Social Enterprise Initiative

Summer Associates


2007 Social Enterprise Summer Fellowship Summaries

Click on organization name for summaries.

Ashoka

John Kim
Ashoka strives to shape a global, entrepreneurial, competitive citizen sector: one that allows social entrepreneurs to thrive and enables the world's citizens to think and act as changemakers. This summer, Ashoka connected me to a company founded and led by one of its fellows, Drishtee. It was here that I had the chance to explore their various business approaches to poverty alleviation in rural India. Specifically, I worked on developing a profitable business model toward delivering health care at the village level. The service would ultimately provide complete health care to each villager for about 3 cents a day. Having plenty of prior modeling experience, however, I found the most thrilling part to be the opportunity to implement the model on the field. I spent the summer based in Delhi, but my project took me to the impoverished parts of India as I navigated the monsoon–ravaged areas via rickshaw, car, bus, train, and plane.

Aspen Institute (The)

Marissa Ashley Evans
Over the past ten weeks, I have had the opportunity to work with two social entrepreneurs on the launch of their first book: Forces For Good; The Six Practices of High Impact Non-profits. The book is scheduled for release in mid October and will be published by Jossey–Bass Publishing; an Imprint of Wiley. My responsibility over the summer was to write a marketing plan for the launch of the book. In this capacity, I was able to combine my interest in strategic marketing with my interest in the social sector. As businesses move towards creating more socially responsible missions, and individuals become more aware of how they are investing their philanthropic dollars, this book seeks to become the guide to measure impact in the social sector. Most books in the sector compare non–profits with businesses and ask how can a non–profit become more like a great business; where Forces For Good takes 12 "great" non–profits and deduces six practices which can be considered the standard for what it takes to become a "great" non–profit. Based on four years of research, the co–authors, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant surveyed industry experts, interviewed leaders in the field, and conducted case studies to narrow the field to 12 organizations which are considered leaders in the field.

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Daniel Longo
This summer, I spent 12 weeks working in an internal consulting group at Brigham & Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston. Most of my projects related to process improvement initiatives for the Shapiro Cardiovascular Center, a $350 million new state–of–the–art facility scheduled to open at BWH in May 2008. These projects included: reengineering booking & patient preparation processes for non–surgical cardiac procedures in order to reduce the number of procedure cancellations and delays, and, developing a detailed work plan for the purchase and installation of $15 million of biomedical equipment for the new facility. The people at BWH were thrilled to have extra help for the summer, and they went out of their way to ensure that I had a great experience. They gave me interesting and meaningful work assignments and numerous opportunities to increase my understanding of hospital operations through procedure observations and job shadowing. I am grateful for the opportunity to explore the operational challenges of the healthcare industry.

BroadReach Healthcare

Radha Ruparell
This summer, I had a very rewarding work experience with BroadReach Healthcare based in Washington, DC. BroadReach is an organization that deploys business expertise and market–based solutions to address global health challenges. Currently, its main project is leading an innovative antiretroviral treatment program in South Africa. The main focus of my summer internship was to help BroadReach start some new work in India. This was an exciting opportunity to learn about India's healthcare challenges and then develop innovative solutions. I spent several weeks in India interviewing the CEOs and other senior executives of hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, pharmacy and diagnostic chains, as well as government officials, academics and leaders of non–profit organizations. The final step involved developing recommendations which led to two sets of opportunities: (a) partnering with a large Indian business conglomerate to address health care challenges in the middle class segment and (b) pursuing a donor–funded project to address health care financing gaps in the rural poor segment.

CancerScan

Jun Fukuyoshi and Yuji Yamamoto
Our mission in this fellowship was "reduce the number of people who die of cancer." We focused cancer screening services, especially breast cancer screening in Japan and started our market research. With a lot of research and interview to medical check–up service providers and professionals including doctors and politicians, we found the lack of awareness, access and aesthetics in breast cancer screening, caused low utilization of such services in Japan. Based on these findings and our knowledge learned at HBS, we developed a business model and our team for the breast cancer screening which will increase participation rate. We will continue our project next year and will start a new entity soon.

Carlisle Development Group

Gregory Pappas
The Social Enterprise Summer fellowship allowed me to spend my summer with Carlisle Development Group, an affordable housing developer in Florida. After spending eight years in the military, I wanted to find a job that had an element of social service while gaining hard real estate development experience. Affordable housing development was the perfect opportunity to do both. Carlisle's rapid growth created a large workload that allowed me to get intimately involved in several ongoing projects and lead new potential growth opportunities. I was also able to learn a lot about the affordable housing crisis in Florida and the industry in general.

Charitable Donations Group

Paris Wallace
This past summer I used the Social Enterprise Fellowship to start my own social enterprise. Charitable Donations Group (CDG) is an organization that helps nonprofits solicit, accept and sell major gifts of real estate for fundraising purposes. A colleague and I created the business plan for CDG over the past school year; this summer we worked on turning the business plan into a company. Our goal for the summer was to get our first transaction. To do this, we had to focus on three task areas: legal, marketing and outreach. Working with lawyers we vetted our business model to ensure that it was legally sound, filed business process patents and applied for corporate status. Our marketing work entailed creating materials for our customers and developing a website. Lastly, we compiled a database of over 200 schools and reached out to all of them individually. We now have the appropriate infrastructure in place to begin facilitating donations and have several relationships that will most likely turn into transactions over the next three months. Overall, this was a unique opportunity to start a company while experiencing all aspects and challenges of the social enterprise sector.

