Playing while contributing to sustainable development

One of the first women invited to these mentoring evenings, Ms. Burgener presented her social entrepreneur experience to MTE students and their mentors. Her idea came to her in 2011 during a training in sustainable development at IMD, where she was able to work with senior environmental program managers from large companies. The Fukushima disaster, which occurred at that time, was a real eye-opener for her: Are these environmental strategies of these big firms so effective, she wonders? And if the solution went through a bottom-up approach rather than dictated by the top of the hierarchy?

In 2013, she managed to raise funds in Geneva, very risk-averse to this kind of social business model, not yet in vogue at the time. P & G got interested in her project and she then developped her product in the form of campaigns, where employees can, on their own, contribute to the sustainability of their business. Thanks to the use of gamification and an application developed by MarLa Burgener, the savings in resources are measured and the data (which remains anonymous) collected.

Since then, her product has developed and Marie-Laure Burgener has been cited as one of the 100 personalities of the Suisse-Romande (Forum des 100, May 2018). Let's hope that this evening could inspire more than one not to forget to consider environmental strategies in their company.