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DIRECTOR'S LETTER
This April marks my 8th anniversary since coming to the University of Maryland from AT&T. I could never have
imagined what these years have become when I first arrived. Today, the Center for Social Value Creation touches
the lives of thousands of students on campus, is supported by a talented staff of changemakers, and collaborates
with campus, local, regional and global partners to make the world a better place through business principles. You
are part of this community as well, and we thank you.
READ MORE >
IN DEPTH
WHAT'S NEXT: A UNIVERSITY CASE STUDY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FIELD
IMAGINE THIS: a place where university students build their own space for launching creative ideas; create their
own majors to innovate around issues that they care about deeply; and mentor one another before seeking the
advice of experienced professionals and faculty. The future is already here. As the Assistant Dean at the Robert H.
Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, I have witnessed first-hard the transformation of education
delivery.
READ MORE >
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WHAT'S NEW :
UMD TO HOST THE 2015 ASHOKA U EXCHANGE
The Ashoka U Exchange is an annual, global convening for
social entrepreneurship education, bringing together 650
individuals from more than 150 institutions around the world.
UMD is a founding ‘Changemaker Campus’ in the Ashoka
network, one of only 24 universities worldwide recognized for
embedding social innovation as a core value and building
supportive environments for changemaking across the entire
institution. With support from the University of Maryland Office
of The Provost, CSVC was able to solidify UMD's role as the
host institution, and will continue to play a lead role in
organizing the event. As an added bonus to this wonderful
conference, CSVC will fold our Annual Social Enterprise
Symposium into the three day conference as a key
programming feature designed especially for students. We're
exploring February 26-28 as the tentative dates so mark your
calendars. Stay tuned for more details as plans progress!
THE DO GOOD CHALLENGE FINALS IS BACK
As part of the 30 Days of EnTERPreneurship, CSVC, the Center
for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership, & Morgan Stanley
Private Wealth Management will host the Do Good Challenge
Finals on April 29th. After an 8 week challenge that involved
over 50 teams, our top 3 projects and 3 ventures will pitch for
over $20K in prizes to a packed crowd and high profile judges
including Boomer Esiason and David Falk. Attendees have the
chance to vote for their favorite finalist to win the $2,500
Audience Choice Award and enter for a chance to mingle with
Boomer! We hope you can join us for this exciting event! Learn more here. Check out their efforts during the Do
Good Challenge in our picture gallery.
APPLY TO BE A SPEAKER AT TED X UMD!
TEDxUMD is coming to campus on Saturday, May 3rd. This fullday, UMD-affiliated event is being led by ten passionate
students who form the TEDx executive board. The goal: to
gather some of the brightest, idea-oriented individuals to give
inspiring talks on a range of subjects all of which help expand our view of "The Human Experience." At TEDxUMD
both TEDTalks videos and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connections. TEDXUMD is
currently taking applications for Speakers and Performers. To get involved, visit TEDxUMD online.
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RECAP :
THE 2014 SOCIAL ENTERPRISE SYMPOSIUM
What could be accomplished if anything was possible, and we
each used our unique talents to forge fearlessly forward –
without ever holding back? This was the idea behind the 6th
Annual Social Enterprise Symposium that took place on March
7, 2014. “We are change makers. We are dreamers. And, most
importantly, we are doers,” Executive Director of CSVC Melissa
Carrier said to attendees. “We are a part of the UMD community
that is dedicated to making a difference in the world.” The
Symposium is a truly a highlight of our year, and we are grateful
to our impact community who both helped make this possible,
and also to those who attended. To relive (or to get a glimpse into!) all the excitement from the day, check out our
Facebook Gallery, watch video of our inspiring keynotes (both Lisa Neuberger-Ferndandez and Jenna Fournel!)
and our highlights reel on TerpVision, OR click through and read Seven Inspiring Quotes that you may have missed!
Thanks and we hope to see you next year when SES takes shape as part of the 2015 AshokaU Exchange!
