In our latest issue of Kaizen we feature an interview with Chan Luu, CEO of Chan Luu, Inc. Born and raised in Vietnam, Luu came to the USA for college in Boston before launching herself as a designer of jewelry and clothing in Los Angeles.

Also featured in Kaizen are: student essay contest winners Farzaneh Farhangi, Kelly Foster, and Rebecca Robinson; Extreme Entrepreneurship Day; filmmaker Jeffrey Van Davis‘s discussion panel for his film Only A God Can Save Us; and guest speakers Douglas Den Uyl, who visited us from Indianapolis, and Federico Fernández and Martin Sarano, who visited us from Argentina.

A PDF version of Kaizen is available here. We will soon post separately the full interview with Ms. Chan Luu.

If you would like to receive a complimentary issue of the print version of Kaizen, please email your name and postal address to CEE [at] Rockford.edu.

Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, was invited last month to the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala to give a series of lectures on business ethics and political economy. Here is a Spanish-language interview in Siglo 21, in which Dr. Hicks discusses business ethics and entrepreneurship. Below is a video interview with Dr. Hicks conducted by Luis Figueroa on corporate social responsibility:

In an article for Huffington Post, Rieva Lesonsky credits Generation Y, which she dubs “Generation Entrepreneur,” for a major role in the entrepreneurial comeback of the 2010s. She cites Gen Y Capital Partners among organizations seeking to correct the difficulty Generation Y entrepreneurs often have in finding capital. The company donates $10 million to Generation Y startups, and gives some of its proceeds to Kaizen interviewee Steve Mariotti‘s Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Read more here.

Business Insider has an interview with Ben Milne (left), founder of Dwolla, an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit card fees and solves security and efficiency problems in the current online banking system. Dwolla, with about a dozen employees, is on track to handle $350 million in payments per month and is being adopted by banks and business across the country.

Read about the Iowa-based startup here.

Related: hard truths about what startup life is really like.

CEE guest speaker Dr. Alexei Marcoux gives a short lecture on different conceptions of entrepreneurship in the video below:

CEE Professor Shawn Klein has a new course for Spring 2012: Ideas of Liberty in Modern Philosophy. Our ideas about liberty and individual freedom have their roots in the thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Students will explore these ideas in the influential works of Hobbes, Locke, Smith, Burke, and other modern thinkers.

View a PDF of the flyer here.

View a PDF of all the Spring 2012 Philosophy courses.

Kaizen interviewee and guest speaker Robert Bradley, Jr. talks about the connection between green energy projects and crony capitalism on the Forbes website.

Read the article here.

CEE Professor Shawn Klein announced a call for abstracts for the First Annual Rockford College Sports Studies Symposium on his Who Needs Philosophy blog. From the announcement:

Call for Abstracts

1st Annual Rockford College Sports Studies Symposium:
An interdisciplinary conference on the study of Sport.
Date: April 28, 2012

Rockford College
5050 E. State. St.
Rockford, IL 61073

Whether one is a participant, a casual spectator, a die-hard fan, or a critic, sport, in all its varieties and forms, play a significant role in the lives of most people through out the world. Sports and competitions have long been a part of human civilization and raise a wide range of important philosophical and ethical issues.

This symposium will bring together a panel of scholars to discuss philosophical themes or issues arising in the study of Sport. The focus of the panel will depend, in part, on the submitted abstracts. Each presenter on a panel will have 20 minutes for their presentation. This will be followed by 10-15 minutes for panelists to respond to each other and then 15 minutes or more for audience Q&A. There will also be a panel on the Rhetoric of Sport.

Abstract Submission:
Submissions are welcome on any philosophical theme or issue arising in the study of Sport. Abstract should be 300-500 words. Send via email (as PDF) to sklein_at_rockford_dot_edu.

Deadline: January 6th, 2012
Notification of Acceptance: February 1st, 2012

If you have any questions, please contact Shawn Klein (Assistant Professor, Philosophy Department) at 815-226-4115 or sklein_at_rockford_dot_edu or Michael Perry (Assistant Professor, English Department) at 815-226-4098 or mperry_at_rockford_dot_edu.

Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, talks with Federico Fernández and Martin Sarano, co-founders of Bases Foundation, on the political and economic climate in Argentina.

Part I:

Part II:

The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship welcomes Federico Fernández and Martin Sarano to Rockford College this Thursday, October 13, from 11 am to 12:15 pm, in Scarborough 208. Fernández and Sarano will give a joint lecture entitled “Doing Business in Argentina: The current business climate and the ethical dilemmas it presents to entrepreneurs and corporations.”

Federico N. Fernández and Martin Sarano are the co-founders of Bases Foundation, a non-for-profit organization devoted to foster awareness and promote the benefits that individual freedoms bring to society. Mr. Fernández (President of Bases Foundation) is currently editing a book on Karl R. Popper which will be published in 2012. Mr. Sarano (Vice President of Bases Foundation) is a Chicago Booth MBA student and has worked in different corporate and consulting roles in various industries.

All members of the campus community are welcome to attend.

View a PDF of the flyer for Fernández and Sarano’s talk here.