School of Sustainability Graduate Culminating Experiences

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a non-profit organization that prides itself in “responding to the world’s worst humanitarian crises”. Through its New Roots program, IRC is using an aquaponics urban garden incubator site “to train refugee farmers in aquaponics agriculture and good business practices in the United States.” The site is an example of the conversion of brownfield into “healthfields” and sustainability and resilience initiatives including the Year of Healthy Communities Program-2017, the Maricopa County Food Systems Coalition, and other community health initiatives that involve major partners including the City of Phoenix.

Entering into the next development phase, IRC wants the site to be an opportunity for demonstrating some of the most innovative approaches to water reuse while contributing to a sustainable food network in the neighborhood and in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. One component created to support this goal is an intervention manual identifying water-sensitive design strategies and ways to scale or transfer to other IRC sites. As such, my project identified and framed guidelines for the selected strategies to use in addition to steps for scaling, transferring, and creating a “location” where all of this information could be held for future reference. The manual content was created around each strategy which included identifying general legal practices in Phoenix related to each strategy, defining key terminologies, detailing water budgets, and research gaps to overcome.

This report is concerned primarily with explaining the deliverables that our team, the Sustainable Saguaros, developed for the Kim Center for Social Balance (The Kim Center), as a requirement for graduation from the Master of Sustainability Solutions program at Arizona State University. As a growing non-profit organization, the Kim Center for Social Balance has a vision for integrated gender equity in workplaces nationwide but lacks the bandwidth to advance its strategy forward. The requested deliverables are: (1) a set of sector analyses for municipal government, healthcare, construction, and finance, (2) a summary of the gender-related reporting requirements for three reporting standards, and (3) a strategic action plan to improve the Kim Center’s board governance and engagement. Our sector analyses revealed common themes associated with gender-specific challenges in the workplace and identified sector-specific challenges that should be addressed in ways that are tailored to the sector. We developed the sector analyses by conducting extensive research into the current state of each sector as it pertains to gender equity, and then identifying challenges to women in the workplace. While we attempted to assess the state of each sector beyond the gender binary, consistent or reliable data was not readily available in most cases. We see this as an area where the Kim Center could help organizations improve in recognizing and supporting employees across the gender spectrum. The summary of reporting standards revealed that the existing gender-related requirements for the most well-established reporting standards are highly inconsistent. The gender-related reporting requirements for GRI, SASB, and NASDAQ did not have any significant overlap. The information required by these standards is routinely collected by US companies as part of their EEOC compliance, but may not be legal to collect in other countries. The strategic action plan for the Kim Center’s Board of Directors was formulated by analyzing the board’s bylaws, a survey conducted with current board members, and an internal non-profit assessment that was answered by their Executive Director. Using these resources, our team identified gaps in board governance that must be addressed in order to build the internal capacity for the Kim Center to operate effectively. From there, our team developed a case for improving board governance and outlined specific recommendations to strengthen the Kim Center’s board alignment and responsibilities.