CSVC THOUGHT LEADERSHIP AT 2014 ASHOKA U
EXCHANGE
Executive Director Melissa Carrier and Assistant Director for
Social Entrepreneurship Sara Herald traveled up to Providence,
RI in February to speak at the 2014 AshokaU Exchange, hosted
by Brown University. Sara participated in a panel on new
frameworks for social business, presenting CSVC’s ‘Inclusive
Business Model Canvas’, whose roots trace back to the event
last August with social entrepreneurs from all over the world.
Melissa spoke at two sessions focused on institutional change,
highlighting how Innovation Fridays cultivates a campus culture
of ‘pursuing fearless ideas’ and sharing techniques for driving institutional change in this new field. The conference
ended with the exciting announcement that UMD has been chosen as the host for the 2015 AshokaU Exchange next
February – stay tuned for updates!
SMITH FACULTY WIN PROPOSAL TO TEACH SOCIAL
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN BELARUS
Smith School has been awarded a cooperative agreement by USAID with the
Global Business School network to provide faculty development on social
entrepreneurship in Belarus. Smith School Professor Jim Sanders will develop
and deliver a series of faculty development workshops in Belarus focused on
social entrepreneurship. This is a two years program focused on developing skills in the faculty of IPM Business
School to support the growing interest by business students in social entrepreneurship and social impact investing.
The program has three stages: developing a curriculum, delivering a faculty develops workshops in Minsk, and
technical assistance and mentoring over two years.
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TERRACYCLE SPEAKS AT SMITH SCHOOL
Albe Zakes Global VP, Media Relations at TerraCycle, Inc.
joined us at the Smith School to discuss how TerraCycle is
turning trash into a brilliant marketing campaigns and a
profitable business. TerraCycle’s mission is to make nonrecyclable waste nationally recyclable by converting difficult-torecycle waste materials into eco-friendly, affordable products
available at major retailers worldwide. Zakes focused on how he
and his team turn this process into widely successful marketing
and communications campaigns and how they prove the value
of these campaigns to their customers.
FROM THE BLOG :
SES STORY OF IMPACT: CHRIS STEINBACH, THE NEWBERRY GROUP
I’m planning to bring some big news to my upcoming All Hands staff meeting.
As President and CEO of The Newberry Group – an IT firm based in
Columbia, MD & St. Louis, MO – I typically present on past performance, our
forecast, and our plans for achieving those forecasted results. But this time
my plans are far from business as usual. I intend to propose that The
Newberry Group align its vision more closely to that of a true social enterprise.
READ MORE >
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DIRECTOR'S LETTER
Happy Spring!
This April marks my 8th anniversary since coming to the University of Maryland from
AT&T. I could never have imagined what these years have become when I first
arrived. Today, the Center for Social Value Creation touches the lives of thousands
of students on campus, is supported by a talented staff of changemakers, and
collaborates with campus, local, regional and global partners to make the world a
better place through business principles. You are part of this community as well, and
we thank you.
In this issue, we highlight some of our achievements as a community.
Our 6th Annual Social Enterprise Symposium was host to 800 students,
faculty, staff and professionals. The theme, Don’t Hold Back, was a call to
action… really a challenge... to imagine the possibilities of what could
happen if we each used our unique talents to forge fearlessly forward
without ever holding back.
Over 50 teams participated in the Do Good Challenge. In our first two years of the Do Good Challenge, students
cumulatively volunteered over 7,500 hours and raised over $160,000. Please join us for the finals on April 29th!
Check out what we shared about UMD’s social entrepreneurship movement at the Ashoka U Exchange at Brown
University this February. Don’t miss our BIG announcement either!
Scores of students are creating change in our CSVC experiential learning programs this semester. Check out our
exciting student projects at our ChangeTheWorld.org Symposium on April 28th. Can we help your mission-driven
organization with a business challenge over the next year? Contact Pammi Bhullar (pbhullar@rhsmith.umd.edu) about
our 2014-2015 experiential learning projects.
We hope you enjoy watching TerpVision’s segment on the Center. We are pleased to showcase the work of our
students through the mission of CSVC! Help us spread the word by sharing the video link with others in your network.
