The class of 2008 embarked on internships in nonprofit management, corporate social responsibility, and nonprofit consulting.

	Chris Edell at the United Nations
	Amy Emerick at Teach for America
	Allyson Fish at Environmental Defense
	Abby Goward at Bank of America
	Katya Levitan-Reiner at Wellspring Consulting

I will be spending the summer as an MBA intern at the United Nations – Global Compact. The Global Compact is an initiative to bring international businesses together with the United Nations to support corporate social responsibility measures, environmental issues, and social principles. These agencies work together to make progress in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment, and anti-corruption. My role will be to research, draft and edit publications, communicate with the international businesses within the Global Compact, as well as help implement the Global Compact’s integrity initiatives.

I found out about this internship after Professor Oster hosted a guest speaker luncheon with Georg Kell, Executive Head of the United Nations – Global Compact. I was able to utilize the resources of the Career Development Office to pursue the internship opportunity. Yale SOM provided a fantastic platform for helping me identify the opportunity, as well as providing a place to network with the key stakeholders within the United Nations.

This summer I will be working with Wellspring Consulting, a management consulting firm serving non-profit organizations along the Northeast Corridor. Wellspring employs a strategic approach to help non-profits achieve their mission. I found the internship through the firm’s on-campus recruiting. Wellspring has a strong connection to SOM, as its founder and a number of other members of the firm are SOM graduates.

Thanks to informal networking and conversations with fellow classmates, I was fortunate enough to find an internship at Teach for America. I’ll be in their NYC headquarters this summer working within their Alumni Affairs division. This is a relatively new operation within TFA (it was created about 10 months ago), so I’m excited about the opportunity because it seems as though there will be a lot of room for innovation and creativity.

There are two individuals with whom I will be working directly. Jen Bluestein, TFA’s Vice President for Political Leadership Initiatives, is going to have me working on researching and proposing a “Local Elected Leaders Fellowship” program. Josh Solomon, TFA’s Managing Director for Alumni Engagement and Infrastructure (he’s also an SOM alum) will have me working on large scale volunteer opportunities throughout the national TFA network.

I will be working with Bank of America in their Corporate Philanthropy department at their headquarters in Charlotte, NC. I was lucky enough to find this internship through the Career Development Office. My responsibilities will include: communications and marketing of Bank of America’s philanthropic initiatives, calculating social return on investment to maximize the impact of BoA’s giving, and researching potential opportunities to work with rural and Native American non-profit organizations.

As the Hewlett Fellow, I will be working in the New Projects department of the Corporate Partnerships office at Environmental Defense. My responsibilities will include research and analysis of new environmentally sustainable strategies for various operational practices in the private sector. For each new strategy idea, I will identify the key industry players and conduct applicable industry analysis, feasibility studies, financial return evaluation, and environmental impact assessment. I’m excited to be working with ED because their work aligns closely with my aspiration to help leading U.S. companies reduce the lifecycle environmental impacts of the products and services they sell. I am also looking forward to putting my newly acquired MBA skills to work during the week while getting my weekends back to enjoy the city of Boston and Cape Cod over the summer.

Yale SOM offers many practical learning opportunities, as highlighted by Professor Sharon Oster in the last edition of the PSE Newsletter.

Highlighted here are three student projects with local nonprofits:

Farnam Neighborhood House by Kendra Lee, SOM’08
Christian Community Action by Sarah Rose Cohen, SOM’08
Visiting Nurse Services Health Care by Imani Brown

Executive MBA students, Chidi Achebe, M.D., M.P.H., David Esposito, M.D., Michael Giordano, M.D., and Jamie Sidore, worked with Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) Health Care, a non-profit organization that has been helping people in Connecticut live independently in their homes for over 100 years. VNA Health Care is focused on home care and wellness services. As Dave Esposito explained, “it was refreshing to work with a group that’s not so much concerned about profit, cash flow, and bottom line.”

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By Sarah Rose Cohen, SOM’08

Christian Community Action is an ecumenical social service organization that expresses faithful witness through providing emergency food, housing and support to those who are poor in New Haven, encouraging their efforts to attain self-sufficiency and working to change systems that perpetuate poverty and injustice. In 2003, CCA launched PIVOT, a job skills straining program that places ad funds members of their constituency into apprenticeships at New Haven companies, to help endow them with important job skills, and to launch them into stable job tracks.

For the past few years, CCA has been considering its options for establishing an earned-income venture (EIV). Such a project would enable CCA to provide some of PIVOT’s training apprenticeships in-house, and would provide the organization with a reliable, unrestricted source of cash flow (EIVs are currently a popular tool with many types of nonprofits because of this latter reason). The concept that emerged was Spirit Movers, a moving company that would serve the New Haven community, and would train and employ PIVOT participants.

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By Kendra Lee, SOM’08

Located in New Haven, Farnam Neighborhood House is a “home away from home” for many children in the community and provides recreational and educational facilities to children, teenagers, adults and families.

As a client of the Outreach program this year, FNH was interested in developing an alumni association and asked the Outreach team for assistance in getting the program started. The goal of the project was to create a sustainable program that would benefit the alumni and the children at Farnam. Once the Outreach team confirmed that it was feasible to develop an alumni association, they worked on a strategic plan to help Farnam create, market, and implement a variety of activities to start the program. On April 26, the Outreach team successfully presented their final ideas to the Executive Director and two board members of Farnam Neighborhood House.

Each year, the Community Service Club coordinates with FNH to help clean up Camp Farnam and get it ready for summer reopening. This was the (fourth or fifth) year that members of the club and SOM staff members trekked out to Durham, CT. April 27th was a rainy day, but students and staff successfully helped to clean cabins, recreation centers, and other camp spaces, ending the day with hot coffee and a barbeque lunch.

Read more about Farnam Neighborhood House.