Martin Seng, MBA ’20, wrote this post on behalf of his team for the Olin Blog.

Our client founded a nonprofit and is a former owner of an affordable housing property located in southwest Atlanta.

When I first started to work with our client, I was excited and nervous at the same time. I was excited because I finally was selected to work on a CEL practicum project, but also nervous because I had no knowledge of real estate and affordable housing. I wanted to work for my client because I shared his vision of making a positive impact in the community and I was passionate about helping low-income families.

The project is divided into four phases: initial steps, research, visiting our client’s site in Atlanta and working on the final presentation. Team members Max Dougherty, Erik Andrew, Bingze Xu, Kristen Xie and Katherine Teng met each other during the CEL kickoff on September 13. We liked each other instantly because we all had the same passion to help our client replicate his model in other communities.

Sizing up the work

A week later, we had the opportunity to meet our client, who is a WashU alum, and had flown up from Atlanta in the morning. We had a fruitful meeting and we discussed the scope and the objectives for the project so we could start working on the statement of work. We were able to submit the statement of work within two weeks of meeting the client and then proceeded to the second phase of the project: research.

Since we had so many topics and areas to research on, Max delegated tasks to our team members to research on the affordable housing space and also to look at nonprofit and for-profit housing providers.

We also had to research primary and secondary sources to identify the tactics and procedures used by our client to create positive financial and social outcomes in his property. In addition to that, we had to come up with questions to ask leading individuals in the affordable housing space so that we could learn about their best practices as well as pain points.

The third phase of our project was going down to Atlanta to visit the property. Our client was kind enough to plan our trip and invited leading experts in the real estate and affordable housing industry as well as his business partners to spend time with us.  Before going to Atlanta, we had thoroughly researched the background of the experts and business partners so that we had a fruitful and engaging conversation.

We also maximized our brief time to immerse ourselves with the property and interact with the residents and the property managers to get a better feel of the property and also our client’s property management techniques as well as his mission.

Final phase

The fourth and final phase of the project was working on the final presentation. After coming back from Atlanta, we began to work on our final paper, which was a deliverable for our project. We spent a lot of time streamlining our paper while creating slides for our practice final presentation.

During our practice final, Professor David Polodian and faculty adviser Karen Bedell gave us valuable feedback about our projects. We then incorporated David’s and Karen’s suggestions into our presentation and used the next two weeks to streamline our deliverable, check in with our client one more time to make sure whether he was satisfied with our progress, and also practice our presentation.

Parting thoughts

Our team learned so much about real estate and the affordable housing space. We were able to incorporate all of the core values in Olin: integrity, collaboration, diversity, leadership, and excellence. We worked very well together, and we were able to deliver a high-quality final product and a presentation using the vast skillsets that we possessed.

We used a lot of outside resources as well as sought help from Professor Rich Ryffel at Olin and Professor Heather Cameron at the Brown School. We all have diverse backgrounds: Max has an extensive background in crop science; Erik was in the military; Bing studied finance in college; both Kristen and Katherine are customer analytics students who are adept at data analysis.

We also had two natural-born leaders in Erik and Max who were constantly motivating the team and also helping us out whenever we faced any obstacles. We also were able to meet three of the five pillars of excellence: data-driven, values-based and experiential.

We used data from a litany of sources and utilized our previous work and academic experience in our research and the final product.

In addition to that, we were able to deliver tangible value to our client and he was able to come away from the final presentation learning ways he could implement his model and also an evidence-based document that backs up his philosophy and his property management techniques.

This experience was completely different from other classes because we were working with a real-life client and solving real-life problems in less than 14 weeks.

Pictured above: Rich Ryffel, Olin faculty/CEL faculty adviser; Bingze Xu, MSCA ’19; Lael Bialek, MBA ’20; Erik Andrew, MBA ’20; Max Dougherty, EMBA ’20; Brent Sobol, client; Kristen Xie, MSCA ’19; Zing Teng, MSCA ’19; Martin Seng, MBA x’20; and two client representatives.

During unprecedented times, the WashU Olin community is coming together as the community we truly are. Though students, faculty and staff span across the city, the country and even the world, setting up virtual study spaces everywhere from New York to India, we’re working to maintain that sense of community, collaboration and friendship that defines the WashU Olin experience.

As virtual classes started this Monday, March 23, students and faculty took the time to document their classroom “views” for the Olin blog.

Doug Villhard, professor of entrepreneurship, asked students to share what their “study spaces” look like.

Top row, left to right: Kaila Pederson (MBA ’21) confronts the challenge of a small space and embraces innovation to create a desk; Marguerite Whitelaw (MBA ’21).