We look forward to seeing you at our final events this spring. As always, please let us know how we can better support you
too. We strongly believe that the work we do together will create a prosperous and healthy world.
Warmest Regards,
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IN DEPTH
Doing our Job as Educators Means Getting Real about
Sustainability
By Kim Robertella Glinka, Associate Director
Center for Social Value Creation
It’s time to get behind a shared business school standard for
sustainability education. Let’s move toward a prescriptive (vs.
descriptive) approach. Let’s flip on its head the paradigm of “the
business case for sustainability” and seek “the sustainability
case for business.” Let’s come together around a set of defined skills, competencies, and learning objectives that
every business student – and future business leader – should have, and move such criteria into the requirements of
business school accreditation.
This is just a sample of the substantive and truly enjoyable dialogue I took part in earlier this month, representing the
Smith School of Business at the “2014 NBS Sustainability Centres Community Workshop”, held at Harvard Business
School. The conversations were idealistic yet practical; the perfect combination for progress.
This incredible event attracted participants from 18 countries, from all continents (with exception of Antarctica), with
66 representatives from business school sustainability centers at 53 world-class universities. The objectives for such
a convening were threefold: (1) to facilitate new relationships with business sustainability centers from around the
world, (2) to provide a platform for peer learning across teaching, research, outreach, and administration, and (3) to
explore the possibilities for deep and ongoing collaboration. To these ends, the three day workshop was a success.
I was excited (relieved? empowered? thankful!) to discover that my NBS colleagues were as interested in action as
they were in discussion. An informal “Sustainability Standards” working group took shape during our three days
together, and a more formal arrangement is underway thanks to the counsel of NBS. A Special Adviser to the PRME
Secretariat has even offered to liaise between the working group and the UN Global Compact. Our informal
discussions covered such topics as the need for proficiency in the language/lexicon of ecological systems and limits;
the importance of living wage calculations; and the credence of systems thinking and design thinking methodologies,
among many other important subjects.
In thinking through a move toward sustainability standards, I am drawn to some underlying ideas: to develop
student competencies for sustainability is to acclimate them to uncertainty; to incite an appreciation for diversity; to
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provide context for navigating the tensions of the short and long-term; and to develop an appetite for complexity. To
use the words of Johan Roos, Dean and Managing Director of Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), and
former President of Copenhagen Business School, in his recent HBR article:
The business leaders who will succeed in the coming decade will be notable for their holistic thinking, global
perspectives, international experience, multilingual capabilities, technological familiarity, entrepreneurial
mindset, creativity, and ability to deal productively with complexity and chaos. Many corporations already
say they cannot find the type of employees they need, so we must begin acting now to transform our
business schools. It is our job as educators to produce graduates who can thrive in a radically changing
world, and who can shape it in positive ways.
A radically changing world it is. And industry has a long way to go before it epitomizes a nurturing system that
fosters a thriving, healthy, sustained world and economy. In fact, a recently conducted survey and report found that
only 35 percent of the 613 largest, publicly traded US companies studied have set time-bound greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions reductions targets. And, of more than 2,000 sustainability goals put forth by Fortune 200
companies only 13 such goals are actually based on scientific data.*
So how do we drive major US companies to adopt more comprehensive and integrated sustainability platforms? I
believe that the most powerful agents for change will be our students; the future managers and executives of the
corporate world. It’s up to business educators to deliver an education that embraces the complexity of corporate
sustainability and encourages innovative, creative and entrepreneurial solutions.
In the year ahead CSVC will be placing an even greater emphasis on sustainability programming and initiatives.
We’ll continue to keep a pulse on the sustainability movement and look for opportunities to develop and shape new
offerings at Smith. This fall we’ll welcome a Sustainability Executive in Residence to the team (details to be
announced soon!) and proposals are in the pipeline for a new undergraduate fellows course, a sustainability
advisory board, and a sustainability portfolio workshop series. And, I’ll be joining the NBS Sustainability Standards
working group upon its formal launch. I invite you – students, alumni, academic and professional colleagues – to join
us in these efforts. Our desire to learn and collaborate stems from a desire to affect real change. Help us enrich the
dialogue and strengthen the movement by sharing your thoughts, challenging our ideas, and exploring new
opportunities for collaboration.
