Center for Leading Organizations

Gib Hedstrom is a professional affiliate of the Center for Leading Organizations, and the founder of Hedstrom Associates. Gib has over 25 years of experience advising CEOs and board members about how to handle difficult environmental, social and governance challenges. He has reported directly to boards of directors of Fortune 500 companies on over 50 occasions. Gib founded Hedstrom Associates in 2004, providing consulting services to companies that want to be profitable, to be admired, and to thrive as successful enterprises.

Schooled in finance at GE, he successfully completed GE’s Financial Management Program and was Manager of Accounting for the Transformer Division. Gib then spent 20 years at Arthur D. Little (ADL), initially leading the firm’s environmental auditing business, overseeing thousands of audits around the world for over one hundred corporations. He led dozens of strategy and governance assignments while managing key aspects of ADL's activities throughout Europe and Asia and leading the firm’s worldwide sustainability team. He was elected a Vice President in 1989.

Current and past clients include Ashland, Baxter, BHP, BP, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Calvert, Chevron, Chiron, Conoco, Curtis Packaging, Cytec, Dell, Eli Lilly, Exxon, HP, Inco, Kodak, Marathon, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Omya, PEMEX, Raytheon, ReCellular, Rio Tinto, Shell, Sunoco, Texaco, The Conference Board, The Conservation Fund, and United Technologies, among others. Recent client assignments include a board-level environmental governance system review, a new process to manage environmental and societal risks, an external “radar” on key emerging issues, and a strategy to capture value from environmental positioning.

Gib serves on the boards of several organizations, including the University of Michigan Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise (top-rated joint MBA/MS program) 1999 to present. He was co-founder and member of the first Board of Directors, Environmental Auditing Roundtable (1984-1988). Gib was a founding member of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and actively participated in the development of the European Eco Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS).

Gib has written several books and authored many articles on corporate strategy and governance related to environmental issues. He is frequently called upon to speak on business risks and opportunities created by environmental and social trends. In August 2001, he participated in a CNN live interview: Business Unusual (on corporate environmental excellence), hosted by Lou Dobbs.

Gib has dual Master’s degrees from the University of Michigan (MBA Corporate Strategy; MS Natural Resource Management) and a BA in Economics and Geology from Hamilton College.

 
Return to the home page