Gender lens investing is gaining traction with investors around the globe and Africa is no exception. WSII’s Senior Gender Lens Investing Advisor Suzanne Biegel reflects on discussions and lessons learned at Sankalp Africa Summit, a 2017 gathering of more than 1,000 investors, fund managers, entrepreneurs, and intermediaries focused on…Read More
Freetown surprised me. Freetown mesmerized me. Even having previously lived and worked in Africa, I arrived for the summer colored by media portrayals of disease and suffering in Sierra Leone. What I found was a city of poverty, inequalities and inconsistencies yes, but also of beauty, serenity and hope. High…Read More
Think Africa and what pictures come to mind? If you haven’t lived or traveled in Africa, the pictures are likely to be few and a tad hazy. Giraffes on an open savannah, perhaps. Maybe an Ebola treatment clinic. Maybe a colorfully garbed woman carrying a perfectly balanced and heavy load…Read More
Call me a glutton for punishment, but I love working in challenging environments that require difficult and entrepreneurial solutions. That’s how I wound up working with East African startups for three years prior to Wharton and again for my 2015 summer internship. I am passionate about supporting entrepreneurship in emerging…Read More
Jenna Gebel, a second-year MBA candidate at Wharton, wrote about her summer internship working in sustainability at Coca-Cola’s Atlanta headquarters. I will never forget the moment when I found out I was accepted to the Coca-Cola Office of Sustainability internship program. Sitting in my MBA corporate finance class, I quickly glanced at…Read More
Monica Barrett, a student of the Wharton-Harvard Kennedy dual-degree program, reflects on her summer experience conducting research in the agricultural sector in Kenya. Barrett received funding from Wharton Social Impact Initiative to participate in an internship with Innovations for Poverty Action. Increasingly, new enterprises are infusing social missions into the fabric of their…Read More
“One percent of the developed world’s income could eliminate the leading causes of preventable death in the developing world,” contended Josh McCann during a Wharton persuasive speaking class. My classmate, a Wharton MBA student, was trying to convince professionals to donate 1% of their income to fight extreme poverty and…Read More
Barry Mattson, WG’08, is a recipient of the Bendheim Loan Forgiveness Fund – a program designed to ease the burden of student loans for selected Wharton MBA graduates who are pursuing careers in the nonprofit and public sectors. Below, Mattson describes his work fighting poverty in Ethiopia. As an MBA student, I had…Read More
Social impact has become a buzzword in business, but what does the evidence say about the success of social impact initiatives? In separate research papers, three Wharton professors — Deborah Small, Franklin Allen and Susan Wachter — look at whether “doing good” means doing well in different contexts: When it comes…Read More
