INDEVOR Founding Story

INDEVOR’s Student & Alumni History:
Raising Awareness, Advocacy and Action for Sustainability in Work & Life

INDEVOR student club was founded by the MBA 93D promotion as a greenhouse for MBAs to grow their MBA skills with a social impact lens and transplant that ethos into life and work beyond INSEAD. The alumni club has since broadened this lens to social and environmental impact, or sustainability.

INDEVOR Founding Committee, Fontainebleau 1993

The student club was born with a big bang when two 93D MBAs who came from INGOs, Katie Smith Milway & Philippe Dongier, sent a VAX mail out to students, staff and faculty asking if anyone else was interested in situating their business skills in the context of global social and economic development. Overnight 120 MBAs, staff and faculty affirmed their interest, a dozen of whom immediately formed the founding INDEVOR steering committee with sponsoring professors Olivier Cadot and Niraj Dawar and strong support from INSEAD’s then dean, the late Herwig Langhor.

INDEVOR Faculty Sponsors: Landis Gabel, Olivier Cadot and Niraj Dawar

That first year INDEVOR focused on 3Cs:

  • Careers (bringing nine social impact orgs to campus),
  • Curriculum (adding two courses, including “Managing Nonprofits,” which 93D INDEVORites created with Dawar and Jean- Francois Manzoni, and “Doing Business in Developing Countries,” which 93J INDEVORites instigated with Cadot) and
  • Convenings to raise awareness, including bimonthly “Continent potlucks and panels (Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia) at student’s homes, and a full topic day on “Future Value: Enterprise and Sustainable Development” featuring the then-CEO of Women’s World Banking Nancy Barry; then-head of World Bank’s Environment Group, Andrew Steer; who now runs Bezos Earth Fund), then-chief negotiator for GATT (now WTO) Gary Sampson; and then-International DG of Worldwide Fund for Nature, Charles de Haes. (See photos attached).

The club has largely held to these pillars of influence for life at INSEAD and beyond, with leadership handovers every six months. And, each successive promotion has innovated approaches to pursue influence more deeply and effectively.

Some milestones:

  •  2003: By INDEVOR’s10th anniversary, students had registered INDEVOR an MBA Net Impact chapter, created an INDEVOR website (replacing a large binder of INDEVOR documents passed from class to class) and a graduation pledge to put business skills in the service of society. In 2003, under Sara Agarwal’s student presidency, the IAA gave INDEVOR a Contribution to Society Award.

INDEVOR’s First Topic Day – 1993: Future Value

Topic Day Keynotes: Chief Negotiator GATT/WTO, Nancy Barry, CEO, Women’s World Banking and Andrew Steer, Director of Environment World Bank.

  •  2008/9: By its 15th anniversary, INSEAD had created a staff position to shepherd social impact/sustainabilty initiatives at the school, with former INDEVOR club president Megan Pillsbury founding the role and initiating an alumni board for the student club.
  • 2013: By its 20th anniversary, INDEVOR, which had spread to the Singapore campus in early 00s, and its student members were hosting an annual Sing/Fonty INDEVOR week with “Treks” to visit sustainable businesses. By then INSEAD had a scholarship program, with INDEVOR alums on the committee, to subsidize summer and starter jobs in the social sector.
  • 2018: For the club’s 25th anniversary, former INDEVOR president Greg Blackwood formalized an INDEVOR alumni global club – INDEVOR Global Impact Network – and executive committee, with student club co-founder Dongier (MBA93) the founding alumni president. Blackwood brought together students and alums at the Singapore campus for a major celebration in conjunction with the launch of INSEAD’s Hoffman Global Institute for Business and Society and the school’s rebranding and capital campaign around “Business as a Force for Good.”
  • 2023: For its 30th anniversary, the INDEVOR Global Impact Network, liaising with the student club, hosted an inaugural Alumni Sustainability Summit in London, in conjunction with London’s INSEAD Alumni Forum Europe. The alumni Global Club officially broadened its charter to promote social and environmental impactand become a force for good for people and planet. It formalized its role as hub for a growing network of sustainability/INDEVOR reps across NAAs and other GCs as a learning and action network, and sums up its mission as advancing 3As: Awareness-raising (learning agenda around social and environmental impact), Advocacy (for INSEAD’s climate journey) and Action (to help every alumni evolve their thinking and behavior toward sustainable practices in work and life toward eradicating poverty and protecting nature).
  •  Today INDEVOR-GIN formally collaborates with other global clubs on aspects social and environmental impact. It liaises with student clubs INDEVOR, Business and Environment and Energy, and hosts The Community Impact Challenge, a newer, high-growth “alumni and beyond” movement to decarbonize work and life.