You're doing what???

June 17, 2012

These days my Facebook news feed looks like a real time edition of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Every time I look, my classmates have checked in at another exotic location around the world from Machu Picchu to the Kremlin and everywhere in between. Yet people still ask me, "You're doing what this summer? Rwanda... really?"

I got similar responses about our trip to Haiti last December with the Darden Haiti Development Project (DHDP). Then shortly after we returned, Darden Dean Bob Bruner posted a blog entry about his four aspirations for management education for 2012. It is for the reasons he described that I think it is important to use my last summer as a free agent to do something totally off the beaten path.

So, why go to Rwanda?

In Jerusalem with Darden, May 2011

1. To extend the reach of educational content and engagement beyond the border's of my home country. The classroom experience at Darden is incredible, but my travels to Israel, Jordan, Haiti, and, yes, Barbados (for my Darden roommate's wedding) through UVA have enriched my education immeasurably. I have never visited Africa, and the Think Impact Innovation Institute provides a unique opportunity to engage with a local community in a substantive, purposeful way. Every time I travel somewhere new, I come home with another lens through which to see the world, and I sense that I ask a different set of questions of myself and others as a result. These types of experiences are invaluable both personally and professionally and will improve my ability to contribute to the dialogue at Medtronic later this year and beyond. 

2. To learn to accomplish more with fewer resources. While the Dean focused on the use of resources in higher education, this goal appealed to me personally because I believe we as a society must continue to learn to find new ways to solve increasingly complex and challenging problems. In Rwanda, my teammates and I will be collaborating with social entrepreneurs to start new businesses, and this is precisely the kind of project I came to Darden to pursue. I define social entrepreneurship as creating markets and starting for-profit ventures that address social pain points, and I am confident that the momentum of the social entrepreneurship movement will push us all to think about how to use resources more efficiently and effectively. It is my hope that our time on the ground in Rwanda will help me to think strategically about how to do so to catalyze social change. 

3. To practice innovating. One of my favorite MBA classes was Professor Jeanne Liedtka's Corporate Innovation and Design course. The class used the ethnographically-based design thinking methodology to tackle seemingly entrenched problems and to identify new channels of innovation for real companies. The results were powerful for our clients. In Rwanda we will be using a similar approach in the design firm IDEO's Human Centered Design Toolkit (HCD). HCD focuses on using innovation as a tool to address social problems at the base of the pyramid. I am eager to apply the theories we studied in Jeanne's class in a radically different context in Rwanda. 

The DHDP team at a meeting in 
Port-au-Prince, December 2011

4. To speak up for what's right. This is the stuff I believe in. One of the long-lost treasures I found in my recent move was an award from my sorority at Lafayette naming me: "Most likely to save the world." Yet while I've spent nearly ten years pondering what exactly that means and studying international development in different ways,  the timing has never worked out to spend any extended period of time in the field. It's possible that I need to catch up on sleep after 2 years of business school, but this summer provides a perfect natural pause to pursue finally pursue this passion. There will always be a reason to stay home, but I still believe in the often-quoted saying from Margaret Meade: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." I know that now is the right time to make this trip. 


I extend a special thank you to the Batten Institute, the Center for Global Initiatives, and the Initiative for Business in Society for their support of this project and for the enthusiasm of the Darden faculty who encouraged me to go. I'm trying to set realistic goals for myself, my teammates and the program itself, but I am confident that the Innovation Institute will help me to reach for each of these aspirations in the next eight weeks. That's why I'm spending my summer vacation in Rwanda.