Charter School Growth Fund

Erika Mills
I spent my summer with the Charter School Growth Fund, a venture philanthropy firm that invests in expanding the capacity of high–quality charter school networks. The Fund was founded in 2005 and I was the sixth employee. I spent the summer working on a number of different projects, including developing a website about business planning for school operators, writing an internal policies and procedures manual, analyzing growth plans and financial models, and developing grant and loan proposals for approval by the Fund's board. Over the ten weeks I learned a great deal about the national education landscape, the U.S. charter market, strategic growth planning, and what it's like to be a part of an entrepreneurial philanthropic firm. I was also able to enjoy beautiful Colorado for the summer!

Clinton Foundation (The), HIV/AIDS Initiative

Shad Ahmed
As a Social Enterprise Summer Fellow at the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative in Kampala, Uganda, I worked closely with the Ministries of Finance and Health in order to support the management transformation of their multi-million dollar Global Fund HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria programs. By applying private sector change management approaches in a public health context, I worked to begin engaging key government leaders in a series of workshop-style meetings in order to align their perspectives and priorities, help them define programmatic roles and responsibilities, and assist with a needs assessment in order to build the program's managerial capacity to ensure a sustainable scaling up of the HIV/AIDS program.

Crystal Cline, Malaria Program, Ethiopia
What attracted me to the Clinton Foundation was its business–oriented approach to solving global health issues that would allow me to leverage my business training and add significant value in a non–traditional MBA field. As a Malaria Program Associate, I was given the opportunity to play an integral role in the implementation of a pilot subsidy in private channels for Artemisinin Combination therapy (ACT), or more specifically Artemether Lumefantrine manufactured by Novartis and branded Coartem. This is the recommended first line treatment for malaria in Tanzania, as well as the only World Health Organization pre–qualified ACT on the market. While the Tanzanian government, with support from the Global Fund, has successfully increased access to this treatment in the public sector, more than 50% of the population seeks treatment for malaria in private drugs shops where ACTs are not commonly available due to their high price. The malaria medications that can be found in these outlets have been rendered ineffective by drug resistance for a large percentage of the population. As such, by testing a comprehensive set of interventions, the objective of the pilot is to make this effective treatment widely available and affordable in private drug shops on a national or global scale to reduce/eliminate the burden of malaria in developing countries. My experience was especially valuable and unique as I was fortunate to be involved from the ground up on a very lean team. Therefore, I was able to have my hands in every step of the process: procurement, distribution, pricing, over–branding, repackaging, social marketing, monitoring and evaluation. I took the lead on developing a preliminary demand forecast as well as a supply chain pricing model to determine the suggested retail price of the drugs in one of our pilot districts. Additionally, I designed and piloted a data collection tool via interviews with various regional wholesalers and retailers as part of an effort to better understand the private sector supply chain to help in our efforts to expand the subsidy on a national level. Overall, this experience strengthened my general management skills, especially in a cross–cultural setting, sparked new interest in areas such as supply chain management, gave me exposure to the global health arena, and most importantly, gave me a sense of fulfillment.

Joel Segre, Malaria Program, Tanzania
I spent this summer in Dar Es Salaam on a four person team within the Clinton Foundation's nascent malaria control program. The centerpiece of the work was designing the launch of a new brand of life saving anti–malaria drug called "DAMMA" for sale in the private sector. DAMMA is an over branded version of Coartem, which is the most effective malaria drug on the market. DAMMA is the first drug of its kind to be available in rural, private drug stores at a price affordable to Tanzanians who make under a dollar a day. Data collected from this initial product launch will help to inform malaria control investments by the Global Fund.

Sridhar Prasad, HIV/AIDS Initiative, India
During the summer of 2007, I worked with the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) in their Delhi, India office. Since last fall, CHAI has been rapidly scaling up their efforts in India to expand pediatric access to anti–retroviral therapy with an ambitious goal of 17,000 new children begun on treatment in India and 100,000 new children begun on treatment worldwide. My role was to help develop and define strategies that would result in more children being added to treatment.

Education Pioneers

J. Stuart Frye, Citizen Schools
Education Pioneers is a national organization that exists to train, connect, and inspire a new generation of leaders dedicated to transforming the educational system so that all students receive a quality education. Their work targets major urban centers where the educational system is in dire need of new leaders. In these locations, Education Pioneers seeks to (1) develop a pipeline of talented leaders from multiple disciplines, (2) increase the capacity of existing schools, districts, and education ventures to operate as high-performing organizations, and (3) build a national network of education leaders and reformers. In order to accomplish these objectives, Education Pioneers engages Fellows through two channels over the course of their summer experience. The first channel consists of an intensive training regimen where Fellows meet together for weekly sessions that focus on a specific area of education reform. The second area of engagement comes in the form of an internship with one of Education Pioneers' partner organizations — a diverse group ranging from urban school districts to social entrepreneurs.

