TIU Day 1: What we stand for

Ice breaker of the day with Team Rwanda

June 21, 2012

Our whole team of scholars and advisers is now in country, and today market the official beginning of our official training at Think Impact University (TIU). We will spend from now until Sunday preparing to enter our communities and meet our host families in Rwamagana in the Eastern province with a wide variety of team building activities, technical trainings, language practice, cultural workshops, and local site visits.

I was thrilled that this morning began with a discussion of the mission and philosophy of Think Impact, as I think this establishes a really critical common foundation on which we can build our work this summer. I want to highlight three themes that dominated our dialogue today.

The tools of the trade. "The Innovator"
is our guide to the innovation process. 

• For vs. With. Perhaps most importantly, we talked about our work being in collaboration WITH rather than FOR the communities in which we live. This distinction is more than simply semantic, as it informs the whole approach we will bring to our work. We think of our community design teams as equal partners with essential assets to contribute to the innovation process. This is critically important.
• Needs vs. Assets. At first I struggled with this one. Don’t we need to figure out what the problems are before we think about solutions? Think Impact takes an asset based approach to development, meaning that will spend the first portion of the Innovation Institute focusing on assets rather than needs.  Traditional aid focuses on meeting gaps and filling needs, and this approach will encourage us to instead think about the strengths and capabilities of our partners.
• Outputs vs. Outcomes. Outputs focus on shorter-term, measurable, tangible results. Outcomes look for larger, systemic, qualitative change that is much more difficult to quantify. We want to use outputs to benchmark our progress along the way, but we will be focusing much more intensely on the quality of the inputs and processes we use to innovate. This will help to achieve the ultimate goal of co-creating and prototyping a product or service by the end of the summer.

Lunch break with Jayne from USC. 

We finished up the day with site visits to two local NGOs: Bridge2Rwanda and Generation Rwanda. Both programs prepare high school students to enter the university system. This was our first interaction with a group of young people, and through our conversations with them, it was exciting to begin to think how the themes and ideas of the Think Impact mission will inform and guide our work this summer. Get ready!

Arriving in Kigali

June 20, 2012

I am here! Our country director Noel and Patrick from Think Impact surprised me and got me at the airport just in time for dinner at our guest house last night. This morning I went running with our three advisors, Audrey, Ashlee, and Lazri, and caught my first glimpses of Kigali in daylight. It is beautiful! More soon - the rest of the scholar teams are all arriving in the next few hours.

First view of Kigali on this morning's exploration 

Pre-Arrival Reflections

June 19, 2012

I’ve spent the last few hours working on my final pre-arrival assignment for Think Impact, a reflection on our hopes, fears, and expectations for our experience. While I discussed some of my motivations professionally and personally for wanting to travel this summer in my last post, I thought I would also share candidly the things I’m worried about.

Disconnecting. I probably look at my phone 200 times a day, checking for new calls, texts, messages, etc.. I’m not kidding, and I know that means 8 times/hour. I am hyper-connected to my friends, family, the news, and everything electronic. I’m used to sending a picture or a note along as things happen in real time.  It will be very hard, but dare I say also very good, to be somewhere without electricity, water, or internet, and I am hoping that this will allow us to be fully present with our teams and communities for the next eight weeks.

Communicating. While my German and Spanish are admittedly pretty terrible, I know enough words that in most of the places I have traveled around the world that I have been able to read a menu and a map, understand the newspaper headlines, and greet and thank the people with whom I interact. Kinyarwanda is the most commonly spoken language in Rwanda, and I’m not certain that I can even correctly pronounce “good morning” (Mwaramutse) correctly let alone “thank you” (Murakoze). Our research here is based on our ability to converse with and understand our community members deeply, and I worry about our ability to communicate, to learn and appreciate the culture, and to build relationships without a shared, common language.

Trusting the Process.  I just had two years of this at Darden right, right? Well this is a different “Process.” I admit to being a compulsive planner, scheduler, and slave to Outlook, and I have neither planned nor scheduled anything for the next eight weeks. I have put my faith in Think Impact and the design thinking process. I know that this is a purposefully messy and complicated endeavor, and I am already practicing telling the planner in me that it’s ok if things don’t happen exactly on time or when I think they should.

We’re not all MBAs.  This means two things. One, I have to tone down the jargon and vocabulary that have come to dominate the conversations amongst my MBA friends. I have to learn to communicate with a more diverse set of colleagues with different assumptions, knowledge, and views of the world. Really we are lucky to have such diverse teams, and I am thankful for that. Second, Darden hard wired me to want to jump to “take action” quickly and deliberately even with imperfect information. I don’t know how quickly or deliberately anything will happen here. Neither of these things is necessarily bad, but they are things I am acutely aware of. They pose unique personal challenges of which I am already thinking about.

