Reflections on the first semester

Well, I'm officially finished with 1/4 of my MBA! I took my final final late last week and am now just waiting for grades to be posted. I'm hoping to see lots of letters that look like upside-down V's with a line across the middle.

I've had some time to think about the past few months now that school work is on hiatus for a few weeks. I happen to think that reflection is one of the most valuable parts of an experience (more on that later!), so I'd like to share a few of my reflections on my first semester with you:

• Grad school has been challenging but very rewarding, already. I like the course work that I am doing and am inspired by what some of the alumni of my program are doing to make our world a better place.
• People and culture can make a grad school experience. I feel so lucky that I ended up in the class of people that I have. I learn so much from my colleagues - from their sharing of life experiences to their thoughts on the future and where to go next. I love that the faculty and staff know my interests and are involved in student life and not only in academia. I feel like part of a community, which is super helpful when making a geographic transition as well.
• Moving is always hard, but can also be extremely rewarding. It's been really difficult to leave behind people that I love and care about in pursuit of a new adventure, but the people I've met and the experiences I've had in just one semester have made this transition worthwhile. I'm learning a lot here in Boston and am starting to establish a network of friends and mentors.
• I had a hard time adjusting to being a full-time student again! This surprised me - I thought I'd be right back at it and loving it all the time. But, I missed working and my regular schedule and my PA people. It felt a little surreal at first to have full-time student as my occupation. I don't really have any good advice for conquering this one, but just know that it might be a possibility, even if you are 100% excited about going back to school.
• Finally, I am sure that I ended up in the right place. I think I am gaining the skills and meeting the people here that I need to be inspired and succeed in fulfilling my goals.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the holidays! Next year at this time you'll hopefully be reading about the completion of my MBA and my graduation from the Heller School!

Happy socially responsible holidays!

I was reading an article in the Boston Globe this morning about how often people that are very eco-friendly & socially conscious throughout the year totally give it up at the holidays in the spirit of spreading holiday cheer. It got me to thinking about my own holiday habits. I often indulge in what might be considered socially responsible holiday habits both in the interest of social impacts and in the interest of my lean budget. Especially my extremely lean grad student budget. Especially in the past few years, I've worked hard to make my holidays less about consumerism and more about spreading the love.

I usually try to make a few gifts - usually lots of cookies or an afghan or something. What spreads holiday cheer better than a gift "handmade with love"? And what reduces grad school stress better than a little holiday baking? I also always reuse gift bags and boxes. I've probably never actually purchased a gift bag from a store. The shopping bags that you get from stores if you choose to shop for a few gifts in this way are often beautiful packaging, too.

I'll admit that it's hard to completely give up shopping for gifts. So though I often make a few gifts, I always buy a few also. My philosophy around buying gifts is that I want to make sure I purchase items that people will actually use. Who needs another knick-knack sitting around the house collecting dust?

This year, I tried to purchase several gifts from various fundraisers. My holiday gifts this year contributed to students' travel expenses for service trips and an affordable housing coalition in a neighboring community. I also love to give food gifts. Fair trade & organic coffee and chocolate are a few delicious suggestions. Grounds for Change (groundsforchange.com) has a great website & philosophy if you don't have any fair trade coffee retailers close to where you live. Ten Thousand Villages has some beautiful gift options too, and supports fair trade craft sales for artisans in developing countries. I also think cookbooks are a great gift idea. Foodie friends will use this gift for years to come, and perhaps they will purchase local organic food while enjoying it.

Finally, here are a few fun websites about this topic that I have come across:
Grist.org: http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/11/20/stuff-free/index.html
Treehugger: http://www.treehugger.com/giftguide/

So get out there, spread some holiday cheer and save your pocketbook and the planet from further demise!

Business plan ... done!