If we’re going to do our job as educators, it’s time to step it up. We need to move beyond the gradational and get
real about a sustainability platform that works in higher education and in industry – however elusive this may seem
at present.
*This statement was amended after initial publication
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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
An Interview with Alayna Abel, B.S. '17 - Accounting
Written by Peter Novak
CSVC: What is your area of study and why did you choose it?
Abel: I am a freshman studying Accounting at Robert H. Smith
School of Business. I chose Accounting because I believe it is a
concentration that is applicable to many fields, and would provide me
with a lot of opportunities when I graduate. Upon graduation, my goal
is to find a job at one of the Big Four public accounting firms to get
the best experience. I am also considering doing accounting for the government or a non-profit organization.
CSVC: How did you get involved in social value creation?
Abel: My family has been exposing me to social value creation activities since childhood. Many of my family members
emigrated from various parts of Europe such as Lithuania, Russia, Poland, and Germany. They came to the U.S. with very
little but eventually became successful due to the support of their community and the people around them. When I was
younger I did a lot of community service through Girl Scouts, and in high school, I got involved with Key Club and the National
Honor Society.
CSVC: What activities have you been engaged in recently?
Abel: Currently I am participating in the Do Good Challenge through Gift to Uplift, an organization I helped start with a group
of peers. The organization focuses on bringing hope and positivity to children with life-threatening illnesses by providing them
with uplifting gift packages that include a personalized book. We recently won the Do Good Ventures Expo at the Social
Enterprise Symposium. The biggest challenge for us now is finding children to help, since we can’t reach out to them directly.
In addition to the Gift to Uplift project, I am a member of Smith Undergraduate Net Impact, where I work with the Sustainability
Committee on planning and executing educational events for undergraduate students. Last but not least, I am pledging Alpha
Kappa Psi, a professional business fraternity. The process is somewhat intimidating but very rewarding.
CSVC: What advice would you give to newly-enrolled students at University of Maryland?
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Abel: I would suggest that they talk to as many people as possible, especially seniors, to see what activities they could get
involved in. For me, meeting and interacting with students was extremely inspiring and motivational. I would also encourage
students to ask themselves what impact they want to make on the world around them, and to consider both the long and short
term. Lastly, try new things! It never hurts to do something completely out of your comfort zone.
CSVC: What is your dream job?
Abel: I would love to work for a non-profit organization helping children in need domestically as well as internationally. And
one day, I wouldn’t mind living in Australia or on a farm in the Midwest.
CSVC: What are your hobbies or things you do in your free time?
Abel: I enjoy being outdoors and playing sports, especially lacrosse and field hockey. In addition, I like to attend unique
events on campus and embrace the school spirit. I’ve gone to comedy shows, theatre performances, and a bunch of
basketball, football, and field hockey games. I am also a mentee in the SmithPeers program, a one-on-one mentoring
program through the business school that has been very educational and motivating. And in my spare time, I like to read and
bake!
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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
An Interview with Steve Ollis, Smith MBA ’99 and Chief
Operating Officer, D-tree International
Written by Blake Carlton, MBA/MPP Dec, '14
Ollis has been working with D-tree International for the past four
years. In his current capacity as Chief Operating Officer, Ollis
manages mobile health projects supporting maternal and child health
as well as malnutrition in Tanzania, India and Zanzibar. Ollis has over
18 years of experience in management consulting, information
technology and public health. He excels in working with clients and
key stakeholders to develop the decision algorithms and applications
necessary to support health workers in their provision of care to clients in the field.
Prior to joining D-tree, Ollis worked for the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative in Tanzania as Deputy Country Director directing
programs in Pediatrics, Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV, and rural Care and Treatment. His past experience
includes serving as Vice President for two IT consulting firms in the Washington, DC area as well as nearly five years working
at BearingPoint as a management consultant, providing financial management and information technology solutions to state
and federal government clients. Ollis holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from The American University and a Master’s in
Business Administration in Information Systems and Finance from the University of Maryland. He is also a certified Project
Management Professional.
