What is a B Corp and why it matters: with Former B Lab U.S. & Canada CEO Jorge Fontanez

The Getting Down to Business podcast series takes listeners on a journey to discover what it means to become a B Corp, why it matters, and what comes next—for B Corps and for the rest of the world. Throughout the series, host Lauren Everett explores the certification process firsthand with B Corp leaders who have taken the leap, and together they break down what it really means to use business as a force for good. In this first episode, Lauren sits down with Jorge Fontanez, CEO of B Lab U.S. & Canada, to dive into these topics.

B Lab and B Corps

Jorge describes B Lab as the nonprofit engine behind the standards that are used by companies to assess themselves and then ultimately certify against those standards—or to become a B Corp. B Lab, he says, strives to address environmental, social, and governance issues within the framework of all stakeholders. “We see ourselves as being one of the most comprehensive standards on the planet,” he tells Lauren. “Literally in the way that Fair Trade helps to certify coffee companies and ensure fair trade practices for growers or the LEAD certification supports the built environment and ensuring that buildings are safe for the people that inhabit them.”

Jorge describes the history of B Corp certification in three parts. The first phase, which started less than 20 years ago, was to create a set of performance standards to help companies be held to account for how they are measuring their impact on the world and on the stakeholders that they affect. The second phase began about a decade ago and included establishing what is often called the legal requirement, but is more simply an alternative corporate structure.  “It is the way in which we lock the mission for companies to make decisions for the benefit of all stakeholders,” Jorge says. “So that tension around shareholders versus stakeholders in some ways gets resolved by the legal structure that we call a public benefit corporation.”

The third and current phase of what it means to be a B Corp addresses what Jorge calls the future of the movement. “Our vision of the future is to create an economic system that is equitable, regenerative, and inclusive,” he tells Lauren. “And if that is what we believe, then we also should be talking about how the rules of the game need to change and how policies operate more for the benefit of companies and shareholders than they do for workers or suppliers or the communities at large.”

The mission and the journey

Jorge discusses his own journey from marketing and academics to joining B Lab. During the pandemic, he says, he became engaged in a conversation with B Lab Global about the future of the organization and the birth of B Lab U.S. & Canada. “For many of us as a society, we were grappling with what it would mean to come out of the pandemic and how we would successfully think through community care, but also what did this mean for business,” he recalls.  “Something about the opportunity really spoke to me because I saw within the strategy a theory of change that really aligned with my values. And in some ways my career path has been a journey in identifying and saying yes to those opportunities that feel most in alignment with my values.”

He also discusses the idea of a regenerative economy, and says his definition of that is to leave the planet better than you found it by creating policies and practices that actually improve the ecosystem in which we all exist. “The unfortunate truth about capitalism is that it has been built on the premise that companies can take whatever resources they need to create a profit and that's what we're looking to combat,” he says.

 

For more information about B Corp Certification and how to measure your company's impact, visit https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/programs-and-tools/b-impact-assessment/