Penn, Wharton, & their AMAZING Resources

Alright, so I complain about Wharton sometimes. I still think it's incredible that the majority of the world's most talented undergraduate business students want to pursue a number-crunching career on Wall Street when there's a world of myriad alternative opportunities out there waiting for them to seize. As globalization carries on at an ever-increasing pace, sustainable development has become THE central theme of our generation. So, why are so many people still adamantly building up their resumes to impress the recruiter of some name-brand investment, bank?

Anyway, as much as this fact annoys me, my experience here at Wharton has been phenomenal so far. The resources here are just incredible: CEOs come here for speeches and network with students on a daily basis, while a couple of Heads-of-States of frequented our campus this year as well. Secretary-General of the freakin' United Nations is about to come here as well. There are just so many awesome speakers and so many awesome campus clubs with their awesome everday events out there! You learn so much outside of class that it's easy to get distracted from your actual schoolwork.

Speaking of classes, the faculty resources here are just amazing. Take two of my TAs this semester, for example:

• David Muir of my BPUB250 class (Managerial Economics) is currently heading a menu pricing project for McDonalds. Yes, McDonalds. 
• Adam Saunders of my OPIM101 class (Operations and Information Management) worked at the President's Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, D.C before pursuing his PH.D at MIT. 

These are my TA's; I won't even start to talk about my professors. I'd continue blogging, but I'm gna head for dinner right now. After dinner, I'll be attending a consulting workshop led by professionals from McKinsey and Oliver Wyman. How does a freshman like me have access to such amazing resources? It's cuz amazing campus groups like Social Impact Consulting put together these awesome events.

Compare this to the Bolivian schoolkids who had to commute up to 4 hours by foot on a daily basis just to show up at English classes taught by professors who didn't know English at all.. I am truly fortunate to be at a place like this. So let's work a little harder and stop slacking off so much--let's not sleep for 10 hours like I did last night, when I've been consistently getting 8 hours of sleep :)

I'm back!

I'm back guys!!

Alright, it's not like many people ever checked out my blog that much in the first place, but anyway, I just want to start blogging again. Nope, I'm not going to do it in Spanish, Chinese, or French this time--it just takes me too long. With my overwhelming daily schedule and lackluster time management abilities, I haven't been able to set aside a long period of uninterrupted time to type stuff up in a foreign language. So.. instead of using this blog to work on my language skills, I think I'm going to start talking about the latest stuff in the social enterprise sector. It's the only reason I'm studying business at all, and honestly, it's just too easy to loose focus on the bigger picture at Wharton.. all this Wall Street talk all day long doesn't do much good in terms of inspiring the next generation of world-changing business leaders. What's really inspiring is books like Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.

Anyway, so here's a list of some cool stuff I've found this week:

• 33needs.com  A newly launched online platform that allows ordinary individuals like you and me to invest as little as $10 in social enterprises around the world. It's based on the concept of "crowdfunding," a concept that can be summarized pretty nicely by the following diagram: 

• As I was doing some research into how mobile technologyr and microfinance could be combined into a distribution model for affordable, high-quality solar products to the Bottom of the Pyramid markets, I came across a bunch of interesting stuff:
  http://www.frontlinesms.com/_PREV/resources/download/Changemakers-kiwanja-SMS-Guide.pdf (overview of innovative applications of SMS in the developing world)
  http://www.frontlinesms.com/ (A really legit SMS platform that's free for NGO's around the world, including Microfinance Institutions)
  http://www.oliverwyman.com/ow/pdf_files/OW_En_FS_2011_Publ_NextGenerationMobileBanking.pdf (Oliver Wyman's & PlaNet Finance's report on mobile banking)
  http://www.globalmobileawards.com/awards/winners_2011.htm (Top mobile technologies of 2011)
  http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.9.49643/ (Comprehensive Microfinance report that's cited pretty often)
  http://www.terrapinn.com/2011/mobileza/index.stm Mobile Money Conference in South Africa that's going on soon
  http://www.nextbillion.net/ really, really, really, really cool website that compiles amazing info about social enterprise stuff going on around the world
  http://www.wri.org/publication/the-next-4-billion comprehensive report about the Bottom of Pyramid market by World Bank Group & World Resources Institute
  http://www2.goldmansachs.com/citizenship/10000women/index.html (Goldman's 10,000 women initiative.. it was kinda hard to believe that the guys responsible for the global economic meltdown actually invest in the world's future, but hey, I guess the world isn't always black and white!)
  

As I search for these URL's, I keep coming across more amazing sites along the way, so I think I'll stop here. I just want to say that I wouldn't have come across any of this had it not been for my amazing internship opportunity at One Degree Solar. I was extremely fortunate to meet an experienced international development professional who had worked in Liberia with the Clinton Foundation for quite a while, and he has been a really great mentor to me. The other guys on the team are all so amazingly accomplished as well. I've just started my internship work, which mostly consists of research, but I can already sense the beginning of something really special with this company :)

Alright, I should go grab some sleep now. Got a bunch of work already, and school's barely begun. I should really put more time into schoolwork, I really should...

Peace,

Clarke