Our Interns Never Give Up

As we head into fall, we're reminded of one of just one of the things that makes summer so great here at The Hub: our interns.
In fact, our interns make working here great year-round, because we ensure that there's space on our team for interns year-round. Why? Well, because of interns like Rachael Pignotti, who joined us at the beginning of the summer and will be with us part-time during the fall.

Meet Rachel, one of our talented interns.

Rachael's a student at Temple University, from which she'll graduate in December. Her major, International Business and Marketing, put her on our radar, but it was her interest in sustainability in business that made us perfect matches for each other. She's an officer in a student professional organization at Temple called Students for Responsible Business, and she happens to manage green event planning for the group.
"The first thing that attracted me to The Hub is that it's LEED certified," she says, referring to our silver designation from the U.S. Green Building Council for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.
But Rachael quickly learned that Hub Sales Director Stephanie Koch and CEO John New wouldn't let her work with just the aspects of business that she was familiar with. They set her to work on a critical side of business she hadn't yet been familiar with: web sites and Internet outreach for our clients. "This is such a great place to grow," she says. "I've learned so much over the past months, and these are things I was always going to have to learn anyway."
Rachael also works in an area of The Hub that's more germane to her position at SRB: marketing promotions. "I’m learning how The Hub likes to brand themselves, and I combine that with my ideas, and it’s been turning out really well," she says.
Part of that success is Rachael's dogged pursuit of sustainability in the meetings and events industry. "We're adamant about green here at The Hub, and making it a part of our company, but I'd love to see more companies be more aware of choosing places that are sustainable, like The Hub. Sooner or later, the marketing of that is going to be beneficial, if not critical," she says.
While Rachael identifies with all five of our Core Values, the one that's closest to her heart is Never Give Up. "I'm incredibly stubborn," she says, "Mostly to myself. I've had some opportunities to opt out of projects that I'm unfamiliar with, and I think it's important to just keep on working."
We agree, Rachael. We'll miss you when you graduate, but we're so happy we got to meet you.
For more information on interning at The Hub, click here.

Hub Day: The Baldwin Room

Our Cira Centre location is adjacent to Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. You get to it by strolling up a ramp and taking a small escalator.

It's a gorgeous space, all light and glass and with a clear view of the trainyards, so we knew we needed to pay homage to one of the men who built modern locomotion as we know it today: Matthias Baldwin.
Now, Baldwin may look like your run-of-the-mill 19th-century bloke, but he was anything but. In fact, although his name is now synonymous with steam engines, he got his start as a jeweler and a silversmith, and it was only because of his partnership with a machinist that he became interested in building stationary engines (engines that don't move, but which power objects--we think of them as modern-day generators).

A stationary engine like this one would help Baldwin in his later endeavors to produce steam locomotives.
Photo: CraftsmanshipMuseum.com

Eventually, he built a miniature locomotive, just for kicks, and it that year that the Philadelphia Museum commissioned him to build a working 4-passenger train for exhibition. Baldwin was asked that same year by the Camden and Amboy Railroad to build a short-line locomotive.

His locomotive, assembled entirely by hand (most modern machinery and tools didn't exist in the early 1800s), was called "Old Ironsides."
Baldwin's fate was sealed. He went on to found the Baldwin Locomotive Company, which would assemble over 1500 locomotive engines before his death in 1866.

Although we think the fact that Baldwin's lifework with trains is a great reason for us to name one of our rooms after him, probably the thing we like most about him is the fact that he was an inveterate philanthropist. (He was a founder of the Franklin Institute for the Betterment of Labour, demonstrating a remarkably early concern for the welfare of workers.) And his charitable donations and insistence on racial equality were a key reason for a major boycott of Baldwin engines in the south as the Civil War became a reality.

For all of these reasons, we're proud that this room, a cornerstone of our Cira Centre location, bears Matthias Baldwin's name.
You can see this statue of Matthias Baldwin in front of Philadelphia's City Hall, and you can learn more about Matthias Baldwin here.

EcoMonday: Flor-ing it to a greener workspace

We've already told you a little bit about some of the steps that we take to make our workspace more sustainable. Turns out, one of the biggest answers is right under our feet.

Pop quiz: Which one of the items in the this photo contributes most to our sense of CSR? It's not what you think.

We use Flor carpeting in our facilities, and we'd like to tell you why: We do it because Flor not only looks great, it's also part of one of the most forward-thinking sustainability movements around. While some major corporations are just now getting behind corporate social responsibility, Flor's parent company, Interface Global, has been doing it for over a decade now, starting with CEO Ray Anderson's (pictured below) 1994 promise to take nothing from the planet that can't be replaced by the planet.

Photo via Interface

That sounds pretty lofty, and the goal that Anderson has set for Interface matches that expectations: Anderson wants Interface to be a zero-impact company by the year 2020. (In March of this year, the company launched a year-long metrics measuring program, so it could better gauge how it's doing in its quest. You can read those results here.)


Okay. Now you know a little bit more about Interface, and why we chose Flor. But realistically, what does that mean for a sustainable office? It all breaks down to the steps that Flor's taken.

• Work with the best: Flor only works with sources that share its vision of sustainability. To that end, it also is constantly on the lookout for new materials that will break down, or recycle into new carpet tiles.
• Reduce, reuse, renew: Flor's manufacturing system is tight. There's very little waste. All Flor tiles can be returned to Flor for breakdown into new carpet tiles. Its modular system (you buy batches of Flor tiles to make up a wall-to-wall carpet, or a rug) means that if you spill something on a tile, you just replace that one section of the carpet or rug.
• Closed-loop sustainability: From beginning to end, the entire Interface company works to reduce its impact. Everything is as locally sourced as possible, and employees even participate in sponsoring the planting of nearly 100,000 trees in order to offset the carbon footprint of things like air travel and commuting.

We like what we see at Flor, and we think it's a pretty good model to use. In the end, what it says to us is that the most quotidian of things can be sustainable, and that sustainability can be a great business model.

Interface's project is called Mission to Zero, and you can take a look around at its drive to get consumers to participate here. For more on sourcing low-VOC carpet, you can visit the Carpet and Rug Institute here.