I've taken quite a few items off of my very long list of assignments from last time! One of the most enjoyable was actually my business plan presentation. It was probably one of the best group projects I've worked on in my educational career. My group was great to work with - prepared, organized, intelligent - and our presentation was well-received. It felt rewarding to stand up and present an idea that we had spent months working on. I had never looked forward to giving a presentation before, but I was excited to do this one. Overall, a great experience.

Our assignment was to pitch a social venture. Our professor arranged for a few outside professionals to come in and give us feedback; we had people from prominent social ventures in the Boston area as our panel. Our group designed and pitched a unique consulting firm focusing on social impact consulting for small businesses. Who knows ... maybe we'll start it up someday!

In terms of next steps, though, it made me consider consulting as a possible field. I never really thought I'd be interested in the profession, but it was fun to think through all of the organizational problems and challenges that we encountered in designing our project. I enjoyed thinking about the inner workings of a business, and it was also a lot of fun to share our ideas. Oh, the possibilities!

Tis the season ...

... to begin the countdown! This is the time in the semester when it becomes realistic to think about what stands between me and 1/4 of my MBA. So, in the next two weeks, here's what I have to look forward to:

• one case brief, most likely on Nissan
• one business plan presentation
• one case presentation on McDonald's
• one accounting paper - analyzing the financial statements of a large non-profit
• one accounting final exam
• one Business & the Environment final exam

There you have it - upon completing these six little items, I will be 1/4 of the way done with my master's degree. Crazy, huh?

True costs & social value

We've been talking a few of my classes about how you actually measure social costs and values - for example, how much does it cost when companies pollute the earth or what is the value of the program a nonprofit creates to teach childhood literacy?

There is really no perfect way to measure these things out there yet, but the term being thrown around is SROI (social return on investment). So, much like in traditional business where returns on investments are a measure of success or failure, the hope is to create some standardized measurements that allow society and businesses to see the value or costs associated with choosing to act or not act in a socially responsible way.

One good example of an effort at this is a short film that a local organic farm used to show to all of its work groups at my last job titled "The True Cost of Food." It's put out by the Sierra Club, and its purpose is to show consumers all of the additional social costs (ie pollution, transportation, etc) that go into the production of food purchased at big box stores versus the social value created when purchasing local, organic foods.

Check it out here: http://www.truecostoffood.org/truecostoffood/movie.asp

Social entrepreneurship

We had an awesome speaker come to campus today - Eric Dawson, the founder of Peace Games. He is a young social entrepreneur who started this organization when he was 18 years old as a Harvard student. Peace Games' mission states: "Peace Games empowers students to create their own safe classrooms and communities by forming partnerships with elementary schools, families, and young adult volunteers." They accomplish this through partnering with schools to introduce their curriculum to students, empowering them to become peacemakers.
Check them out here: http://www.peacegames.org/index.html

Eric Dawson is a social entrepreneur. To give a little background on this field, Ashoka.org defines social entrepreneurs as "individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems ... they are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change". They use the principles of traditional business entrepreneurship to implement creative solutions to societal problems. Ashoka is an organization that supports social entrpreneurs, from which Eric Dawson received a fellowship to support his work with Peace Games.
Check Ashoka out here: http://www.ashoka.org/

Eric's presentation was truly inspiring. He started from the bottom - 18 years old with no idea what he was getting into. He just saw violence as a major problem and wanted to fix it. He surrounded himself with intelligent people and made it happen.

Social entrepreneurship is an exciting field - the results that can be acheived with a successful venture are amazing. I am taking a course on it this semester and am loving it. It's incredible to see what can be acheived when people make their ideas for social change into a reality. I see it as a great example of meshing an idea born out of traditional business with the desire to create social change. And generally the people who take on the challenge of founding these organizations are incredibly inspiring, driven and passionate, which makes studying them even more interesting!

Millenials, adapt!

I recently read an article in the New York Times (see link below) about students heading off to business school or currently in business programs who had set their sights on a career in finance and are now watching the demise of the financial industry right before their eyes. Scary, right?

