Moore School of Business - Moore School - Economic Development for Fast Track Experience

Ryan Flaherty, IMBA 2006

As 2006 IMBA Portuguese track graduate Ryan Flaherty’s classmates donned business suits and drove to their climate-controlled offices for their first day of work, Flaherty was on a seven-hour drive into the mountains of Central America. His journey ended in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, an impoverished village of 3,000 in Guatemala.

Flaherty travelled to this remote village to work for the MBA Enterprise Corps, a division of Citizens Development Corps (CDC), which hires recently graduated MBAs from the top 50 U.S. business schools to work 12- to 15-month volunteer assignments in developing countries and emerging economies. Flaherty’s assignment was with a Guatemalan nongovernmental organization called Fundación Sierra Madre (FSM), which was created by CDC with funding from Goldcorp, Inc., a Canadian mining company, as part of its corporate social responsibility initiative in the area. Through its Integrated Community Development Program, FSM’s goal is to help the local population develop and sustain strong institutions and a healthy regional economy to ensure their well-being long after the closing of the mine.

Flaherty with FSM co-worker, Selvin Fuentes

"One of the biggest challenges," said Flaherty, "was working with three major stakeholders--to satisfy everyone’s needs but ultimately provide a benefit to the community." His job had two major objectives. The first was to work with FSM leaders to improve their management and financial processes. The other larger goal was to create a structured entrepreneurial program for the community that would attract local entrepreneurs so that FSM could help them develop their businesses. This would require getting buy-in from the mostly indigenous population and encouraging them to take initiative to do things for themselves.

Flaherty developed a multi-tiered Enterprise Development Program (EDP) that began with nurturing an entrepreneurial attitude, which was a challenge given the reserved culture created after hundreds of years of repression from the Spanish conquistadores to the atrocities committed throughout Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. “The first challenge was to get people to believe that they could make change and that they needed to be proactive to do so,” said Flaherty. "Our motto was 'Development begins with oneself.'"

Once they attracted entrepreneurs, the next step was to get them on a regular schedule for training and meetings. The training includes seminars on business topics such as business plans, marketing, basic accounting and the legal and fiscal aspects of micro-enterprises. These trainings are followed by on-site, individualized consultations. The EDP also provides technical assistances where experts spend from one to four weeks working one-on-one with the entrepreneurs to improve their products or services. The culmination of all this work is the "Annual Entrepreneurial Fair of Life, Color and Flavor" in December where entrepreneurs from all over the region come together to promote and sell their goods and services.

By the time Flaherty left San Miguel in December 2007, he and his FSM co-workers were working with more than 50 entrepreneurs consistently and FSM was functioning without the assistance of CDC. It proved to be a daunting, but successful mission.

"I selected this job specifically because of the challenge." explained Flaherty. "I wanted to take what I learned in the IMBA program and figure out what was relevant to their reality, because some of the things we learn in business school are not relevant in that setting. I then had to present that information in a way that they would understand."

"The internship experience you have here at the Moore School really prepares you for success in a broad range of environments. The type of person that the Moore School attracts thrives in different cultures. For me—that challenge is something that really excites me."

Perhaps the most valuable part of the assignment was the set of soft skills he gained. Unfortunately, he, like most IMBA students, are very involved with their classes and don’t put much importance on the Birkman Method behavior assessment courses taught by the Office of Career Management. "The last five or six months I was in upper management – really trying to analyze people – trying to figure out how to motivate them," said Flaherty. "I wish I had taken my Birkman book with me because the tools would have been very helpful for me on the job."

Since 1995 the MBA Enterprise Corps has hired 50 Moore School International MBA graduates to serve as management consultants in developing countries. These unpaid economic development assignments may lack glamour and financial gains, but they offer young MBAs the opportunity to gain experiences and develop skills that their corporate-bound peers will take years to acquire.

For more information about Fundación Sierra Madre please visit Web site: http://www.fundacionsierramadre.org/ .

March 2008

Alumni Profile

Economic Development for Fast Track Experience