Leadership Symposium: Power of Partnership

Join us for a conversation Chief Development Officer, Elizabeth Egle and Giovanna Castro, Disaster Resiliency and Recovery Lab Team Manager as they discuss SBP's transformative partnership with Toyota- a relationship that leverages the power and efficiency of the business world to drive human impact.

Utilizing the philosophy and practices of the Toyota Production System (TPS), SBP began to visualize processes and implement continuous improvement measures that allowed it to drive impact for disaster-impacted families on a national scale. Today, SBP’s award-winning rebuilding model is a direct result of Toyota’s investment of money, time, personnel, thought leadership and successful business practices - allowing SBP to drive process efficiencies, reduce construction time by 48% using TPS and return thousands of families home over the past ten years.

About SBP

SBP, a social impact organization focused on disaster resilience and recovery, solves the challenges facing at-risk communities by bringing the rigor of business and innovation to drive social impact, create resilient communities, and streamline recovery. To shrink the time between disaster and recovery, SBP takes a holistic approach — reducing risk, increasing resilience and improving the recovery process — to effect transformational change in the disaster recovery system and restore opportunity and security for people and communities.

Since its founding in 2006 in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, SBP has rebuilt homes for more than 3,000 families with the help of 150,000 volunteers in 14 communities across the U.S. and in the Bahamas.

About Elizabeth Egle, Chief Development Officer

In her role as Chief Development Officer at SBP, Elizabeth is responsible for developing programs and raising funds to support the organization's mission of shrinking time between disaster and recovery. In addition to earning revenue from foundations, government grants and individ

ual donors, she develops and manages partnerships with regional, national and global companies to align corporate philanthropic and business strategies with SBP's 5 Interventions. As part of her role on SBP's Executive Team, she builds strategy and new programs that allow the organization to improve the way America prepares for and recovers from disasters. Elizabeth has worked at SBP since 2014.

Elizabeth started her career as a pharmaceutical sales representative for Ortho-McNeil, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. She then took a leap of faith to chase the American dream of owning a business, and opened a coffee shop (Saxbys) with her husband near Georgetown University in Washington, DC. After six years and many lattes later, they sold the shop and moved to New Orleans. Elizabeth has a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration from East Carolina University. She is originally from Lancaster, PA.

About Giovanna Castro, Disaster Resiliency and Recovery Lab Team Manager

Giovanna Castro has over 6 years experience working in the non-profit space, with 4+ years working directly in disaster recovery in both the public and private sectors.

An alumna of Tufts University, she began her disaster recovery work in her native Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria as a bilingual Public Affairs Specialist with the SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance. After seeing first hand how the federal recovery process failed struggling families, she joined SBP with the goal of making a lasting difference. As Community Engagement Manager in SBP's Puerto Rico operation, and one of its first employees on the island, she designed and led the Client Services and Volunteer Departments from their beginnings. Giovanna went on to design SBP's National Volunteer Department Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), guided by the principles of the Toyota Production System. Driven by her belief in large-scale systems-change, Giovanna recently joined SBP's Advise Initiative, which works to drive forward and advocate for innovative solutions to the systemic challenges faced by communities in the current disaster recovery process.

Giovanna is also a 2L student at the University of Puerto Rico's School of Law as a part of their nocturnal J.D. program.