Championing Change: Fred Keller’s Legacy of Sustainable Business

The Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise celebrates 20 for 20 honoree Fred Keller ’66, founder of Cascade Engineering.

The journey in sustainable business began in the transformative 1960s for Fred Keller ’66, who was inspired by a vision of ethical and thriving businesses that benefit society and the environment. Founder of Cascade Engineering, Keller has spearheaded numerous projects, most notably the Welfare to Career program, which earned national recognition in 1999 with the Ron Brown Award for corporate leadership from President Bill Clinton and presented to Keller at the White House.

A graduate of the Cornell University College of Engineering, Keller is one of the 20 for 20 Notable Alumni honored this year in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise (CSGE) at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Keller continues to dedicate himself to the development of welfare programs that are traditionally considered “unnecessary.” In fact, his diversity work has further expanded to include anti-racism programs as well as the Returning Citizens program that extends Cascade Engineering hiring practices to be inclusive of formerly incarcerated individuals.

Beyond his transformative work at Cascade Engineering, Keller has taught courses on Sustainable Business and Social Entrepreneurship at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, emphasizing his commitment to the essential role of sustainable practices in business.

Learn more about Keller in this Q&A. 

Capitalism vs. sustainability

What drives your commitment and focus in environmental and/or social impact? What impact do you want to have in the world?

Keller: I have come to realize recently that it was the tumult of the ’60s—specifically the mid-’60s, when I was an undergrad at Cornell—that drove me to understand that the people in charge didn’t have it right. That started me on my path to try to figure out what is the right way for the world to operate.

In the intervening decades, we have confirmed as a nation that the right economic system is capitalism; but we have also learned that veering into maximizing shareholder value has had many negative impacts. We are once again in a revolution of sorts and this presents the opportunity to “get it right,” as the system is deeply perturbed. We now have the opportunity to make sure that the system organizes itself along sustainability principles in a way that everyone can survive for the long term. I want to help catalyze the creativity it will take to arrive at this desired state.

Q. Can you share any insights or lessons learned from your experiences that may inspire current students who want to be sustainability leaders?

Keller: What we are learning is that sustainability is not an option. It cannot just be a program thrown on the back of the organization to be disposed of when desired. We have learned that the area of win-win for business and the environment and society is a large area of practice. But we need to get beyond this practice and get into the existential questions for our society that include the unacceptable disparity in wealth and the climate changes that threaten the very way of life as we know it today.

Going against the grain

Q. Describe the biggest challenge you encountered as you built your career in sustainability and how you overcame it.

Keller: There were many, but the most insidious and perhaps the one that trips up too many people is the idea that you are “going against the grain.” To be doing things that others think are not worth doing, or that are considered unpopular or even wrong, causes one to have self-doubt. I think I had to learn to be myself; to not subscribe to the will of the crowd; to learn to not laugh at demeaning jokes; and to not succumb to selfish thinking.

Q: What are the most valuable things you learned at Cornell that have helped you in your career? Did any Cornell faculty member(s) influence you on your chosen career path? Who and why?

Keller: My story of sustainability at the Johnson School began back in 1998 when Professor David BenDaniel called me to see if we would be willing to have a case written about Cascade Engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with the graduate student who came to visit as we designed the case about our decision to not purchase a business in California. As I spoke about the case on several occasions in his class, at one point I mentioned how, in a family business, we designed our future to last for generations. This was an unconventional concept in business schools. On one occasion, Professor BenDaniel stated that “We teach how to maximize value within three to five years before flipping a business.” To which I replied that I didn’t believe in that thinking. He said, “Then you should teach a course about that.”

So in 2002 I started to teach a one-credit course, Sustainable Business. Basically, it was about how to design businesses so that they would be capable of surviving while providing real positive impacts both socially and environmentally. By having Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, and all three B-Corp founders speak in my classes, I learned a lot about how businesses not only survive but thrive through sustainable practices. Over the years, it became clearer to me that sustainability was not only possible, but it was the only way we should be conducting our businesses.

The role of higher education in advancing sustainability initiatives

Q. What role do you see business schools and universities playing in advancing sustainability initiatives, and how can alumni contribute to this effort?

Keller: Business schools hold the primary responsibility for dismantling the Milton Friedman doctrine of maximizing profits as a business’s sole social responsibility. Over the last 40 years, this approach led businesses to follow a philosophy of trickle-down economics with the result that severe economic distress is now endemic in upwards of 40 to 60 percent of the population. It is the responsibility of business schools to teach that businesses, and especially business leaders, have the ability to change this equation. That is, the vast percentage of the population can thrive given the right conditions.

The recent proliferation of artificial intelligence is on track to disrupt capitalism as we know it today and will provide a real opportunity to transform business to serve all people, not just the few at the top. As Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and founder of DeepMind, explains, AI will democratize knowledge. The cost of acquiring knowledge about how to optimize products and services for markets will diminish uncertainties, change job requirements, and even change the roles of business leaders. This disruption will create many new opportunities while at the same time causing severe difficulties for businesses that ignore this new and powerful tool that has the power to transform how we do business. Today’s business leaders need to be able to leverage AI’s capabilities and to understand that it can be a force or good.