This post is the first in our Social Enterprise Initiative 25th anniversary blog series, which highlights some of the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who have been a part of SEI throughout the years. In this post, Jennifer Nash, Director of the HBS Business and Environment Initiative, shares her connection to SEI and her hopes for the future of social enterprise. [...]

Before coming to HBS, I worked for a number of years in financial services in Asia. It was not uncommon for me to wonder what real benefit, other than to provide my clients with the ability to make more money, I was providing to the world. That desire is one of the reasons I wanted to come to HBS. I recently took the class “Investing in the 21st Century: Return, Risk and Impact,” taught by Professors Shawn Cole and Vikram S. Gandhi. Through this class I learned that my previous career could actually provide a positive impact on the world, and that impact investing is becoming more mainstream in the United States. There are many impact funds that manage to achieve market rates of return while at the same time generate positive impact. In the past decade, the ability to measure impact has improved, enhancing the investor’s confidence in this sector. [...]

Business is the most powerful force humans have ever created. It’s been the source of both enormous peace and prosperity, as well as massive social and environmental disruption. The challenges facing humanity and our biosphere today require that we step away from outdated ways of thinking about the true role of business in society. These challenges call us to raise our game as business leaders so we can harness the enormous power of business and wield it for a better world. [...]

Fun fact - the resume is about 500 years old. It was invented by Leonardo DaVinci. Now back in the 1800s, this invention was revolutionary, but today, the resume is just not working for most job-seekers. For many of you reading, applying to jobs through the current system has been less than ideal. You’ve spent hours editing, included as many keywords from the job description as possible, tapped connections to put in a good word - and still felt entirely unclear whether you might be deemed a fit. Imagine how much harder this process is for the millions of Americans without a bachelor’s degree. [...]

This year’s graduating MBA class will re-enter the work force ten years after the onset of the greatest economic recession in a generation. While the stock market has since recovered, business leaders today face an increasingly complex web of ethical and legal challenges amidst a rising level of public scrutiny of their actions. As members of the MBA class of 2018 preparing to enter this world of uncertainty, we are reviving an effort launched by alumni who graduated into the depths of the financial crisis: to recruit our classmates to take an MBA Oath pledging to lead socially responsible and ethical careers. [...]