“Don’t leave your soul at home when you come to work.” – how long-term investments pay off and why care about potential ones.

Dr. Glenn Howard Frommer, Sustainability Development Manager, MTR Corporation, Hong Kong, P. R. China

It was the vision of realizing his own potential that brought Glenn Frommer from being an aerody-namics engineer in the USA, to undertake re-search in hearing speech pathology in Europe, and finally assisting in the development of a sus-tainable public transport system in Hong Kong - and hopefully in other Asian cities. Looking back on this long and diverse journey, rediscovering how the dots fit together, Glenn told us that what satisfies him today is the fact that he had made a positive impact on his com-pany, community and society.
Glenn prefers to commit himself to long-term, solid pro-grammes rather than jumping around short-term assign-ments. In the case of Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation his 13 year-long engagement developed an internationally lea-ding public transportation company in the area of sustain-ability. Today, Glenn tries to leverage his acquired exper-ience by taking leadership in various international organi-sations and, especially by chairing the Sustainable Deve-lopment Commission of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP). Through the UITP’s Charter for Sustainable Development, a number of leading enterprises around the world develop alternative and more sustain-able – solutions for mobility in the 21st century.

In the following lines we would like to share selected statements of our discussion with Glenn Frommer. You may be able to read more in our book “MyImpact”.

Dr. Glenn Howard Frommer’s selected quotations:
“It has always been my target to realize my own and facilitate other people’s potential in a way that benefits my job and my community.”

“One-half of the world’s population lives within a 5 hour plane flight from Hong Kong. We must develop sustainable mobility solutions that work in Asia and develop them quickly. Europe is a well developed society that will need other mobility solutions and there is greater time period available for developing these. ”

“I want to live a good and consistent life I live what I believe, walk my talk and don’t leave my soul at home.”

“Environment is important at work but also in my private life. My family and I have maintained a vegetarian diet for the last 30 years, buy organically grown food, and we use public transport. In Denmark we owned a farm where we grew more than 80% of our own food. ”

“1992-1997 was an intense period of development in Hong Kong with much of the infrastructure visible today built, for example the Airport Railway, the New Airport and the Lantau Expressway. This gave us a tremendous challenge and opportunity to construct things in a sustainable and future-oriented way.”

“At MTR we have a program that gives every employee a chance to do some social work as volunteers. It is highly appreciated and helps to develop a better appreciation for our community.”

“What gives me satisfaction is quite simple: I have made an impact in job, in my community and in my society.”

Some background on Dr. Glenn Howard Frommer:
Dr. Glenn Frommer was born in the USA where he also went to school. His background is in aerospace engineering, where he focussed on high speed and later on low speed aerodynamics before receiving his second major in medicine from Stanford University in California. For his PHD, Glenn became member of a medical engineering program at Stanford University working on hearing/ speech pathology, a combina-tion of low speed aerodynamics and medicine.
After his PHD he got a Fulbright Scholarship to research inner ear physiology in Denmark, where he met his wife. After years of research Glenn started working for a local company of the F. L Smidth Group in 1981, focusing on acoustics (acoustical ceilings, non mineral based absor-bents, fire prevention) and got more and more involved with environmental issues. As a consequence of Glenn’s efforts, his company, received the Danish Working Envi-ronmental Prize in 1984 for the development of a mineral-wool free sound absorbing ceiling.
After a short stay in Australia in 1991, being in charge of an engineering company, he moved with his family to Hong Kong where they now reside. Glenn has been wor-king for MTR ever since and has designed the company’s environmental and sustainability programmes to be among the world’s leaders.

Some background on MTR:
The MTR Corporation is in the business of building and managing mass transit railway systems and providing related rail services. Combined with the rights to develop and own property – shopping centres and other commercial pro-perties - adjacent to the rail network, the Corporation is positioned to actively participate in the sustainable development of the communities served in Hong Kong and beyond.
The MTR network operates six railway lines comprising 88 km of rail lines connected by 50 stations in and around Hong Kong. The system transports averaged 2.4 million passengers per weekdays.
The MTR Corporation went public in 2000 and employs 6’500 people today. It is currently helping to implement additional public transport systems in mainland China, especially in Shenzhen and Beijing.
Sustainable development of the operations of the MTR has been a major focus for several years and the organi-sation pioneered this trend in Hong Kong. The MTR pub-lished the first sustainability report in Hong Kong and is continuing to innovate in this area to remain in an inter-nationally leading position.

If you would like to engage with the work of Dr. Glenn Frommer or get to know more about MTR Corporation please visit www.mtr.com.hk,

or, for more specific opportunities, contact joanna.stefanska@myimpact.ch or wolfgang.hafenmayer@myimpact.ch directly.