I spent the internship portion of my summer with Citizen Schools, an educational program that improves student achievement by teaching skill–building apprenticeships along with rigorous academic and leadership activities. Currently, they serve 3,000 middle–school students and engage 2,400 volunteers at 30 sites nationwide. By 2010, Citizen Schools plans to have 75 sites in 8 states, serve over 7,700 middle–school students and engage 6,200 volunteers in this arm of education reform. My project this summer was directly related to these exciting plans to scale. I worked closely with a team from the New Site Cultivation and National Network departments to build tools and processes around market assessment and financial sustainability. As Citizen Schools continues to expand its national footprint, they will implement these tools in order to scale in a strategic and sustainable fashion.

Maura Marino, KIPP
During the summer of 2007, I had an amazing opportunity to work at the KIPP Foundation in San Francisco as a member of the Network Growth Team. KIPP is the largest network of public charter schools in the country and focuses on supporting low-income students to make their dreams of attending college a reality. Currently, the network consists of 57 schools in 17 states, and my project this summer was to create a growth management process that will allow KIPP to reach 100 schools in 2011 without sacrificing quality of instruction. A true highlight of the summer was presenting my work at the KIPP School Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. Not only was my team able to meet with KIPP's regional leaders to discuss our "smart growth" strategy, but I also met the teachers from around the country who make this work possible.

Jeffrey Shaddix, Victory Schools
I spent my summer working on several projects for Victory Schools. As a Summer Associate in Victory's Development group, I worked closely with two school boards as they prepared applications to open charter schools in the Fall of 2008, and in collaboration with a New York City Board, developed several key components of the school design including the student internship program, senior thesis, and college partnerships for a public policy themed high school. I also worked with the Board of an all boys charter high school in the Olney neighborhood of Philadelphia, and played a key role in developing Victory's first Annual Report for the 2006–2007 school year highlighting the accomplishments of Victory's partner schools.

I also participated in the Education Pioneers Fellowship Program which brings graduate students together from multiple disciplines including Business, Public Policy, and Education. The mission of Education Pioneers is to train, connect, and inspire a new generation of education leaders dedicated to transforming the educational system so that all students receive a quality education.

Thanawan Kittisuwan, WestEd
WestEd is an $80 million nonprofit research, development and service agency. Over the course of 40 years, WestEd works to achieve its goal in creating success for every learner by enhancing and increasing education and human development within schools, families, and communities throughout the country. WestEd's work stretches to over 700 projects at the national, state, district, school, and individual levels. During my ten weeks as a summer business development intern at WestEd, I was mainly responsible for:

  • Developing a business plan for DistrictsMovingUp, WestEd new comprehensive services for districts that have been identified in the program improvement under 'No Child Left Behind'
  • Creating a toolkit for WestEd Talent and Leadership Development Initiative that would help strengthen the agency's leadership pipeline
  • Performing market research and competitive analysis to identify market opportunity for 'Aim for Algebra,' WestEd's new Algebra supplemental materials

Overall, I am very satisfied with my summer internship experience. It gave me a great opportunity to apply knowledge, skills and practices that I have gathered through my past work experience and my first year at HBS into practical uses. Spending the entire summer with passionate people who truly want to make a difference in education reform gives me inspiration to try even harder regardless how complex and difficult the issues at hands may become. I strongly believe that with our positive mind and constant efforts, we will one day see all children have equal opportunity to succeed in education.

Endeavor

George Leng, Air Ties, Turkey
As a Social Enterprise Fellow, I worked for Endeavor, an innovative non governmental organization that helps support high–impact entrepreneurs in emerging economies. As a member of the Endeavor team, I was sent to Istanbul where I consulted the senior management team of a leading Turkish technology start up company on several strategic issues facing the company. My experience this summer has been one of most meaningful to–date. My internship has not only offered me a unique opportunity to learn about the operations of a leading global social enterprise organization but also allowed me to apply what have learned at HBS to contribute to a meaningful cause.

Joan Jove, Dominio del Plata, Argentina
Endeavor is a pioneering non–profit that stimulates entrepreneurship in emerging markets as a new approach to global development. Endeavor supports leading entrepreneurs in emerging markets and helps to create the local infrastructure and inspiration necessary for entrepreneurial initiatives to thrive. In particular, I worked with Susana Balbo, an entrepreneur that owns the winery Dominio del Plata in Argentina. Susana is a self–made entrepreneur. In 2001, while Argentina's economy was stumbling, Susana took the bold decision to leverage most of her personal savings and build her own winery. Her success with Dominio del Plata has been nothing short of extraordinary. Dominio del Plata has been growing at a 50% annual rate since it was founded six years ago. This amazing success has increased the complexity of the company and right now her company is facing complex organizational and strategic challenges. My first main task this summer was to establish control systems and formal information flows among the different levels of employees. Secondly, I worked on developing a financial planning model that is going to be used as a basis for formulating the budget of the company over the next two years. Finally I worked with the entrepreneur in analyzing a key strategic decision: broadening the company's investor base to include external investors.

Alan Vainrub, Graffiti Designs, South Africa
As I'm preparing myself to become an entrepreneur of a socially responsible business back in my country, Venezuela, I've taken the opportunities that the Harvard Business School has presented me. For my summer internship, I chose to work for Endeavor, a non–profit head quartered in America that supports entrepreneurs in developing countries. I understand that the only way to achieve real social and economic growth is to generate valuable employment opportunities that create a virtuous cycle of growth. That is why I believe in Endeavor's mission to generate high impact change through high impact entrepreneurs.

