Boryana Damyanova was a rarity among undergraduates at Tufts' Institute for Global Leadership: She was interested in business.
While her colleagues investigated development, poverty and democratization, Damyanova focused on complex issues that lie at the intersection of business, politics and society.
Damyanova, a member of the Class of 2006, was fatally struck by an automobile last November, but her passion lived on Tuesday night with the inaugural installment of a annual panel in her memory.
"Globalization and Localization: The Cultural Impact of Multinational Corporations" focused on what standards corporations should follow as they enter the world marketplace. The conclusion was that while standards should exist, there is only so much corporations can and should be expected to do.
The discussion centered around the increasingly popular term of "corporate social responsibility."
The first panelist, Phillip Clawson of the Community Matters Group, showed data demonstrating that appearances of the term in media have increased 700 percent in the last five years.
Clawson defined the term as "the art of making profitability responsible," a phrase with which the other panelists did not disagree.
Clawson and Robert Massie of the Coalition of Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) both made speeches extolling the benefits of working closely with corporations to positively change conditions around the globe.
Final panelist Debora Spar, a professor at the Harvard Business School, offered a different perspective: that corporate responsibility can have both positive and negative effects.
She presented the case of AIDS medication as an example. Pharmaceutical companies have been compelled to give away drugs for treating HIV at or slightly above cost in the developing world.
But pressure on corporations to give back has not ceased, she said. Now corporations are being asked to contribute to health care systems and education in countries where they are lacking.
Forcing corporations to do more and more might have unintended consequences. Spar said one pharmaceutical company - which she declined to name - was no longer researching AIDS drugs because of the costs involved.
Now, the company is focusing on a more profitable market: pet medication.
Though the panelists threw around a number of technical terms and flashed slides with multi-colored bulls-eyes and a web of interconnecting arrows, real-life examples repeatedly surfaced.
Institute for Global Leadership Director Sherman Teichman started one question with two one-word sentences: "Google. China."
Spar responded by saying that the challenges corporations face in China - highlighted by the controversy over Google's decision to offered a censored Chinese version of its search engine - are different than those posed by previous authoritarian governments, such as South Africa under apartheid.
"The United States can't boycott China," she said. "The power dynamic is very different."
But Massie said that once international corporations are inside a certain country, they gain leverage that can help push for change from within.
"Asked in the right way, corporations can make significant changes," he said.
The panel was organized by seniors Tiffany Chen and Thomas Singer, as well as Bonnie Rose Schulman (LA '04), all members of Damyanova's Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) class.
The panel was announced at the annual EPIIC symposium in March. The idea originated from discussions around the time of a campus memorial service held in January.
"Bory had contributed so much to us," Chen said. "This was her main area of interest, so we thought this would be a good thing."
Singer interrupted, saying that "there is a scholarship that is being created and all that, but our EPIIC class has little to do with that."
"This is a way for our EPIIC class to give back," Chen said.
Singer met Damyanova when the two worked together on their EPIIC research project, which involved traveling to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to investigate American corporations operating in the Middle East.
"We got together because we were both interested in business," Singer said. "Not everyone was interested in business; in fact, not too many people were."
As a native of Bulgaria, Damyanova found globalization to be more than a theory - it was her background.
"She was interested in the reach of western civilization and in our interest in developing nations," Chen said.
At the time of her death, Damyanova had just accepted a position with Citigroup as a financial consultant. The financial services company - which has more than 200 million customer accounts in 100 countries - has a reputation as a leader in corporate social responsibility.
It is a topic that is sure to be addressed on campus before next year's memorial panel. While asking a question, Teichman off-handedly announced the theme of the next EPIIC class: global governance.
