Before HBS, I moved to Kenya so that I could work on critical infrastructure projects and help build the foundation of countries. While contributing to some of the largest energy and transportation projects in the region was rewarding, I realized that none of the projected development would materialize without a healthy population. It became clear that global health was an integral component to development and that an “investment in human capital, partly through global health, is a prerequisite to inclusive economic growth” (Former president of World Bank, Jim Yong Kim). This summer I sought out to test a hypothesis of mine that led me to apply to business school: that the skills developed through an MBA could contribute to solving some of the world’s toughest global health issues. [...]

This post is part of 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, Donella Rapier (MBA 1992), shares her perspective on social enterprise. [...]

During the year, we’ll be connecting with some of our 2017-18 HBS Leadership Fellows, who will share their experiences in the Fellowship year. In this post, we hear from Hrithik Bansal (MBA 2017), Special Advisor at BRAC USA; and his supervisor Donella Rapier (MBA 1992), President & CEO at BRAC USA. [...]

In November of 2015 I set in the upper deck of Faneuil Hall in Boston, looking on 300 people from 80 countries congregated to take their oath as the newest crop of US citizens. Among them was my girlfriend, now fiancé, who had navigated her own journey to the US as an asylum seeker 14 years prior, arriving here with no contacts and no English, ready to start a new life. Seeing her would have been an emotional experience no matter what, but having been supported through chemo for the prior few months, arriving together on the other side, healthy and ready to celebrate her accomplishment, elicited one of the most powerful feelings of gratitude I had ever experienced. [...]

About 10 years ago, I was a bright-eyed HBS intern at the World Bank in Mozambique. I went there thinking I would continue to work with small and medium businesses globally, making them more efficient given my background prior to graduate school. Instead, I came home wanting to design a maxi pad out of a banana tree for half the world! How did that happen? [...]