As my experience previous to coming to business school had been in Marketing at P&G, Endeavor paired me up with John Rice an entrepreneur that leads Graffiti Designs, a flexible alternate media advertising company in South Africa. Its core business is the branding of vehicles, which are used as media channels.

Jose Henrique Shintate, Ideagro, Colombia
During this summer, I worked with Endeavor supporting Ideagro, an early stage manufacturer of cattle farming machines in Bogota, Colombia. Endeavor is an NGO which aims to promote social and economic development by supporting high impact entrepreneurs in the developing world. Endeavor provides a top level network of businessmen and mentors, and advises companies through programs such as the eMBA, where students from top business schools in the US do internships in Endeavor companies helping shape their futures. I was the first eMBA in Colombia, and during my stint I helped entrepreneurs Mauricio Angel and Arturo Arciniegas to:

  • Define, size and plan how to serve Ideagro target market in Colombia and abroad
  • Create a new production model preparing move to new plant
  • Revise the sale contract of a stake of the company to foreign investors
  • Define a governance and reporting model of the new company after the capitalization
  • Create a cost controlling system

The experience was great professionally, since it allowed me to be exposed to a broad set of issues covering almost all of the subjects studied in the first year of the HBS MBA program. It was also a great time personally since Colombia is a wonderful country with a rich culture and Endeavor there has a young and motivated team.

Brian Elliot, IncuBeta, South Africa
This past summer I worked for a U.S.-based NGO called Endeavor Global in the capacity of a consultant intern to an online tech firm, IncuBeta, in Cape Town, South Africa. Endeavor had identified IncuBeta as an innovative startup with significant potential to scale, and if it grows to its potential, it will bring jobs, revenues, and renewed investor attention to South Africa. As a steward of Endeavor's private–sector based international development efforts, I had a high-impact internship in which I advised IncuBeta's leadership team on strategic and organizational issues. By relaying my experience as an HBS student and former management consultant, I was able to help IncuBeta improve their business model and practices. I helped the firm create customer case studies, investor briefs, user surveys, customer segmentations that had not existed in the past. Although I was not working at nonprofit directly, I came to realize the importance of private sector development in South Africa and how instilling a culture of entrepreneurship in emerging markets can play a key role in advancing a developing economy. I left my internship experience with a commitment to remain involved in international development in some capacity in my future career.

Environmental Defense

Jamie Ponce
Environmental Defense's Oceans Program works to find constructive solutions to problems that threaten the world's marine environments, including pollution, overfishing, and habitat damage from fishing gear. Creating markets and incentives for environmentally–, socially–, and economically–sustainable seafood holds the promise of protecting marine resources while supporting fishing–based economies; it also requires extensive planning and cross–sector collaboration. As a 2007 Social Enterprise Summer Fellow, I worked with Environmental Defense to evaluate value propositions, explore market channels, estimate demand, and develop financial projections in support of a comprehensive business plan for sustainable commercial fishing in central California. My work helped to foster discussion and debate among regulators, conservationists, and fishing communities in pursuit of innovative strategies for long–term marine resource management.

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Adrian Mucalov
This summer I worked for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, based in London. The Bank's mission is to promote market–based democracies in the former communist and socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. EBRD's Banking department, which focuses on investment in the private sector, is one of its core departments. I was fortunate enough to join the Group for Small Business, the Banking division that funds microfinance and SME (small and medium enterprise) lending institutions. I served as the lead analyst on a potential investment in a global currency fund, which would allow the bank to do more of its lending, especially to microfinance institutions, in local currencies rather than US dollars or Euros. I also had the opportunity to conduct financial analysis and due diligence on several other debt and equity investments, as well as some exploratory work on potential securitization of SME loan portfolios.

FabIndia

Melissa Lau
Fabindia is a leading for–profit Indian retailer with the stated mission of providing employment to traditional artisans and farmers in rural India. At the crux of Fabindia's business model are its efforts to distribute the benefits of the company's growth by offering equity in regional supply chain companies to the rural artisans that craft Fabindia's products. As a special assistant to Managing Director's office, I worked directly with the company's senior management team and Board on the scale up of the company as it plans to expand over the next five years from 50 to 200 stores and increase annual sales five–fold to $250 million. This was a memorable and instructive experience that allowed me to understand the challenges of managing a business in an emerging market, and see an example of a company that was generating healthy profits while also creating sustainable employment opportunities for thousands in the developing world.

Financial Superintendence

Tanya Wilkins
From June until August this year I interned for 8 weeks with the Financial Superintendence of Colombia in Bogota. The Financial Superintendence is an organization that works to preserve confidence in the Colombian financial system via financial supervision and the development of regulations. During my internship I interviewed many representatives of the national and international banks and banking organizations in Colombia in order to better understand the financial landscape. My specific project was to develop a marketing strategy to help communicate the 'Bank of Opportunities' policy; a new policy by the Colombian government to expand financial access to the general population. Currently Colombia has a low level of financial penetration with less than 30% of the Colombian population currently owning a savings account.

