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WILLAMETTE MBA STUDENTS OFTEN HEAD TO FULFILLING CAREERS IN THE NOT-FORPROFIT SECTOR. To help them gain valuable experience and make an impact in real organizations, the program organized a scholarship to fund internships at Oregon nonprofits. Here, six MBA students share what they learned.
Liebson
KEVIN LIEBSON ’15, MBA’17 Hometown: Manhattan Beach, California Organization and mission: Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC), Salem; a college and career prep organization for high school students What he learned: “The solution that works in theory doesn’t always work in reality. While working at CTEC, I amended my proposals to measure student performance several times before submission to make sure my solutions were feasible and easily understood. Although there were others I wanted to incorporate that I felt would better resolve the issue, they weren’t feasible or were too complex to be implemented.”
INA SONG MBA’17 Hometown: Beijing, China Organization and mission: Astra Women’s Business Alliance, Lake Oswego; an organization supporting women-owned businesses
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Song
Sevostyanova
What she learned: “During my internship at Astra, I got to work with a group of 20 teenage girls who participated at the third Astra Science Technology Engineering Arts Math Summit, an event I helped organize. Watching these girls pitch their new venture business and app ideas to a panel of judges and in front of their peers, mentors and parents after the summit was truly a rewarding experience.”
ANNA SEVOSTYANOVA MBA’17 Hometown: Tashkent, Uzbekistan Organization and mission: Boys and Girls Club of Salem, Marion and Polk Counties; providing character, leadership and education development to disadvantaged youth What she learned: “Nonprofit organizations attract some of the most amazing, kindhearted and accepting people. My internship also allowed me to deeply study U.S. labor laws, which was an exciting journey because the laws are very different from those of my home country of Uzbekistan.”
Bright
Bassett-Smith
HEATHER BRIGHT MBA’17 Hometown: Portland, Oregon Organization and mission: Mercy Corps Northwest, Portland; an organization that serves low-income residents of Oregon and Washington What she learned: “Sometimes, you’ve got to get creative to solve the big problems. Part of Mercy Corps’ Community Investment Trust team’s mission is to create a new model for asset-building that caters to individuals of all backgrounds. The CIT team has accomplished this by taking a real estate model that has been around since the ’60s, flipping it on its head a bit, and turning it into a model that mobilizes program participants to become investors.”
TREVOR BASSETT-SMITH ’10, MBA ’17 Hometown: Keizer, Oregon Organization and mission: Salem-Keizer Education Foundation; an organization that enhances education and provides resources and programming for Salem and Keizer youth
Galen
What he learned: “How to implement process change, how to collect and manage data, and how to evaluate program effectiveness. Because I was largely in charge of a project, I had to learn how to communicate about data effectively to other staff members who work in various roles that were not directly involved in data analysis.”
ANDREW GALEN MBA’17 Hometown: Los Altos, California Organization and mission: Family Building Blocks, Salem; an organization striving to break the cycle of child abuse and neglect by providing resources for high-risk families What he learned: “The scope of this internship covered an array of projects in data management, marketing and event planning. One of my biggest takeaways from this experience is the importance of being nimble and able to add value to the organization in a number of different ways. Needs can change quickly in any organization, but especially at nonprofits.”
Illustration by Stuart Patience