D-tree International works to develop mobile decision support tools to help health workers worldwide provide high quality
health care. We partner with Ministries of Health and other NGOs to design, develop and implement mobile systems at the
frontlines of the health system. D-tree International is currently participating in the center’s Change the World program, an
initiative in which students act as consultants to small social enterprises and nonprofits located around the globe. Additionally,
Ollis was a panelist for CSVC’s networking career workshop in December, 2013.
CSVC: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Specifically, what was your career path both before and after receiving your MBA at
Smith?
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OLLIS: I actually got my MBA relatively early in my career. I knew I wanted to get an MBA and, working a 9-to-5 job as an
accountant in a design firm, I felt like I could balance both by going to school in the evenings. So, I applied and got into Smith.
When my classes started, however, I changed firms and began working at BearingPoint where I did consulting work, which
was quite different from the quiet 9-5 work I had been doing. So, I was actually working as a management consultant while
pursuing my degree part-time. At BearingPoint, I was working mostly on financial instruments for federal government clients.
One thing that came to the forefront in a lot of my work were the accounting problems I would encounter were usually not with
people’s financial analysis or accounting, but had more to do with the information systems that were being used by, say, the
Department of Defense, for example, which used two or three different systems, any of which could have errors or may not be
providing the bigger picture of a client’s situation. So, that got me interested in the IT track. So, while at Smith, I combined
concentrations in financial management and IT.
After attaining my MBA, I stayed with BearingPoint for a few more years and then moved into IT consulting, working for two
small firms still in DC, but outside of the Big 5. After a number of years doing that, I decided it would be interesting to look at
the nonprofit sector and see if some of the skills I had acquired in IT, financial and project management could be applicable
there too. I was looking for, perhaps, a bit more meaning than in the work I had been doing. I thought I’d be able to start
working in international development, since I already had twelve years of experience and with the skills I had to offer, but, I
actually found that I needed to volunteer overseas to prove that I could work abroad. I started working with the Clinton
HIV/AIDS Initiative, part of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, where I worked in public health, but with more of an IT and
project management focus. So, I was leaving the medical work to the experts. I was particularly interested in international
development because it seemed interesting and challenging. I had always enjoyed traveling, but I wanted to take a closer look
at some of the problems faced by some of the low-to-middle income countries and some of the challenges faced by people in
more rural areas. I actually would have been happy working for a non-profit here on the east coast, which I did do as a
volunteer, but I was interested in traveling and gaining experiences with other cultures as well.
CSVC: What’s one of the more challenging aspects of your line of work in international development?
OLLIS: The organizations that I’ve worked for have always worked with someone else’s money in supporting foreign national
governments, ministries of health and local governments, which is a lot different than coming in with your own money and
being able to do with it what you like. Trying to implement change while working within a different system and in accordance
with someone else’s system creates a delicate situation in which you have to push what you consider to be very important,
without being seen as pushing too hard. You have to orchestrate from the rear to ensure that everyone is on board with your
ideas and that you may be driving the changes, but you need to let someone else be at the front, all while knowing that you
could certainly get things done more quickly if you did them yourself and in your own way. Then again, your actions won’t be
as sustainable or have as long-lasting impact if you don’t take the time to build consensus and make sure everybody’s on
board with your proposal. So, it’s a balancing act in which you try to satisfy donors and keep headquarters happy, while also
dealing with the realities of needing to work with and respect your partners who will be there longer than you and who have to
live with whatever change you implement.
CSVC: What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced while growing D-tree International since joining the team four years
ago?