Institute for Financial Management and Research Trust

Arti Bhatt
When visiting or living in the congested and polluted cities of India, it is easy to forget the serenity and beauty of the country's rural areas. Fortunately, through the Social Enterprise Initiative Summer Fellowship, I had the opportunity to both visit these remote parts of India and gain first–hand knowledge of how the for–profit, non–profit and public sectors are initiating economic development programs aimed at developing rural India while maintaining its culture and beauty. During the summer, I interned at a social venture capital firm whose mission is to invest in intermediaries that connect rural producers and consumers with urban markets. My specific project involved analyzing how the firm could help create employment in rural India through investing in firms engaging in rural business process outsourcing.

Institute for Humane Studies, Mercatus Center

Brian Robert Brenberg
This summer, I was awarded a Charles G. Koch Summer Fellowship by the Institute for Humane Studies. The Koch Summer Fellowship spanned ten weeks and consisted of economic and policy analysis training and an internship with a public policy organization. I spent my internship with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The mission of the Mercatus Center is to help policy makers bring sound economic theory to bear on real–world decision making. Mercatus advises policy makers on issues such as international economic development, government regulation, and the public-sector management process.

The Government Accountability Project of the Mercatus Center helps policy makers improve the public sector management process by bringing analysis to agencies to develop quality information about their effectiveness. My specific duties as a part of this project were to assist in research on Federal Empowerment Zones, Housing Policy in New Orleans, and Community Development Block Grants. I was also responsible for translating our findings into written products for use by government policy makers. This set of responsibilities gave me exposure to how the Mercatus Center allocates resources, manages its analytical product portfolio, and markets its products to consumers.

International Finance Corporation

Mark De Ambrosis, Infrastructure Group
IFC provides the rare opportunity to work under the umbrella of a large social enterprise (The World Bank Group) focused on the economic and social development of emerging economies, and at the same time utilize and develop commercial finance skills. Being able to combine these two experiences was a pre–requisite for my summer internship; IFC met both of these expectations.

Over the summer I worked with the IFC Infrastructure Group, focusing on the power (generation, transmission and distribution), water and transport and logistics sectors. The financial modeling and deal exposure obtained over the internship far surpassed my previous experiences at former employers and in the classroom, with investments ranging from straight debt and equity to convertible debt instruments. In addition, the social and economic development impact of IFC projects was readily apparent in all of the work I was involved in. For example, in the case of the power generation deals I worked on in the Philippines and Pakistan, power shortages have been front–page newspaper headlines in both countries over the course of the summer. These projects are filling a very real and very pressing need in both countries, critical to social and economic development. Finally, for all of the projects I was involved in, it is very questionable whether the projects would have got off the ground without IFC involvement, suggesting that IFC is living up to its mission of promoting sustainable private sector development in emerging economies by providing finance to enterprises that otherwise lack access to funding.

Rei Yamazaki, Oil and Gas Division
I worked in the Oil and Gas Division of International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Washington DC as an intern for 10 weeks this summer. IFC is the private sector financing arm of the World Bank Group and is the largest multilateral provider of financing for private enterprise in developing countries. IFC promotes economically, socially and environmentally sustainable private sector investment in developing countries as a way to reduce poverty and improve people's lives. My primary assignment was to help building the knowledge of equity investment which is an area in which the Oil and Gas Division is currently expanding. I researched the listing requirements of several stock exchanges on which oil and gas companies are actively traded. I also assisted with several transactions including evaluating oil and gas companies in developing countries and researching the oil and gas market in Africa.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Maxime Aucoin
This summer, I was one of three Harvard Business School students working at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the largest performing arts organization in the world, located on a 16–acre campus in New York City. My role was one of an internal consultant reporting to both the president and my different internal clients. I mainly worked on 3 projects: 1) The Lincoln Center campus is currently going through an $800M redevelopment. My project consisted of, with the Concert Halls & Operations group, identifying how the redevelopment will impact campus operating expenses and translating these impacts in financial terms. 2) For its major donors and patrons, Lincoln Center has a VIP ticketing and customer service desk called the Patrons Desk. With the Fundraising group, I analyzed past trends in desk usage, assessed current ticketing processes and operations and recommended a series of improvements to standardize operations, simplify processes and better utilize the desk as a fundraising tool. 3) With the Marketing group, I analyzed past premium pricing strategies at Lincoln Center, benchmarked pricing strategies in the entertainment and performing arts sector and identified a series of high potential pricing strategies. This fellowship gave me a unique view inside the inner workings of a large not–for–profit artistic organization, great exposure to top management issues and interactions and further developed my business skills. And above all, it was great fun to work with passionate individuals in such a great environment.

John McCarthy
My experience as a summer fellow for the Lincoln Center was nothing short of fantastic. I was able to use and solidify my first year MBA learning with projects that were critical to the organization. By working directly with senior management, including bi–weekly meetings with the president, I was also able to gain a perspective on the key high–level challenges facing an internationally renowned arts organization. My projects were incredibly diverse: creating a leadership development program for Lincoln Center employees, designing strategy for a national major donor fundraising effort, developing a framework for an arts speaker symposium, and crafting a pension benefit education program. These projects enabled me to work with a wide range of departments and senior managers, providing exposure to a variety of functions. Most importantly I met incredibly talented and passionate individuals that I know will remain close personal colleagues and friends.

