Center for Social Innovation

Published: January 13, 2008 Download  50 minutes, 23mb, recorded 2007-03-01

Stuart Smolkin, senior executive with Intralox LLC, the conveyor belt manufacturer, experienced firsthand the devastation caused when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005. The disaster was both personally and financially traumatic to him and thousands of others whose businesses were affected. How did Intralox recover and keep the business going? In this Stanford podcast, Smolkin shares what the company wished it had known — and done — beforehand.

Stuart Smolkin is a senior executive with Intralox LLC, a New Orleans-based modular plastic conveyor belt manufacturing company, with worldwide annual sales exceeding $200 million. As president of his neighborhood association, Smolkin helped organize and guide its 400 families through the post-Katrina recovery. He also served as advisor to the presidents of the New Orleans Business Council and Citizens for One Greater New Orleans, assisting in organizing a grassroots campaign endorsing legislation to improve levee protection. Smolkin received his MBA from Tulane University in 1973. Prior to joining Intralox, he was president of a New Orleans-based software development company and a regional personal computing retail store chain. He also held various technical, sales, and marketing positions with Tymshare, Inc., a Silicon Valley computer services firm.

Resources

• Intralox
• Crisis Mentality, a Stanford Social Innovation Review article
• Burnout in a Crisis, a Stanford Social Innovation Review article