Impact. What are the motivations driving our work for each of us, and what kind of an impact will we be able to make in a relatively short period of time?  I’m very sensitive to the challenges of “doing development” well. Our flight is clearly filled with well-intentioned mission groups and aid workers, but how effective will any of us be?  I picked this program because I think it is has a sound methodology and is striving for the kind of long-standing relationships and collaborative, sustainable ventures that I believe in. I haven’t even thought about what kind of business we’ll be working on because I want to make sure the ideas are coming from the community members themselves. Still though this remains the hardest question for me both personally and intellectually.

I’m watching the plane tick closer and closer to our destination on the monitor on the seat in front of me, and I’m hoping we break through the clouds on our descent before the sun gets any lower in the sky so that I can get my first glimpse of Rwanda from the air. My next post will be on the ground in Kigali!

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. 

Starting a New Chapter

The view flying into CHO

June 4, 2012

I started this post mid-flight on my last trip back to the East Coast with Virginia as “home.” Having just moved in to a new neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis, I was overwhelmed with excitement for and anxiety about starting a new chapter of life post-Darden.  I was already feeling homesick for Charlottesville, and I was searching for reassurance that change can be good.

Jasmin at Pleasant Hollow Farm in 2002

As I stared longingly at the regal Blue Ridge Mountains below, I was reminded of the journey that brought me to Virginia the first place. In 2009, I wrote one of my grad school admissions essay about my dear friend Jasmin Edson and how her wise counsel and quiet encouragement helped me to make the bold decision to ride full-time after college in 2005. It was not easy, but that turned out to be one of the best and most powerful decisions of my life. My years riding in Virginia brought so many wonderful people and experiences, and they will forever influence the way I think about the world, people, relationships, and, yes, business.

Sitting on a hay bale in the aisle at Pleasant Hollow, Jasmin had taught me that there is time and space in life to pursue our many different passions.When it was time to leave The Plains, thinking of her during the grad school application process helped me again to find the courage to leave a place I loved to make another major life change in the decision to attend business school. 

The final dinner of Learning Team 38

Remembering this as we landed in CHO, I suddenly felt a sense of calm. When I came to Darden, I didn’t know how to add in Excel, I had never heard of NPV, and my Learning Team was a cast of strangers. I felt a sense of dread driving down 29 South similar to the one I was feeling now. Two years later, Charlottesville had become home in every sense of the word. Change is scary and will continue to be, but reflecting on this experience, I recognize that having the audacity to explore uncharted territory and start afresh and the conviction to pursue my passions has always enriched my life. 

Last week, June 12, marked nine years since Jasmin passed away after a tragic riding accident. Remembering her every day but this week in particular, I can't stop smiling, knowing that I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to live the dream in Virginia and that I still have the courage to to think big and the ability to make things happen. I will strive to continue to do so in Minneapolis, Rwanda and beyond. Enjoy the ride.  

Welcome back to On the Beat

Friends,

It was strange to revisit this blog and read that the last time I wrote was in the heat of competition season in 2009. How things have changed since then! Despite the best of intentions to document life in Charlottesville, I was drowning in all things business school for the last two years, and I am just now resurfacing to the outside world.

I've just completed the second year of my MBA at the University of Virginia Darden School, and I will be joining Medtronic in Minneapolis in late August. First though, I am taking advantage of my last student summer to travel to Rwanda with the Think Impact Innovation Institute.

Please check back to follow the adventure from Charlottesville to Minneapolis to Kigali and beyond.

Cheers,

Emily

Spring Event Results

(Bumbleberry at home at Stuart Mill Farm on a gorgeous May evening after a thunderstorm)

Alas I have (sort of) found the surface of my desk, and I am getting back to the blog!  I have many thoughts and reflections on the spring season to follow, but here is the spring scoreboard from our events in the past few months.

SUREFIRE FARM HT - June 27th, 2009

Bumbleberry - 7th in Open Novice

London Bobby - 10th in Open Novice with owner Jeff Keffer

SENECA VALLEY HT - June 14th, 2009

Quantum Meruit - 8th in Training Hose

WAREDACA HT - May 30th, 2009

Quantum Meruit - 7th in Preliminary/Training

FAIR HILL INTERNATIONAL HT - May 16-17, 2009

Quantum Meruit - 10th in Open Training

Bumbleberry - 2nd in Open Novice

London Bobby - 14th in Open Training

REDLANDS PONY CLUB HT - April 18-19, 2009

Quantum Meruit - 9th in Open Training

London Bobby - 9th in Open Training

Peter Panther - 6th in Beginner Novice Horse

Bumbleberry - 4th in Open Novice 

Belle Luna - 5th in Open Novice