Zulema Quintans
This past summer, I worked at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., along with two of my HBS classmates, John McCarthy and Max Aucoin. Lincoln Center is the preeminent performing arts organization in the world, a leading presenter and educator in the arts as well as a landlord for the 11 resident organizations that make up the Lincoln Center campus. Summer 2007 was an exciting time to be at Lincoln Center, where a major redevelopment of the entire16–acre campus and preparations for the 50th anniversary in 2009 are currently underway. Over the course of our internship, we reported directly to the president on three to four individual projects that dealt with optimizing current operations or identifying new opportunities for many of departments within the organization — marketing, finance, human resources, development, legal and education. My primary responsibilities were as follows:

  • Develop a strategy to market Lincoln Center as a destination, focusing on increasing outreach to international tourists through the internet;
  • Analyze utilization of parking garages to inform pricing strategies;
  • Write a business plan for Lincoln Center Institute print and online publications;
  • Analyze the value of pro bono legal services to Lincoln Center.

In addition to individual projects, we collectively consulted to the President and Executive Department on new business ventures including retail/merchandise, expanded tour operations, concert hall rentals and others.

Working at Lincoln Center this past summer was in many ways a dream come true for me. In my HBS application essay, I wrote that my career goal was to be the leader of a major arts organization like Lincoln Center, so I was thrilled when I received an offer to join them as a Summer Fellow. Compared with other MBA summer internship opportunities, the Lincoln Center program is unique in that Fellows are given full project responsibilities from project design to client management, culminating in a series of presentations to senior management and members of the board of directors. Having the opportunity to work closely with my HBS peers and a number of HBS alumni at Lincoln Center further enhanced the experience. John, Max and I also shared the responsibility of managing an analyst who assisted each of us on a project of our choice. For the three of us, this was our first experience serving as a direct manager, which greatly contributed to our personal development as future managers.

Eric Wong
This past summer, I served as an intern at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the world's largest performing arts center and home to a dozen resident arts organizations that present the best in their respective spaces. During my time at Lincoln Center, I worked closely with the Chief Financial Officer of the organization, shadowing him on a day–to–day basis while helping him with a number of ongoing finance–related projects. These projects included analyzing how Lincoln Center should allocate a greater portion of its endowment to alternative investment managers as well as performing cash flow analyses for projects associated with the redevelopment for the organization's 50th anniversary. My internship allowed me to apply my experience in finance to the non-profit arts management industry, an area in which I have always held deep interest in exploring. I look forward to my continued journey in seeking intersections between arts and business as well as seeing the fruition of Lincoln Center's redevelopment.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, Technology Transfer Division

Renee Barnett
I spent my summer in the Los Alamos National Laboratory Technology Transfer Division, in Los Alamos New Mexico. The six summer MBA interns were given the opportunity to choose projects from a list of 15–20 proposals submitted from laboratory scientists, local businesses, and the technology licensing teams. I led the efforts on two projects in the solar energy industry. For SolStar Energy Devices, I was able to extensively apply my business school training to advise the founder and CEO on his business plan, financial projections, market research, and company valuation as he prepares to seek external funding. I conducted industry research and competitive analysis for Bandgap Engineering, a start–up company researching nanotechnology to increase solar cell efficiency based in Boston, Massachusetts. I assisted the Center of Excellence for Hazardous Materials Management in researching options for continuing to research and develop algae derived biodiesel fuels. Finally, I performed research on the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for a benchmark study on state and federally funded supercomputing centers in the United States. I provided lessons learned and recommendations for the recently approved New Mexico Center for Advanced Computing (NMCAC) to Tom Bowles, Science Advisor for Governor Bill Richardson. In addition to my projects, I had the opportunity to attend numerous regional technology venture networking and educational forums. I visited areas of the lab conducting research in imaging, magnetism, superconductivity, threat reduction using the European honey bee as substance detection technology, and social behavior prediction using agent modeling. During my last week, I traveled to Carlsbad, New Mexico, to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a Department of Energy supported nuclear waste internment facility.

Millennium Challenge Corporation

Matthew Dunn
This summer I spent eleven weeks as an intern at the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington, D.C. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a new organization within the U.S. federal government, designed to provide foreign aid to reduce poverty through economic growth, and to do so in a transparent, results–oriented, country–owned manner. MCC acts more like a private–sector entity than a part of the federal government, which makes it a nimble organization and also makes it an excellent place for a Harvard Business School MBA student to spend a summer internship. I worked within the Policy and International Relations division of MCC, mostly with the Threshold Program and Donor Relations. For the former assignment, I became an integrated member of a small team, helping to create materials for funding agreements and for meetings with government representatives from the U.S. and other nations. For the latter assignment, I owned a discrete project analyzing MCC's "trade–capacity building" funding, and I coordinated my activities with a team across the U.S. federal government's agencies. I also had the opportunity to participate in a number of ad hoc activities across the organization, everything from doing development research to helping prepare for events at the State Department with dignitaries from the U.S. and its partner countries. Finally, I had the great experience to dive into the world of economic development and development aid, which were relatively new to me.