OLLIS: There’s two main challenges. First is updating people about what we’re doing, given that we’re working in an
innovative and fast-changing field. We have to make it clear that we know what we’re doing even though what we’re doing
now may be very different from what we were doing six to twelve months ago, based on what we’ve learned and how
technology has changed. For example, a lot of our early work from a few years ago involved Palm Pilots. If we were to write a
study on the use of or suggest that a government use Palm Pilots today, we’d be laughed out of the room. But, at the same
time, some clients, and this applies especially to governments, are willing to work with a technology that isn’t necessarily
cutting edge, but which already has a track record of reliability. So, there’s a tension between being innovative, or pushing the
envelope, while not going over the cliff.
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Internally, there’s the challenge of growing towards current innovations, which applies to all startups. Moving from a tenperson staff to a 20-person staff involves moving beyond the people you already know, the circles you’ve already established
and those who could create connections. Instead, you have to start hiring people outside of that circle. Also, you have to
prepare for that type of growth so that the process isn’t just ad-hoc.
CSVC: Please describe the changes you’ve implemented at D-tree and observed throughout both the health and international
development industries during your career.
OLLIS: Some of the things I’ve tried to do are to introduce the processes I mentioned before, which involved making things
more standard and more proactive instead of reactive. There are a number of issues that come up in the field, including, but
not limited to, materials or people not showing up on time for work or for treatment. So, I’m trying to introduce more processes
so that we can be less reliant on the individual.
Also, I’m trying to encourage people both working within D-tree as well as our partners to not be afraid to ask more questions
about the information systems, the mobile devices or the data attained by the devices. This [the compilation of data] is one of
the big pushes now when it comes to health and international development. There’s always been such a big push to collect
data, but now there’s a push towards “what is it you can do with the data?” Many people have been managing programs in
which data was collected on paper. Now, suddenly, they find that the same amount of data is accessible to them with the click
of a button. So, that’s a huge shift within the industry. These days, we’re collecting so much data, much of which we’re not
even using. There’s even a push towards collecting less data. I mean, you may be able to collect 400 indicators rather quickly,
but, nevertheless, only ten of them are relevant.
CSVC: You are a specialist in finance and information systems. Please speak to your combined interests in both areas and
how they relate to health-focused international development.
OLLIS: There is never enough money to be able to do the work we want to do, so, being knowledgeable about budgeting and
forecasting are important pieces of what we do. As for the Information Systems side, I focus more on the IT side. I’m a terrible
programmer, but it’s good for me to be aware of how technology works and how it’s changing as well as what aspects of it are
easy and which are difficult. It’s also good to have a basic understanding of the lexicon when discussing things that apply to
health and IT. The IT part is a lot about systems thinking. When trying to deliver healthcare, you have to think about health
systems. So, systems thinking is about piecing together who needs what information about which healthcare needs and at
varying levels of the health system. IT really supports a lot of the work that we do, so, out of the coursework from school, a lot
of the tools can help you adapt to technology issues.
CSVC: On a daily basis, what does the role of Chief Operating Officer entail at a health-focused international development
startup?
OLLIS: Certainly a lot of variety and a lot of talking. A lot of my work is about bringing people together, as I try to stay abreast
of what’s happening at both the operations level as well as the country manager level. I have to make sure there’s financing
for the information systems needed for our programs. I work closely with the statistical piece, the software development side,
to ensure they’re getting the information they need from the clients, the users and the field implementation teams. And vice
versa. That’s all more internally-focused.
I spend quite a lot of time doing business development, ie, writing proposals, creating presentations, networking and following
up on inquiries about potential projects. We’re still small, so, I still do a lot of hands-on work as far as data analysis, testing
and quality assurance of the software itself and also the design side of developing the decision support logic that underpins
the tools that we use. I go through health guidelines and help develop the protocols that health workers follow, for example,
what questions they ask and what they’re supposed to do based on the answers they get, all in an effort to provide quality
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care to our clients.
I also do some analytical thinking about who we should partner with, in what countries we should work, next projects and how
we can reach the maximum number of people without compromising the quality. We provide critical decision support tools that
could help a lot of people, but we don’t want our tools not to be accurate or not to not get the right results. We have to be
careful so that the quality of our projects don’t suffer.
