When Andrew Liveris became CEO of Dow Chemicals in 2004 and was looking to grow the business globally, he turned his attention to corporate citizenship, according to Bo Miller, global director of corporate citizenship at Dow.
“He looked at all the levers he could pull, and he recognized that corporate citizenship was one of these levers we had probably not been pulling on hard enough in the past,” Miller said in an interview on the sidelines of the Business Civic Leadership Center’s 2012 global conference in Washington, D.C.
Miller explained it was this “tone at the top” that launched the transformation of Dow’s corporate citizenship program from one of traditional philanthropy to a set of initiatives that are more strategically aligned with the employee priorities and the company’s business priorities.
In this video, Miller describes the evolution of his role, the importance of partnership and how the company’s worker-safety initiatives have succeeded in China.
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About the author
Andrea Useem
As former associate editor and content director for Devex Impact, Andrea created and managed cutting-edge content on the intersection of business and international development. An experienced multimedia journalist, Andrea also served as leadership editor at the Washington Post and spent three years as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Africa reporting for publications including the Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, and San Francisco Chronicle.