National Math and Science Initiative

Garrett Smith
I had the opportunity to work for the National Math and Science Initiative, an innovative non–profit organization created to facilitate the national scale–up of programs that have a demonstrated positive impact on math and science education in the United States. At this time, NMSI aims to scale up two proven programs by awarding grants to applicants from around the country that are well positioned to achieve success in replicating these programs. I had the opportunity to participate in all aspects of the grant making process, including review of applications, interviewing applicants, and going on site visits to take an on–the–ground look at our prospective grantees. In the process, I got to travel the country (including 5 states I had never been to!) meeting individuals and organizations who are passionate about, and committed to, improving education in our country. Overall, I learned a ton about starting a non–profit, running a grant–making process, and building public–private coalitions to drive educational reform.

National Renewable Energy Laboratories

Michael Richard Bachrodt
As a Graduate Intern at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), I worked to further the efforts of three technology transfer initiatives, and performed a financial modeling exercise. NREL is a an applied science laboratory located in Golden, CO that is funded by the United States Department of Energy and focused on the research and development of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. Even though the lab is a leader in research, NREL feels that it can significantly improve its commercialization performance. I was able to assist in designing the goals and processes of innovation management. To provide an additional channel for achieving a these goals, I drafted a detailed structure of an entity that would use public funding and venture capital mentoring to build companies based upon laboratory intellectual property. NREL also seeks to promote industry growth with an annual forum that unites the investor and entrepreneur communities. The highlight of the forum is a business case competition, and I was asked to contact potential entrants in order to promote participation. Finally, I received an introduction to the impacts of energy policy when asked to build a cash flow model to value renewable energy projects on Native American tribal lands.

New Sector Alliance

Marie–Jose Helene Bahnam, Boys and Girls Club of Boston
New Sector Alliance provided an opportunity to taste the traditions of the corporate world without completely leaving that of the nonprofit. As a New Sector consultant, I completed a project for the Boys and Girls Club of Boston (BGCB), one of Boston's oldest safe havens for youth. Equipped with skills learned at HBS, comprehensive company–provided training, and the support of a seasoned consultant, I attacked my project head–on and provided high–impact results that will resonate across the lives of over 13,000 of Boston's youth in the coming year. The project not only appealed to my analytical side but also my entrepreneurial energy as I was able to assess the current status of the Clubs, determine areas for improvement, and recommend initiatives BGCB to better serve the youth of Boston. In the process, I utilized my passionate energy in several areas including urban education and youth development, structure, analysis, and innovation. Finally and of utmost importance, I established lasting relationships with the employees of BGCB and look forward to helping them as needed throughout the upcoming year.

Nicole M. Ledoux, Initiative for a Competitive Inner City
This summer, I was an MBA Consultant for New Sector Alliance, a non-profit strategy consulting firm. I had the opportunity to work with Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a Boston–based non–profit organization founded by Harvard Business School Professor Michael E. Porter. ICIC is dedicated to promoting economic prosperity in America's inner cities through private sector engagement that leads to jobs, income, and wealth creation for local residents. ICIC was looking to deepen its research, expertise and impact in the inner–city Real Estate, Construction and Housing (REACH) cluster. To help ICIC deepen its understanding of this cluster, I gathered relevant data and conducted an in–depth analysis of this sector. I measured and analyzed cluster activity and linkages and in order to understand the historic and changing role of inner–city locations in this cluster. Through this research, I was able to contribute to ICIC's REACH Report, which will be presented by Professor Porter at the Inner City Economic Forum in Philadelphia in October 2007.

Robert Spina, Year Up
As a New Sector Alliance summer consultant I was able to leverage my MBA education and project management skills in the non–profit sector. I completed a project with New Sector's client, Year Up, a workforce development program designed to help 18-24 year old at risk youth to attain the skills and training required to acquire entry level I/T jobs. My project with Year Up was to redesign a corporate dashboard for the Board of Directors. The existing dashboard was based on one small site, however Year Up has expanded to four cities and plans to expand to 25 cities over the next nine years, thus the existing dashboard was no longer effective. The project entailed analyzing the businesses strategies, finances, and operations of Year Up in order to develop improved reporting tools to provide the management team and the Board with the visibility of performance of the organization as it grows over the next few years. The new dashboard was presented to the Board of Directors in Year Ups' September board meeting and was received with praise. Besides the dashboard being a success, I feel that I successfully integrated into the program as a member of the team and have since volunteered to become a mentor to one of the students for the incoming class.

Outward Bound

Susie Caulfield
Outward Bound is a non-profit educational organization with five divisions (Wilderness, Expeditionary Learning Schools, Urban Centers, Discovery and Professional) that inspire character development and self-discovery in people of all ages. This summer I worked directly for the CEO and President of Outward Bound on three strategic initiatives critical to Outward Bound's future as a recently merged organization (5 independent divisions are now under one national corporation). Working with the senior leadership team, I analyzed the outcome measurements employed by each division; this analysis guided strategic development resulting in a unified organization with 4 consistent metrics (service, adventure, leadership, teamwork). The second project was conducting a competitive analysis of the corporate experiential learning industry. This study advanced the development of Outward Bound Professional's growth strategy. Following, I published the results to all companies involved in the research. The final project was performing demographic and geographic analysis of future Urban Center sites. Overall the greatest take-away from my first entry into the non-profit world was the mentorship provided by the CEO (also an HBS alum) throughout the course of my 10 weeks.

