About the Global Good Conference
The annual Global Good Conference highlights sustainable and innovative ways of addressing global challenges with the goal of inspiring students, faculty, and the local community to use their knowledge and skills in the business of building a better world. This conference is reimagining the former Business For Good and Global Opportunities Conference into a combined event, highlighting the interconnections of local and global action and the importance of business as an actor in creating a sustainable world.
2025 Global Good
The Global Good Conference will take place on Friday, September 26, from 9 am to 1:30 pm in the Plemmons Student Union on the campus of Appalachian State University.
This year's conference will feature speakers from a variety of industries and roles in the sustainability space. Breakout sessions will cover a diverse range of topics in sustainable business, including carbon savings accounts, rainforest sustainability projects, sustainable fashion, and more. Career-focused sessions for students will connect attendees with sustainability leaders from various industries.
The Global Good Luncheon will provide an opportunity for networking and for recognizing outstanding contributions to sustainability and global engagement in the college.
Speakers
Check back for more details closer to the event. More speakers are coming soon!
Keynote Speaker
President
Reinsurance Association of America
Frank Nutter is president of the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA). Nutter currently serves on the Advisory Board of the OECD’s International Network for the Financial Management of Large-Scale Disasters, the RAND Center on Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation, and the University of Cincinnati’s Carl H. Lindner III Center for Insurance and Risk Management Advisory Board. Nutter serves on the Board of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, the largest private funder of research grants to find a cure for childhood cancer. He also serves as chair of EdututorVA, which links college education majors for tutoring with underserved public school students.
He has recently served on the Advisory Board of the Center for Health and the Global Environment, an adjunct to the Harvard University School of Public Health, Council of the American Meteorological Society, and the Board of the University Center for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of universities managing the National Center for Atmospheric Research, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the Worker’s Compensation Research Institute, the Board of Overseers of the Institute for Civil Justice, a subsidiary of the Rand Corporation and on the Board of the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences.
Nutter holds a Juris Doctorate from the Georgetown University Law Center and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Cincinnati. The University of Cincinnati awarded Nutter the 2020 Kautz Alumni Masters Award. Nutter was an officer in the U.S. Navy and is a Vietnam veteran. He competed in the 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2025 Senior Olympics in cycling.
Andrew Gibbs-Dabney
Founder & CEO
LIVSN Designs
Andrew Gibbs-Dabney is the founder and CEO of LIVSN Designs. LIVSN creates outdoor apparel products and systems that maximize function and minimize harm to people and planet.
Andrew is dedicated to hedonistic sustainability and believes business success and social progress go hand in hand. He has built LIVSN on these ideals from day one.
He is from Arkansas, where he grew up exploring the bluffs and hollows of the Ozark Mountains. As an outdoor native, Andrew loves being in nature and mainly spends his time mountain biking, paddling, and camping.
Abby Hollis
Director of Product and Sustainability
LIVSN Designs
Abby Hollis is a designer and artist working to transform the relationship people have with textiles through human-centered design, fiber art, and craft community-building. Hollis works cross-disciplinarily on regional and global scales to shift production systems and consumer culture. Hollis is Director of Product and Sustainability at LIVSN Designs, an outdoor apparel brand creating products and systems that maximize function and minimize harm to people and planet.
Co-founder and CEO
Scope Zero
Lizzy Kolar is Co-founder and CEO of Scope Zero, creators of the Carbon Savings Account® (CSA). Think health savings account (HSA), but for home technology and personal transportation upgrades that reduce employee utility bills and corporate scope 3 emissions. Kolar leads Scope Zero’s mission to reduce personal utility bills and fuel expenses by $300 billion per year, removing the carbon emissions equivalent of 125 million cars from the road. Kolar holds a master’s degree in sustainable design engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University.
Victor Salviati
Former Director of Institutional Development and Innovation
Sustainable Amazon Foundation
Victor Salviati is the former director of institutional development and innovation with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation (SAF). He is a biologist with a Master’s in Sustainable Development and has been working with conservation and financing conservation in the Amazon since 2009. Among his duties at SAF are fundraising, forest monitoring, innovative arrangements for conservation, REDD+, R&D, and public policies. As key ongoing projects, Victor is leading the first-of-its-kind FSC certification for protected areas’ management, designing FAS’ strategy for climate adaptation in isolated riverine communities in the Amazon, and supporting the regulation of the Environmental Services Law in the State of Amazonas.
Author
What We Can Do: A Climate Optimist's Guide to Sustainable Living
Taking a holistic, data-driven view across our Personal, Professional, and Political lives, What We Can Do aims to instill readers with a pragmatic optimism in the fight against climate change. Using a lens of organizational design and modern environmental frameworks, his best-selling book also underscores "how sustainability gets done" by highlighting how every job can be a sustainability job. Author Charlie Sellars has previously served as board member and chief technology officer of an impact-focused nonprofit organization, The $100 Solution, which believes that “solutions to big problems start with small steps.” He initially joined this nonprofit while studying for his Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from Williams College, a small liberal arts school nestled in the Berkshire Mountains that helped grow his love for nature.