CSVC: What did you learn at the Smith school that has helped you the most in your career so far? Is there anything that you
think you would have done differently while you were at school? What advice would you give to students who want to pursue
a career in the health sector and/or international development?
OLLIS: I would have spent more time doing my homework. I was a bit stretched for time. I didn’t put as much into the program
as I would have liked to have been able to. I was trying to move up the ladder in a management consulting firm, which cut into
my time. That said, short of not sleeping at all, I’m not sure how else I would have managed those three years. I was a parttime student at the Shady Grove campus while working in Crystal City, so, I was facing a three-hour commute some days.
What I learned most had to do with the case study methodology, in which you’re thrown into a situation for which you have
some information, but you never have enough. But, you have been given a framework to break down a problem and provide a
solution. Though you never have enough time or the perfect information that you want, you still have to think analytically about
the situation.
I also appreciate the multidisciplinary approach to what I learned. At Smith, you learn about human resources, IS, finances,
operations, and management. Particularly in the field in which I’m working, there’s always an opportunity to improve
processes, so, it’s good to have some background in several areas. I’d suggest students put themselves out there. If you
know nothing about human resources, for example, you should throw yourself into some new situations just to see how you
do. Even if you’re dead set on focusing on finance, creating global applications, or working with state-of-the-art information
security, you never know what may come of your career, so, it’s good to keep your brain elastic. Even if you’re an introvert and
your comfort level is to stay behind a keyboard, when you’re doing marketing and business development, it’s up to you to
push yourself.
For those interested in a career in either of these areas, I’d say, rather than being intimidated by a lack of knowledge or
experience in either, try to think of the common pieces that serve the operations of both. To run a health organization, you still
have to pay people, and finance projects, money and information systems. The same goes for international development.
There are some core pieces underpinning the work, which may be from various different sectors.
Finally, especially for international development, don’t be afraid to volunteer. I volunteered for six months, which wasn’t exactly
what I expected at that point in my career, but it was a great experience, a great way to learn a bit more before I dove into a
new career and it certainly opened my eyes. It helped me determine that this is what I want to do with my career
wholeheartedly.
CSVC: Can you tell me a fun fact about yourself?
OLLIS: I was married on a goat farm
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Robert H. Smith School of Business | The University of Maryland | Suite 2410 Van Munching Hall | College Park, MD 20742 US
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Share this:
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
An interview with Christine Beckman, Associate Professor, Robert H. Smith
School of Business
Written by Ryan Steinbach
CSVC: Let’s start with your work and research at Smith and before Smith on
entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Tell me a little more about that.
BECKMAN: I came to Smith in August from UC Irvine where I was on the faculty for
almost 15 years so I’m new to the East coast. I’ve done a lot of research on
entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial teams, primarily in high tech companies. In 2008 I started getting interested in social
entrepreneurs after having some interactions with educational entrepreneurs. I started wondering whether social
entrepreneurs are different than the kind of entrepreneurs I’d been studying. I started a project on educational entrepreneurs
in northern California, studying the founding of charter schools. I started collecting the data in 2008 and it’s been a fairly slow
moving project. I’m not done with it and it’s evolved for various reasons.
A lot of my work had been on looking at how the background and experiences of entrepreneurs shape the company they
create and how that has a lasting impact after the entrepreneur or founding team member leaves. I was interested in doing
that with these charters school, but on a number of dimensions social entrepreneurship seems a bit messy. It’s harder to
measure success. In some sense these educational entrepreneurs are never done. They’re dealing with big problems like
educating poor urban kids. They might be able to succeed in some areas, but there’s always more to be done. Also, I couldn’t
easily categorize the people that were founding these schools in the same way that I could categorize a high tech firm. In a
high tech firm I could say, “this is a marketing person, this is a finance person, this is an operations person.” The people that
found charter schools were sometimes teachers, sometimes administrators, sometimes business people, sometimes parents,
and sometimes community members. But even knowing that they were a teacher didn’t necessarily tell me the kind of
organization they would found.
CSVC: What else have you been working on?
