Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, helped kick off Longwood University's much anticipated three-day Sustainability Conference on Thurs., March 18. The sustainability conference was a three-day series of events for students and staff from both Longwood and schools from around the state. The conference thesis focused on economic development, environmental stewardship and social justice.

Greenfield was the essential speaker of the conference, where he lectured in Blackwell Hall. He spoke about business sustainability, social responsibility and his radical business philosophy that has made Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream the multi-million dollar company that it is today. In addition, attendees were treated to free Ben & Jerry's ice cream in Dorr ill Dining Hall after the lecture.

Greenfield began by giving a summary of how Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream got its start.
He talked about how he and Ben Cohen became friends and how they ultimately came to want to make ice cream for a living. Greenfield explained that the pair attended a $5 Penn State correspondence course in ice cream making, and shortly thereafter opened their homemade ice cream shop in Burlington, VT in May 1978. Though there were challenges of operating an ice cream shop in the cold Northeast, eventually Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream began selling their ice cream in containers like most of us recognize today.