Alumni Choose Corporate Setting to Make an Impact

"There are a lot of complicated questions around how to lead a company in a way that reflects its values and how to measure these sorts of intangible things. In some cases, companies are turning toward people with MBAs to help them address these problems." -Sasha Dichter (MBA '02)In 1993, the founders of the Social Enterprise Initiative thought long and hard about the name of their new venture. In selecting the term "social enterprise," they acknowledged that the focus of their work would be the solutions to social problems by the nonprofit, public, and corporate sectors. The wisdom of that decision is made clear when speaking with HBS alumni who have found that their business skills are welcome assets in corporations that are working to improve society.

Robin Berholz (MBA '04) came to HBS because of its social enterprise offerings and took full advantage of them as a student, including taking three electives offered by Social Enterprise, joining the Social Enterprise Club, and participating in the summer fellowship program. Upon graduation, she was considering several positions in education-related nonprofits when PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Canada (PwC) offered her an opportunity she couldn't resist. The firm was starting up a foundation in order to build upon the success of its existing philanthropic activities. Berholz jumped at the chance to return to her native Toronto and manage the day-to-day operations of the new philanthropic venture.

As program manager and the foundation's first employee, Berholz's initial priority is to develop a volunteer program whereby employees who donate a certain number of hours of their time to an organization will be able to apply for a PwC grant to support the organization. "A group of employees are already active volunteers in the community. The foundation will be a way for them to be recognized and for their organizations to benefit from grants," observes Berholz, who also hopes to set up team-based volunteer programs, increase the number of managers involved in nonprofit boards, and develop a grant program for local organizations.

"The Social Enterprise courses I took at HBS gave me a broad perspective on the sector. I knew I would apply what I learned right away, and that is just what I'm doing now."

-Robin Berholz (MBA '04)

The larger goal, she explains, is to create a framework to better coordinate the firm's volunteer and giving activities together with those of its people. "We'd like to be a catalyst to those who are not volunteering to get involved," says Berholz, whose constituents are the 4,200 PwC employees who work in 25 locations across Canada. "A big part of what we'll do is educate people on the types of opportunities that exist."

Like Berholz, Sasha Dichter (MBA '02) didn't expect to work for a large corporation after earning his MBA as well as an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government. But an informational interview with the president of IBM's international foundation convinced Dichter that a position leveraging IBM's influence to create social change was a good fit. "The chance to take the resources of a company that focuses on innovation and try to have an impact on something as big as public education really was appealing," explains Dichter, who is senior program manager in the company's Corporate Community Relations department and project manager of IBM's Reinventing Education Change Toolkit.

"We are very focused on strategic giving," he explains from his office in Armonk, New York. "We want to take the best technology, services, and solutions that we offer our business customers and apply them to our philanthropic efforts," says Dichter, noting that he uses the general management, leadership, and analytical skills he gained at HBS every day at IBM, and they have helped him understand the organization as a whole.

Both Berholz and Dichter find it rewarding to leverage the leadership and management know-how they gained at HBS to apply to social enterprise areas. "It always seemed to me that being inside a large, powerful organization could be one of the best ways to promote the kind of socially responsible thinking that I've hoped to see reflected in such organizations," says Dichter, stating that IBM has more than 300,000 employees and donates over $100 million to charity each year. "When I work on issues of corporate responsibility at IBM, I'm thinking about which of these issues are core to our business and how can I explain them in a way that will make an impact with IBM senior executives or even with our salespeople."

Berholz, who describes her position at PwC as a "dream job," adds, "I knew I wanted to work in the social sector. This is an entrepreneurial exercise within a broader corporation. I get to work on the development of our strategy, our marketing and communications plan, and the design of our programs. It's a chance to put so much of what I learned at HBS to work."