About Us
Student & Alumni Profiles
Stephen Chan, HBS/HKS 2009
The Social Enterprise Community
My first experience with the social enterprise community at HBS was at an Admit Weekend dinner that the Social Enterprise Club had organized for prospective students. People always tell you that business school isn't just about the available resources and what you learn in class—it's about the other students. From that first encounter, I was really impressed with the caliber of people, their creative thinking, and their sense of urgency to see the world change.
So I came to HBS with a pretty positive impression, but was still blown away. A lot of what I expected to do at HBS was connect with like-minded people, which I did. But the Social Enterprise Club, where I served as co-president, is so much more than a group of people with experience in the nonprofit sector—there are more than 350 members with an incredible range of experiences and backgrounds. Every year the club hosts a conference that draws an amazing list of speakers and close to 1,000 participants. Beyond that, we're all learning from each other and drawing on one another's connections and relationships. The power of that diversity comes out in classroom discussions, too; you have to grapple with the fact that there's not just one way of approaching a problem, that there are a lot of different tools at our disposal.
Career Path
After graduation, I'm looking forward to building on my past experience at the Boston Foundation by serving as an Advisor to the Mayor for the City of Boston. The position is sponsored in part by the HBS Leadership Fellows program and really fits well with my overall career goals of doing something at the local level in government or the nonprofit sector, primarily around issues like education, affordable housing, urban planning, immigrant rights, civil rights, and other social justice issues. Working at the intersection of public policy and social innovation seems like a great way to expand the toolkit of skills I've developed at HBS.
