Tiny Greyston Bakery may only have 65 employees, but its social impact is enormous.

The bakery is a social experiment that started more than 20 years ago with the goal of employing the chronically unemployed – getting them off the streets and back into the work force. Today, it has become a role model for companies that want to inject some social action into their business. It is the key supplier of baked goods to major ice cream manufacturers like Ben & Jerry’s, has provided cakes and tarts to the White House, and has been profiled on television's "Sixty Minutes" and in Marc Gunther's book "Faith & Fortune."

Greyston has always interwoven a values driven social mission with practical business tactics. It was founded in 1982 by Bernard Glassman, a one-time aerospace engineer who had become a Zen Buddhist. Glassman borrowed $300,000 to open a small storefront bakery in Riverdale, the Bronx that he hoped would become profitable enough to free him and other Buddhists from their workaday jobs. They would earn their own daily bread by turning out muffins, scones, and cakes for the neighborhood and for upscale restaurants in Manhattan. Within a few years, having realized this goal and moved to Yonkers, the group decided to spread its entrepreneurial wings by hiring the chronically unemployed and giving them on-the-job training as well as paychecks.

Today, Greyston Bakery has been transformed into a gourmet wholesale-retail bakery that generates more than $3.5 million in revenues and employs 65 people. Its profits are poured into the Greyston Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the poor and the afflicted. Greyston Foundation's development work includes housing, child care, health care, a computer learning center, and more.

Julius Walls Jr. became president and CEO of Greyston Bakery in 1997. Since becoming CEO, Walls has instituted an “open hiring” policy at Greyston showing his commitment to the belief that everyone deserves an opportunity and recognizing that it is impossible to predict who will succeed. Once hired, employees must adhere to strict productivity, behavioral, and attitude standards. Walls was also instrumental in creating Greyston's Pathmaker Services Program to help workers with their problems, whether or not they are job related. Employees are given access to social services to assist them with personal and family problems. Additionally, Greyston will lend money to its workers, give education grants, and provide employees with career services assistance.

At the Center's Conference, Julius Walls will talk about his realistic goals for corporate performance and his drive for community outreach. To learn more about the Conference, click here.