The Economy of Communion Project continued our series of interviews, the third being John Mundell, president and founder of Mundell and Associates in Indianapolis, an environmental consulting company. With a background in civil and geotechnical engineering, John has spent 45 years running his business according to Economy of Communion Values. He had numerous stories, and provided some rich material in 15 hours of video footage we took while he was here! Our interns also enjoyed getting to know him and found his work inspirational. Snippets and case studies from his interview (and all the interviews) will soon be available on our site at https://www.economyofcommunion.org/

The EoC Project welcomed Paul Catipon, CEO of NetPro in New York City to Creighton October 20-22nd to be interviewed as one of the eight Economy of Communion Entrepreneurs to be interviewed this Fall. He has powerful stories of how he built up a company through incredible generosity and open-handedness to friends and competitors. His success story is truly inspiring and will provide a lot of great snippets for use in classroom discussion as the EoC project develops course curriculum for its website.

8 Entrepreneurs will be interviewed this fall, and another 4-6 this spring, all sharing stories of putting people first and living out their values of love and unity first, with profits being a necessary, but not sufficient, basis for running a business.

For more on the EoC Project, or to sign up for updates, please check out https://www.economyofcommunion.org/

Andy Gustafson, director of the BFCGI, is going to do three presentations at Providence College October 17th. He will do a morning coffee table event with selected business students, meet with faculty from the business school to discuss Jesuit Catholic Business School education for lunch, and do a public talk on How Business Can Make You a Better Human Being.

Andy Gustafson, director of the BFCGI, presented at the recent CBFA annual conference at Lee University in Cleveland, TN. His talk was about how Protestant business faculty can utilize Catholic influenced teachings on business, otherwise known at Catholic Social Thought. His talk was generally well received and he is grateful for the opportunity to present and engage the CBFA members.

Joan Duggen was quite successful in business, made a lot of money, and then began an Economy of Communion company which she helped co-run for 22 years, tutoring students. She has an inspiring story and the Economy of Communion Project was fortunate to be able to interview her for 2 days at Creighton in early October. She is the first of more than 12 EoC entrepreneurs who we will be interviewing in the next few months.

(by Andy Gustafson)

I had the fantastic opportunity to travel to Rome last week. While there, I was able to attend the East Asian Economy of Communion annual meeting, and also to attend the Shape the World Summit 2025, put on by Consulus (Singapore) which brought together leaders from around the world.

I also got to travel to Castle Gondolfo, just south of Rome, and Roca di Papa, the worldwide central headquarters of the Focolare movement, a Catholic-inspired organization who founded the Economy of Communion movement in 1991. While at Roca di Papa, I was able to meet with Margaret Karram the president of the Focolare, as well as Ruperto Battison and Genevieve Sanze who oversee the Focolare work and sharing operations worldwide. We also had supper with Jesus Moran, the president of the Economy of Communion movement. None of this would have been possible without the help and support of Loretta Raushuber, who lived in Italy for 17 years and knows everyone it seems.

I also got a chance to finally meet in person Lawrence Chong, who is one of the most active Economy of Communion entrepreneurs in the world, and co-leader of Consulsus, an international consulting group. He is fully committed to the Economy of Communion way of doing business– putting people first, and seeing business as a means to bring communion with others and social transformation. He is inspirational, and it was very interesting to hear the various leaders speak at the conference Thursday.

It was a wonderful trip (although being away from Celeste and the kids for 5 nights was tough) and I think the connections made will have a lasting and ongoing impact on my life and work.

The Business, Faith and Common Good Institute had a substantial impact on the discussions at Creighton University this last schoolyear.

Of course our speaker series which included Andreas Widmer (Catholic University), Joe Vukov (Loyola Chicago), Alex Salter (Texas Tech) and Zach McDonald (Omaha Entrepreneur) provided wonderful public forum opportunities for students, faculty and the larger community to learn and discuss contemporary issues regarding business, faith and society.

A new and impactful piece of our curriculum development was Gustafson’s “Social Media, AI, and the Meaning of Life” course, which is aimed to help students consider and reflect and then act on the issues arising from the growing influence of social media and AI in our society. One of the most powerful assignments in the class, it turns out, was the 5 minutes of silence and nonactivity which every student was supposed to practice every single day, and then reflect and report on 3 times during the semester. Students reported that at first it was the most difficult assignment they had ever had, but then as the semester went on they reported that that 5 minutes was the time they looked forward to the most. Substantial habit changes have happened for students due to the course, each of the 3 times it has now been offered (spring 2024, fall 2024, spring 2025).

Creighton is a wonderful place to get to work at living out one’s values in business. The BFCGI is fortunate to get to have the support and freedom afforded from Creighton.

Andy Gustafson, Lead Colleague of the Business Faith and Common Good Institute

We know it feels like winter, but we have an amazing lineup of people coming as part of our BFCGI speaker series this spring! Last week former Swiss guard and entrepreneur Andreas Widmer came to campus from Catholic University and provided a fantastic discussion on faith and entrepreneurship, thanks to the generous support of Dean Tony Hendrickson and co-support from the Menards Family Center for Economic Inquiry.

We have 4 more fantastic speakers this spring– 3 speaking on AI and its effects in business and society, and another on economics and society. They are:

Josh Fershee, Dean of Creighton Law School

Zach McDonald, Owner of Clay Pigeon Marketing and entrepreneur.

Joe Vukov, Professor from Loyola Chicago and author of 3 books.

Alex Salter, Professor at Texas Tech and author of hundreds of articles on many economic issues, including distributism.

Andreas Widmer, from Catholic University, will be engage with Creighton’s own Alexei Marcoux this coming Thursday February 13th in the Auditorium at the Heider College of Business in the Harper Center at 5pm. All are welcome!

Widmer, formerly a Swiss guard at the Vatican, has a vision for entrepreneurship which brings faith directly to bear on business. His books include The Pope and the CEO as well as The Art of Principled Leadership.