Innovation

Jeana Wirtenberg is a leader, mother, Professor, and an authentic business woman, whose life and service is a representation of what women are capable of if they truly live their authentic self and do work they deeply care about. Jeana Wirtenberg is President and CEO of Transitioning to Green and a co-founder and Senior Advisor of the Institute of Sustainable Enterprise at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Transitioning to Green helps organizations make sustainability an integral part of business practices. Jeana loves making a difference in people’s lives by educating them. Her willingness, sense of curiosity, and ambition has allowed her to notice the abundance of talent following the recession, where she saw opportunities and was determined to take action. Jeana’s innovation did not involve one particular person or goal. She was inspired by her peers, her mother, mentors like Chuck Nakamura. In essence, Jeana said, “I saw all this talent and opportunities and I wanted to work on something meaningful.”

Transitioning to Green consists of consulting services, sustainability assessments, and profitability modeling. It also consists of leadership programs for executives and managers, training, and coaching to help organizations become more profitable and environmentally conscious. As Jeana said “ I firmly believe we can align the aspirational goals of business and society by creating environments where all the talent – millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers alike- are engaged in purposeful and meaningful work.” Her passion and dedication to a greener world is attributed to her service of helping companies, communities, organizations, and professional associations to make sustainability a mainstream, normal business practice, and ultimately the only way business is done. Therefore, the innovation enables a commitment to reducing the environmental impact while maintaining their commitment to helping companies; using sustainable practices as an elemental and fundamental part of their operating methods. They encourage their business partners also to make an effort in practices that could eventually have an impact on future generations. It may not be easy, as Jeana believes one of the biggest short-term effects in the company was finding customers. Like most start ups, obtaining customers can be a bit of a challenge because not a lot of people know about the company and they don’t know if they can trust it. A long-term effect has been getting an effective group together who do what they say they ought to.

Inspiration

As a company, they knew they could focus on something better. The economic value, although relevant, distributes its primacy with other values based on the "new" paradigm of business such as sustainability, where the imperative is to create value in generating economic profitability, social progress, and conserving the environment and its resources. Innovation is defined as the process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates values for which customers will pay. Transitioning to Green is a global sustainability management-consulting firm providing leading-edge client solutions to a wide variety of challenges facing business and organizations from all sectors.

Overall impact

Transitioning to Green started as a foundation; 501C3 in 2008 in the height of the recession and was later developed as an LLC. Jeana saw many of her friends lose valuable jobs as America’s economy crippled. Hence, she discovered a gap between talent and a need for societal well being and then she thought about linking talent with opportunity. She helped bridge the gap between the so-called “grey” economy and “green” economy. Furthermore, she created an event at Fairleigh Dickinson University for more than one hundred people who were looking for jobs and along with her team she helped them understand the great opportunities in the “green” economy, considered to be highly successful. This was further developed into a twelve-week transitioning to green career certificate program that became the basis for what her foundation is today. She said “I’ve now done that program eight times and we have an 85% placement rate, which is phenomenal in the world of unemployment. We are now the official training and consulting arm of the Institute for Sustainable Enterprise.” Jeana's authentic service has greatly contributed heavily to our society and has fought against all odds to be where she is today.

Business benefit

Jeana’s passion for educating people set her on the path to teach businesses about the planet while making a profit at the same time. “Many people don’t know what the meaning of sustainability is,” said Jeana. In this generation, business owners know that it is imperative to create a prosperous, profitable company. These days the only way to be profitable is to be sustainable. Jeana’s company steps in to educate and inform businesses on the benefits of creating or transforming a company through sustainability. With this in mind, Jeana’s idea of creating an organization geared towards sustainability will continue to be beneficial for the business.

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Social and environmental benefit

In today's hyper technologically advanced and complex society, climate change is one of the global threats to human life. Transitioning to Green is working alongside companies to brainstorm creative and innovative solutions to making strategic choices to become a greener world. This tackles two issues with a single stone, helping organizations become more sustainable and working to ingrain clean energy initiatives. While world leaders are having endless debates on the issue of climate change, Jeana has taken steps to put her vision into action.

Interview

Jeana Wirtenberg, President and CEO