We get this question quite often. Where is our office? Our headquarters’ address is in the Washington, D.C. area. Specifically, we are incorporated in the State of Maryland as a nonprofit organization with an address just outside of Washington, D.C. proper (literally, just a few hundred meters from the District border). For those of you familiar with Washington, you will know that most of the D.C. area is actually in Maryland and Virginia.
We also get asked if we are a U.S.-focused organization? No is the easy answer. The Institute was established to serve a global community and have a global presence. Our faculty and staff are located in several countries, with the largest numbers actually residing in Canada and the Philippines, not in the United States.
So far, I don’t expect this story to be of much interest, but there is an element of our operations that I believe is noteworthy.
We put a lot of thought into the design of the GHG Management Institute as a 21st century organization. Indeed, we take the challenge for companies and other organizations to reduce the carbon footprint of their operations very seriously. So much so, in fact, that while setting up the Institute we decided to do what so many talk about, but so few organizations actually do. We created a virtual organization, thereby eliminating commuting emissions and inefficient use of building space. We focused on finding the best experts in the world, regardless of their location. We invested heavily in information technology infrastructure rather than bricks and mortar (and continue to do so). We minimize our travel, and therefore travel related emissions, to the greatest extent possible. You may wonder why you rarely see us at conferences or other events. This is not by accident. We are not against travel, but insist that it be necessary travel.
We hope to serve as a model for what an organization can be if it takes the need to reduce its emissions seriously and is willing to innovate and experiment.
And because we are heavily relying on information technology tools to build a new global professional community, we believe that the best way to explore what works is to first try it out on ourselves.
We are eager to hear your thoughts on how the organizations of the future should be structured to meet the challenge of climate change and what your organization is doing in this regard.
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