Christine Bader on Corporate Idealists

My Q&A with Christine Bader is up on s+b's website:

Christine Bader’s Tales of a Corporate Idealist
The former BP policy development manager and U.N. business and human rights advisor on the nuances of promoting social responsibility and sustainability within companies.

Big Oil seems like an odd place for a social responsibility and environmental sustainability advocate to pursue her career, but after Christine Bader heard then CEO of BP John Browne speak at Yale, that was exactly where she went. Browne’s strong message about the social responsibility of corporations—a highly unusual statement from the leader of a major energy company in 1998—intrigued the first-year MBA student. It prompted Bader to intern with BP’s chief policy advisor and then to join the company full time in 2000. Over the next eight years, she was assigned to the development of a natural gas field and plant in West Papua, the planning of a massive ethylene production complex outside Shanghai, and finally BP’s London headquarters—“an MBA working on social issues in a company of engineers,” as she puts it.

In 2006, BP enabled Bader to work part-time, on a pro bono basis, with Harvard professor John Ruggie, who had been appointed by Kofi Annan as the United Nations secretary-general’s special representative on business and human rights. Two years later, not long after Browne resigned and Tony Hayward took over as BP’s CEO, Bader left the company and joined Ruggie full time, helping create the U.N.’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

In 2011, after the adoption of the Guiding Principles, “Team Ruggie” split up and Bader began writing The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil (Bibliomotion, 2014). The book is a thoughtful memoir of her experiences and a nuanced guidebook with many lessons for aspiring corporate idealists. Bader, who is currently a part-time human rights advisor to BSR (Business for Social Responsibility) and a visiting scholar at Columbia University, recently talked with strategy+business about how dedicated people can guide their companies to protect human rights and the environment...read the rest here