Bryan Welch, CEO of B The Change Media and founder of Mother Earth News, comes to Harrisonburg to join in “Leading into the Common Good: An Anabaptist Perspective,” a conference for practitioners, scholars and students April 7-9, 2016, at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU).
Welch will speak April 7 at 7 p.m. in Martin Chapel. The lecture is open to the public with a $15 admission charge and free for conference attendees.
Welch joins a group of notable speakers, including leaders and entrepreneurs from inside and outside the Anabaptist world. [For a complete list, visit the conference website.] Workshop topics include emergent leadership, leading innovation, people management ethics, developing resilient organizations, and authentic leadership.
The conference will focus on clarifying Anabaptist values related to leadership, examining historical models, critiquing current economic and social systems, and developing applied theories that can be used to build more effective and future-looking organizations.
After serving as the publisher and editorial director of Mother Earth News and leading Ogden Publications for nearly two decades, Welch started B The Change Media, a multi-platform media company focused on business as a force for good in the world, which he founded in cooperation with B Lab and the B Corporations.
He and his wife, Carolyn, raise organic, grass-fed landrace cattle, sheep and goats at Rancho Cappuccino near Lawrence, Kansas.
In addition to Mother Earth News, Ogden Publications, Inc. also owned Mother Earth Living, Utne Reader, GRIT and several other category-leading media brands focused on sustainability, natural health and rural lifestyles. For 10 years leading up to 2013, Mother Earth News was the fastest-growing major magazine in North America.
From its inception, Ogden Publications sustained steady growth in audience, revenues and profits based on its rapid development of new products and the digital media. In the past five years revenues have grown by 15 percent and profits are up 34 percent. Over the same five years, audiences have more than doubled, from about 5 million people in 2009 to more than 12 million at the end of 2014.
Ogden Publications is a certified B Corporation and winner of several awards for corporate environmental stewardship.
Welch has served on the boards of the Magazine Publishers Association, the Social Venture Network, Down Home Ranch Foundation and several other nonprofits. He also has served on corporate boards of directors and advisory boards of companies involved in natural foods, ecommerce and the media. He was Niche Media’s 2014 “Niche Rock Star of the Year;” is a member of Mequoda Group’s Digital Media Hall of Fame; and was honored with the B Corporations’ 2014 Hal Taussig lifetime-achievement award for “using business as a force for good.”
He holds a master’s degree from Harvard University where he studied media policy and media management at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School.
Welch’s award-winning book, Beautiful & Abundant: Building the World We Want, appeared in 2011.
The conference is sponsored by ARCS, EMU’s School of Graduate and Professional Studies, Mennonite Central Committee, Mennonite Economic Development Association (MEDA), Mennonite Health Services and MennoMedia. Co-sponsors include Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Bethel College, Bluffton University, Canadian Mennonite University, Conrad Grebel University College, Goshen College and Hesston College.
Register at www.emu.edu/leadership-conference.