New Blood

I posted an intern notice to find a new intern to travel and stay in Tanzania for three months, replacing Joel as he comes back to the states. Within 3 days I received almost 150 CV’s. It was an unbelievable turnout that attests to this new generation of people interested in social enterprise as a career. The vast majority of respondents have been those in or just out of school. There has been a good mix of MBA and design students and a few people interested in changing career paths. We’ve even had a few people who are retired or semi-retired looking to give back to the world. After a long search I finally settle on Sekhar Suryanarayanan and Kathryn Nevard. Sekhar has worked for a large consulting firm on projects all over the world. He desired to practice his Project Management skills without the safety net of a very large MNC before accepting the challenge of an MBA program. Kathryn is a Peace Corp volunteer currently working in the Gambia. It’s amazing that these two people, who have very different work background both found a sense of purpose in desiring to work in Africa for this project. The combination of the two of them fulfills the specific needs of this particular type of work. I think it takes a combination of real world, on the ground implementation from ground up and top down. In this case the top down is large MNC projects with budgets 100X plus ours. The ground up is working and living in the Gambia in a community of a couple of hundred people. It’s a combination of dirt under your fingernails as you drag the parts together in the middle of nowhere and boardroom financials, spreadsheets, and PnL statements. I’m excited to have them work together because I think they are both highly motivated, really smart, and passionate about changing the world.