It is with a certain excitement that I am announcing you that Pinchot University – where I am starting the second year of my MBA in Sustainable Business and Energy – has been acquired by Presidio Graduate School, San Francisco, CA.
Here is the introduction of the official press release:
Presidio Graduate School (PGS) and Pinchot University today announced that the two graduate schools have entered into a definitive merger agreement. The two pioneer organizations have been the #1 and #2 sustainable MBA programs for over a decade and have a long history of sharing faculty and collaborative student and alumni/ae ventures. Both schools’ missions are focused on creating effective business leaders who establish and sustain frameworks that ensure profitability and progress aligned with the common good.
This union significantly enhances the competitive position of sustainability-to-the-bone curricula, fueling synergistic innovation and accelerating the efficacy of graduates in leadership roles in business and government. The impact of a programmatic, systems-thinking approach to business has already proven itself when compared to the “sustainability electives” at traditional graduate schools, and now this alliance cements the joint organization’s long-term growth trajectory.
The Editor in Chief of Triple Pundit, Jen Boynton, did a great job writing about the event. Here is a short extract:
Presidio Graduate School (PGS) and Pinchot University, two schools whose alumni share a friendly rivalry of the sort most common to organizations with few differences, have long been considered the leaders in the field of Sustainable MBA programs. They were two of the original “sustainable through-and-through” programs — embedding sustainability into every course and tract — as opposed to just tacking it on as an elective like many traditional schools.
Pinchot holds the claim of being the the first school to offer an MBA in Sustainable Business in 2002, and Presidio holds claim to being the New York Times’s chosen school to go to if you want to change the world. TriplePundit has strong ties to the PGS community — our founder Nick Aster was an esteemed member of the second cohort of students; I was right behind him in the seventh cohort. However, many students from both schools have contributed to TriplePundit over the years.
On a personal note I am thrilled at the prospect of doubling the amount of alums in my network – 1,500 people ! – and hope and dream about the opening possibilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Silicon Valley where I could find a cleantech company interested by my multicultural background as well as by my experience and skills I have to offer.
Image credits: Flickr, verygreen ; Presidio