travel costs.
The institute also offers two nine-month certificate programs, in Sustainable Business and Ecopreneuring, taught in Seattle.
BGI graduated its first MBA class in 2004. Some of its graduate success stories include the graduate who has become the first director of corporate responsibility at REI, the one who is a head of sustainability at Hewlett Packard and the one who works for Starbucks on its sustainability programs.
The marketplace is beginning to recognize the need,” said Miguel Esteban, BGI’s director of marketing.
“What we see is that graduates are leading the world in the direction it needs to go,” said Pinchot.
For Stranahan, who will has entered his second and final year of the program this fall, BGI’s program has been instrumental in helping him get his business, Olympic Biofuels, LLC, off the ground.
“I can’t speak highly enough about BGI,” he said. “It’s an excellent education and an astounding network of brilliant people.”. | 