BECKMAN: I just published a paper on entrepreneurial boards and the role of entrepreneurial boards in helping new
companies create alliances and reach revenue milestones. I’ve a paper on mutual fund managers, I’ve got a paper on soccer
teams, on baseball teams, I’ve got a paper on the navy. I jump all over the place. That’s the great thing about being a
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professor, you get a question in your head and you can figure out how to answer that question and what kind of data should
be collected.
CSVC: To what extent do you see the research and work that you’ve done in the entrepreneurship space being relevant to
social entrepreneurs?
BECKMAN: I think it’s hugely relevant. A lot of the research I’ve done is on what founding teams look like and which ones
tend to be successful over time. Do you structure it so you have two founders who both do everything or does one have a
specific role while the other has another specific role? It’s really clear that the teams that are clear about who should do what,
do better. That structure is really helpful. It minimizes conflicts. If you have your job and I have mine, there are certain things
we’re going to need to collaborate around, but it’s not as slow as if we had to make every decision together. And then when
one person leaves and someone else comes into that job, it’s a much easier transition. So this idea of structuring teams I
don’t think would be specific to any kind of new venture.
CSVC: Where do you see the role of University research in the social entrepreneurship space and the entrepreneurship
space in general?
BECKMAN: I teach a class in implementing strategy, and it’s all about having an idea that you want to accomplish and how
you go about making sure that happens. How do you hire the right people? How do you create the right structure? How do
you create the right culture? And those are all entrepreneurial questions. I didn’t have any social entrepreneurship elements
this time, but the last time I taught this class at UC Irvine, I used the KIPP School which is a Charter School. KIPP has grown
very quickly so we looked at how to scale that kind of organization. This time I did a case on a bread shop in Boston that
wanted to make multiple retail stores. So whether you’re scaling schools or scaling bread shops, there’s a whole set of issues
around how you do that. I think the research community brings a real systematic understanding of what works and what
doesn’t work. It’s easy to just look at successes, but the whole research method says, if you only look at success stories, you
don’t know actually what worked and what didn’t because there may be just as many failures that tried doing exactly the same
thing and failed. And so unless you look at a whole sample of companies where some have failed and some have succeeded,
you can easily be misled and have false ideas about how to succeed. So I think that’s what the research / university world
brings - a real interest in systematically trying to understand what works.
CSVC: I wanted to come back to this idea of building entrepreneurial teams. Do you have any advice for students who are
starting to build these ventures and starting to look for that first, second, third team member?
BECKMAN: So I would say, first, there’s real value to having people with really diverse and different experiences. Our
tendencies are to put together a team of people who all think the same way. That’s a human tendency. But the research is
pretty clear that teams with diverse experiences do better. That does come with some potential conflicts. Those teams can be
harder to manage, but it’s still overall the case that teams that are more diverse tend to do better. So looking for people that
have different experiences than you is useful.
The other thing I’d say is about bringing in the right people. A lot of times we talk about putting in ‘place holders’. We have
someone working in a role that doesn’t have the relevant experience – because we can’t afford it or can’t find that person and we plan to later bring on a professional that’s really going to have the experience we need. The problem is that when the
professional does come onboard, the job as it has been created don’t make sense to the expert. For example, when you have
someone start in a job that has an unusual experience for that job, such as a sales person with no sales experience or a
finance person with no finance experience, and then you bring in someone with experience later, those people with the
relevant experience leave faster. I don’t know why because I am measuring the turnover rate, but it’s really clear that if you
start with someone in that first job that has an unusual set of experiences, the second, third, fourth people all turnover over at
much higher rates if their experience is different than that first person. This is true even if the experience of the subsequent
people is more functionally relevant than the experience of the first person. And so what that suggests is: don’t create a job
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until you have the right person to fill it.
CSVC: What are some things that you do outside of being a faculty member at the Smith School?
BECKMAN: I’m a native Californian and this is my first time living on the east coast so I’m learning the environment. My
family and I live in DC. I’ve got two middle school/high school age kids and we like to cycle and explore. It’s a neat city and
we’re really enjoying living in the city a lot.
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