Susanne Lee, Mitchell Center Talk Series, 9/14/2020

Title: What Can Walt Disney Teach Us About Sustainable Solutions?

Speaker: Susanne Lee, Faculty Fellow, Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, UMaine

Walt Disney was one of the world’s great problem solvers. The driving force behind Walt’s success was an optimism that things could be done better – “all our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

But Disney was not just dreamer, he understood that solutions are complex and you need to “work at it until it’s done right.” In her talk, Susanne will discuss Walt Disney’s approach to creating sustainable solutions including the use of highly talented yet diverse teams, understanding your audience’s needs, engaging young minds in the work, setting the highest standards, and learning from inevitable mistakes. She will also highlight how these Disney tenets align with the Mitchell Center approach that her teams are using to develop sustainability solutions for food waste management in Maine.

Susanne Lee is a senior executive who has created, launched and operated successful multi-million-dollar consumer products brands and businesses with large Fortune 100 companies as well as with lean start-up teams. She worked for nearly a decade at the Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California learning firsthand about the Disney approach to problem-solving. In 2019, Susanne was awarded a Mitchell Center grant to fund a multidisciplinary student research project identifying sustainable food waste solutions for Maine businesses.

For information on the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, go to umaine.edu/mitchellcenter.