June 2, 2026 / Leave a Comment
What does it actually take to build a responsible company? Mot just a company with a sustainability department, but one where corporate citizenship is woven into strategy, operations, and culture? That’s the question Dave Stangis and Katherine Valvoda Smith set out to answer nearly a decade ago, and it’s the question at the heart of this conversation.
Dave and Katherine join Marcy for the first episode of Table Stakes’ “Read Responsibly” book series to talk about 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and Your Business — what inspired it, how it’s held up across a decade of political and cultural turbulence, and what they’d add if they wrote it today. They also dig into the war over ESG terminology, the quiet disappearance of the word “ethics” from corporate vocabulary, and why the money in publishing a book is never actually in the book.
This is a conversation for practitioners, leaders, and anyone who believes that doing good and doing well are still compatible goals — even right now.
Meet Dave Stangis
Dave Stangis is one of the most recognized figures in corporate sustainability and responsibility in the United States. He currently serves on the leadership team at Apollo Global Management, where he has continued his career-long work of integrating sustainability and corporate citizenship into business strategy at the highest levels. Prior to Apollo, Dave served as Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President of Corporate Responsibility at Campbell Soup Company, where he was widely credited with embedding sustainability into the company’s core business model. Before that, he built and led the corporate responsibility function at Intel Corporation — one of the first of its kind at a major publicly traded technology company.
Dave has served on the executive advisory board of the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship for many years and was a key figure in shaping the center’s curriculum and community. He holds deep expertise in stakeholder engagement, purpose-driven strategy, and the practical business case for corporate citizenship. He is the co-author, with Katherine Valvoda Smith, of 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and Your Business and The Executive’s Guide to 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: How Your Company Can Win the Battle for Reputation and Impact, both published by Emerald Publishing.
Meet Katherine Valvoda Smith
Katherine Valvoda Smith is the Executive Director of the Center for Corporate Citizenship at the Boston College Carroll School of Management, a role she has held for more than a decade. Under her leadership, the Center has become one of the premier institutions in the world for corporate responsibility research, education, and practitioner development, serving a global community of members across industries and sectors. Katherine also serves as faculty at the Carroll School of Management, where she teaches Business in Society.
Before joining Boston College, Katherine served as AVP of Research at Brown University and as COO of the University of Massachusetts Foundation, where she doubled assets under management to more than $700 million. She has unique experience driving large-scale social impact initiatives and joint research projects at the intersection of neuroscience, equity, and education. Katherine is the co-author with Dave Stangis of 21st Century Corporate Citizenship and The Executive’s Guide to 21st Century Corporate Citizenship.
Shownotes
Key topics, books, and resources mentioned in this episode:
The Books
- Buy from Bookshop.org: 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and Your Business — Dave Stangis and Katherine Valvoda Smith
- Buy Kindle from Amazon: 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and Your Business
- Buy the executive’s companion from Amazon: The Executive’s Guide to 21st Century Corporate Citizenship: How Your Company Can Win the Battle for Reputation and Impact
Other Books Mentioned
- The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson Bookshop Amazon
- Not the End of the World — Hannah Ritchie Bookshop Amazon
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century — Thomas Piketty Bookshop Amazon
- Black Genius — Dick Russell Bookshop Amazon
- Built for a Better World — Jeffrey Hollander Bookshop Amazon
- Incorruptible — Eric Ries Bookshop Amazon
- Connectography — Parag Khanna Bookshop Amazon
Organizations
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