Carl Hammerdorfer, Executive Director  Carl Hammerdorfer is the Executive Director of CASE, created to meet needs and opportunities that came to light while running the Global Social & Sustainable Enterprise MBA. An entrepreneur with twenty-five years of experience overseas and domestically, Carl began his international career working at the grass-roots level as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, West Africa. A water resources volunteers, Carl’s greatest success was the production of a record in Bambara featuring songs about various public health challenges.
He has worked as a water sanitation consultant in Cote d'Ivoire, VOCA Country Director in Warsaw, Poland, and Peace Corps Country Director in Sofia, Bulgaria. In addition to his international work, Carl has extensive experience forming and launching cooperatives internationally and domestically. He was co-founder of America’s first cooperative business incubator -Cooperative Solutions – building national cooperatives in drywall & roofing distribution, bicycle retail, leasing, and other sectors.
Carl’s current interest is in developing and applying enterprise solutions that address the root causes of global poverty and that solve chronic development challenges in base of pyramid markets. He is fluent in German, French and Bulgarian and speaks passable Bambara. He lives with his wife Kathy (RPCV Mali '90) and their three sons in Fort Collins, Colorado. Kathryn Ernst, Managing Director Kathryn Ernst has a BA in International Studies and a BA in Spanish from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, and an MBA in Global, Social & Sustainable Enterprise (GSSE) from Colorado State University. After working for a family-owned bicycle tour company for a year, she served 2 years in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic as a Community Economic Development volunteer. Her work in the DR with an organic coffee cooperative inspired her to research alternative supply chain models that benefit small-holder farmers in the developing world. During the GSSE program, Kathryn co-founded Organic Oasis, an aquaponics business whose family-sized units increase nutrition and income to bottom of the pyramid families in Lima, Peru via efficient vegetable and fish production. Kathryn worked as Research Associate for CASE for nearly 2 years before moving into her current position as Managing Director, where she is working on marketing and desiging new educational programs. Jessica Rawley, Research Associate Jessica Rawley holds a BA in Political Science and International Relations from Western Washington University and an MBA in Global, Social, Sustainable Enterprise from Colorado State University. Her career started in working for several small non-profits and business start-ups to establish operating systems, business development strategies, and marketing plans. After doing Fund Development and Public Relations for Habitat for Humanity, Jessica joined the Peace Corps and served as a Small Enterprise Development Advisor in Kenya. Placed with a national conservation organization, she worked closely with community groups to improve and market conservation-based enterprises, namely eco-tourism ventures. This experience prompted her to pursue her MBA in Social Enterprise and understand how entrepreneurship can be used as a tool for sustainable community development. During her GSSE-MBA, Jessica co-founded Taka Energy which develops community-scale waste-to-energy facilities that generate renewable energy assets from otherwise useless waste streams. Now serving as the Research Associate for the Center for the Advancement of Sustainable Enterprise in the College of Business at CSU, Jessica helps to implement a number of programs and services designed to educate and engage people in using enterprise as a means to address our world’s most serious issues. Ian Heath, Administrative Assistant Ian Heath is currently a junior business administration major with finance concentration in the honors program at Colorado State University. He has worked with GSSE and CASE since he was a freshman. During his time, his views have evolved to see the necessity that sustainable business practices have in the modern society and marketplace. |
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