Oxfam America

Robert K. Silverman
Oxfam is a non–profit international relief and development organization active in more than 120 countries around the world. Oxfam supports grassroots efforts to combat poverty and injustice and empowers local allies to advocate for systemic policy change. Oxfam America is currently working in Louisiana and Mississippi to further efforts to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and rebuild the Gulf Coast. In my role at Oxfam this summer, I worked to advocate for policy change on the local, state, and federal levels to promote an equitable, inclusive, and responsible recovery. My central priority this summer was to bring about greater transparency and accountability in the rebuilding process. I engaged in grassroots coalition building, researched community–based monitoring, analyzed recovery data, and lobbied Congress. My work at Oxfam centered on the themes of building affordable housing, combating poverty, ensuring civil rights, and promoting economic and social justice. These are the themes that I wish to pursue during my time at HBS and throughout my career. I am grateful to HBS and to Oxfam for the opportunity to work for social justice this summer, and I continue to hope and pray for a speedy and successful recovery on the Gulf Coast.

Room to Read

Abigail Falik
Room to Read (www.roomtoread.org) partners with local communities throughout the developing world to establish schools, libraries and other educational infrastructure. In my role as Strategic Advisor to CEO and Founder John Wood, I spent the summer working on Room to Read's global expansion strategy. Collaborating closely with a leading social entrepreneur was inspiring and instructive, and allowed me to reflect on my own strengths, limitations and career aspirations. My projects were diverse and cut across many of the organizations' operational and programmatic functions. Over the course of my internship I was responsible for fine-tuning the organization's messaging and presentation materials, exploring earned income opportunities, creating a tool for new donor prospecting, and outlining a campaign to market Room to Read to new audiences in the US. My range of projects allowed me to work closely with management and staff throughout the organization, and gave me insight into the many opportunities — and challenges — of rapid growth in a new social venture. Ultimately, my experience at Room to Read was a perfect bridge between my past work in global education and my HBS training, and it was a privilege to support the organization's important mission while learning first–hand about launching and scaling a high–impact social enterprise.

Sesame Workshop

Bindu Shah
As a result of the Social Enterprise Summer Fellowship, I was afforded the opportunity to work for Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit global media organization known for its production of Sesame Street. Sesame's hybrid business model of having to compete head–on with for–profit media players for viewers' attention and at the same time other nonprofits for philanthropic funds is one of the major reasons I was attracted to the organization. Also, having worked in public education reform prior to business school, I was eager to analyze the use of media as a tool for education. At Sesame, I was able to work on a variety of projects where I applied my business school training. My projects included: developing digital media distribution strategies for the preschool market, evaluating real estate alternatives and their financial implications for Sesame's corporate office, and assisting the International Department in developing country–specific business plans. My summer internship has undoubtedly reinforced my interests in remaining involved in the education arena whether it be in a professional or volunteer capacity. I am grateful for the HBS Social Enterprise Summer Fellowship in enabling me to further refine these goals.

Teach for America

Meredith Hamilton
During the summer of 2007, I worked as a Summer Associate with Teach For America's Teacher Preparation Team. Teach For America's mission is to enlist the nation's most promising future leaders in the movement to eliminate educational inequality. The organization seeks to accomplish this by engaging a national corps of recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools and later become leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity. As a member of the Teacher Preparation Team, I worked in the group that designs, organizes and manages the Summer Institute program for new corps members. During Summer Institute, new corps members spend six weeks immersing themselves in learning new teaching skills, and they put those skills into practice for four of the six weeks teaching summer school. District partners are essential to the success of the Teach For America Summer Institute model, and I was tasked with researching innovative, strategic ways to better leverage these partners, especially the veteran teachers who observe the corps members teaching in the classrooms. Given the vast number of summer staff required to execute the current Summer Institute model, my second project sought to identify opportunities through which Teach For America could capture the value of alternative training delivery methods, enabling the organization to reduce labor and travel expenses and also to reinvigorate the staff training program overall.

TechnoServe Kenya

Jimmy Joseph Tran
This summer I spent a little over 2 months with TechnoServe, a nonprofit which aims to "provide business solutions for the rural poor." Specifically, I joined the TechnoServe Kenya office, where I assisted a co–operative of farmers write a project proposal for growing sugar beets in Kenya. The project was extremely grassroots and hands–on, giving me exposure to agribusiness from both a micro and macro perspective. I wrapped up my project by presenting my proposal to the Chairman of the Kiriita Sugar Beet Farmers Co–operative as well as a number of governmental bodies and potential donors.

Village Ventures/AMPATH

Peter Park
This summer, I worked with two organizations: the Academic Model for the Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS (AMPATH), a large and quickly growing HIV care program based in western Kenya, and Village Ventures, a private sector venture capital firm specializing in investments in emerging markets in the United States. In my summer work with both AMPATH and Village Ventures, I worked closely with a General Partner from Village Ventures interested in pursuing social investments as an active angel funder. Our goal for the internship was to identify applicable principles of venture–capital investments to social enterprise development, and direct these learnings into a business plan for AMPATH's economic security initiatives.

My summer experience helped me gain a better understanding of how venture capitalists evaluate investment opportunities and its applications for social enterprise development. I also learned to develop clear strategies for mitigating risk in launching a social entrepreneurial venture, and affirm my conviction in social entrepreneurship as a long–term career path.