Not for this generation! The students in this article talk about performing better in school, getting better credentials, diversifying their talents. They'll explore opportunities in other sectors, adapt to the what's available, or create their own path.

I happen to be a member of this millenial generation, and though I admittedly have had flashes of panic about getting a business degree at a time like this, I would say my overall outlook on my job prospects for the future is pretty positive. I consider myself a diversified candidate - I am learning about ways to make business a tool for social change. Don't we need this type of thinking now more than ever? It's important work. One of my professors said today that corporate social responsibility is required for business today - it needs to be part of the overall strategy.

That said, I don't feel cornered into a CSR career path or a nonprofit career path because of the type of MBA that I have decided to get. I think the world needs socially responsible leaders who are thinking about the consequences of their actions at every level of an organization, in many types of positions. Didn't this whole financial crisis happen because no one thought about what the consequences might be on the world around them if something didn't work out?

We have to think about how businesses are affecting all of their stakeholders - communities, customers, shareholders, employees, the environment, and many more - it's not only about profit anymore. Profit is a good thing, but other things matter too. Can businesses continue to operate and innovate without making a commitment to social responsibility at this crucial time?

Here's the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/education/12student.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

What do you think?

Getting Involved!

Whew! Made it through the crazy midterm week and am feeling refreshed after another beautiful fall weekend in New England. Onward!

I have always enjoyed getting involved in a lot of groups and community activities beyond work or school - it's a great way to gain perspective and meet many awesome people in the process. So, I have become involved here at Brandeis too! I am doing a grad assistantship, have a tutoring job and am involved in our Net Impact chapter. I want to make the most of my new opportunities during grad school - I know that the time will fly by, so I best fill it with great things!

My grad assistantship works with the community service office and a group of undergraduate students to plan service trips over the spring break week. It's awesome work and something that I did in my role as an AmeriCorps*VISTA for the past two years. I'm totally pumped to be doing it again.

I'm tutoring for a writing class and am also loving it. It's very different material and thinking style from my MBA coursework, so it's a fun way to add a little variety. Writing is something that I enjoy doing (hence this whole blogging thing!), so hopefully I can be helpful to my peers.

And Net Impact ... well, it's basically a large professional organization that is passionate about many of the same things that I am passionate about. From their website (because I can't really say it any better myself): Net Impact is an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to make a positive impact on society by growing and strengthening a community of leaders who use business to improve the world. Net Impact members are current and emerging leaders in CSR, social entrepreneurship, nonprofit management, international development, and environmental sustainability who are actively improving the world.

If you're interested in socially responsible business, you should definitely check it out: http://netimpact.org/

And check us out at Brandeis too: http://brandeisnetimpact.wordpress.com/

We're a fairly new club, but we've got some good plans for the year. I'm excited to learn from some of the leaders in the field of socially responsible business through this organization and to be inspired by new people and ideas.

Grad school life is chock full of good things right now... Until next time!

Busiest.Week.Ever.

Moral of the story: Grad school makes you busy. It is midterms week here at Heller. The beauty of the whole thing is that no one is really stressed out alone. We are all in this together. My Leadership group rocks. My accounting friends rock. We'll all do just fine.

And this weekend will be glorious once all the work is done! My promises to you for a more substantial post once my two papers are handed in and my accouting midterm is taken. Til then ... study, study, study.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome! I'm here to share with you some of my grad school adventures, tips, stories, thoughts ... you get the idea. I just started my first year as an MBA student at Brandeis University and I'm loving it. My MBA concentration is entitled "Social Impact Management" - a mouthful, but basically I'm interested in the ways that businesses can function as socially responsible assets to a community.

That's my brief intro, but stay tuned! I'll write eventually about how I even decided I wanted to get an MBA, how I found this program, the beauty of a "unique" MBA, life as a grad student (including life on a grad student budget!) ... all that good stuff. Keep checking back!