Five weeks ago on May 24, we graduated from Harvard Business School with the Class of 2018. We moved out of our apartments and headed to Jackson, Mississippi for a weeklong training with Freedom Summer Collegiate. After training we drove to Meridian, Mississippi to teach a month-long summer class on Business and Entrepreneurship to high school students at the Meridian Freedom Project. [...]

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. [...]

In 2018, the HBS New Venture Competition—an annual student competition sponsored by Harvard Business School’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise Initiative—received a record 69 entries to the Social Enterprise Track. After an extensive review and deliberation process with social enterprise leaders from across Harvard, the Social Enterprise Initiative just announced the 16 semifinalists in the Social Enterprise Track. [...]

I’ve known for a while that I want to be a community developer, and I want to start that work in my hometown of Detroit. I desire to create beautiful spaces and experiences for people that enhance the fabric of a neighborhood, community, and city. Having been involved in community-based organizations and non-profits since I was child, and working in public service in New York City after college, my pivot to HBS was to dive into the hard skills and action-based work that I was missing to make my community development goals more realized in a more fulfilling way. I plan to do this through real estate development and business investment. Having studied architecture before transitioning to urban and African-American studies in my undergraduate program, it was a relief to discover that developers, not architects, actually build buildings – a lesson that came alive this summer as I worked on a community-based real estate project in Detroit. [...]

“Nice talking to you as well!” I hung up the phone and looked out the window of my company’s conference room, high above midtown Manhattan. I had just finished a call regarding my acceptance to HBS with Matt Segneri, Director of the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative, and it was an impactful one. Not only was I impressed that he made time to chat with me, but he also seemed very warm and genuine on the phone. I already knew that HBS had an incredible MBA program--that call demonstrated to me the culture and type of people I would be surrounded by. After speaking to Matt, I knew that HBS was the right place for me. [...]