Bottom row, left to right: Lexi Lessaris (MBA ’21) and her co-worker Lola; Ellen Kenzora (MBA ’21).

Students and faculty also shared moments from their virtual classroom spaces and team meetings on Zoom.

Left column, top to bottom: Tom Fields’ Strategic Cost Analysis class, submitted by Nitish Yadav (MBA ’21); EMBA 54’s first virtual class, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, taught by Nick Argyres; Barton Hamilton’s Compensation, Incentives and Organizing, submitted by Nidhi Kandari (MBA ’21).

Right column: Peter Boumgarden, professor of practice, strategy and organizations, teaches a group of undergraduates.

Teams and student groups won’t let distance stop them from getting great things done.

CEL practicum team works on a project for Midwest Bank Center.

From left to right, top to bottom: Hannah Levin, Lael Bialek, Bruno Moreira Yamamura, Lin Xie, Frankie Hong, Chris Colon (not pictured).

The Graduate Business Student Association’s incoming leadership team holds their first meeting.

Top row: Ellen Kenzora, Kendra Kelly, Shivani Jain

Middle row: Raphael Kodjoe, Nidhi Kandari, Dolapo Ojutiku

Bottom row: Gina Wang

Not pictured:  Gaurav Gupta

And staff and faculty have shared their new personal workspaces.

From left to right
Row 1: Brooke Van Groningen (Assistant Brand Manager, Marketing & Communications), Ashley Macrander (Assistant Dean & Director of Student Affairs),

Row 2: Todd Milbourn (Vice Dean of Faculty & Research); Glenn MacDonald (Professor of Economics & Strategy), Allison Dietz (WCC Employer Relations Lead),

Row 3: Dorothy Kittner (WCC Associate Director & Dean of Business Relations) Paige LaRose (Director of Undergraduate Programs), Amy VanEssendelft (CEL Senior Program Manager),

Row 4: Heather Cameron (Professor of Practice, in Berlin), Molly Cruitt (Social Media Strategist, Marketing & Communications), Jodi Heen (Faculty Support).

Though we are far apart now, WashU Olin remains together as a community. We can’t wait for our students, faculty and staff to be on one campus once again. Until then, a virtual cheers and best wishes for a great semester.

By Jean Dubail, originally published in the 2018 edition of Olin Business magazine.

When David Karandish was a WashU engineering undergraduate, he didn’t think his computer science major would give him everything he needed for the career he planned. He also wanted to learn something about business—especially entrepreneurship.

As a double major in two different colleges, Karandish’s academic choices presented a challenge, even for someone of his considerable determination.

“There wasn’t a lot of overlap,” said Karandish, BSCS ’05, who added a second major in entrepreneurship at Olin. “You had to really carve out your schedule to make that work.”

After graduation, he founded or ran a string of tech-oriented startups, including Answers.com. He recently founded Jane.ai, an artificial intelligence application he likens to Siri or Alexa for the workplace.

Having run several of his own businesses, Karandish is more convinced than ever of the value of melding computer skills with business acumen. Software engineers can benefit, for example, by knowing something about how the product will be marketed.

“I think it would be awesome if engineers came out of school somewhat more business-minded,” he said. There is, he added, “a big opportunity to break down between silos.”

Meeting a need in the marketplace

That’s exactly the purpose of a new initiative from Olin Business School and the School of Engineering & Applied Science: a joint degree program, the first such degree Washington University will offer.

The new bachelor of science in business and computer science will allow Olin students to hone their tech skills through the engineering school while encouraging computer science students to improve their business chops through Olin.

“We’ve worked for a year to put this together, and we’ve validated our thinking off of other alumni and corporate partners,” said Steve Malter, Olin’s senior associate dean of undergraduate programs. “This is what the workforce is looking for. This is the future.”

The program’s architects are confident demand for its future graduates will be strong.

“We know there is a lot of need for these types of positions—someone who can use both disciplines, the engineers as well as the analytics and strategy,” Malter said.

What WashU educators have done, however, is not merely add the core requirements from one school to those of the other. Instead, faculty and administrators from both schools selected certain courses from each discipline to tailor a unique mix for the new degree.

Chris Kroeger, associate dean of the engineering school, gave a tongue-in-cheek description of the process of drafting the joint curriculum. “We totally threw all the requirements up in the air,” he said. “With the faculty from both schools, and insightful feedback from alums, we picked up the ones that made the most sense for the objectives of this program.”

Kroeger described the resulting core curriculum as a “hybrid” of the separate business and computing programs. Malter agreed. “It’s not two programs shoved together. The two faculties will be working together to deliver the material.”

Officials in the provost’s office, whose blessing was needed to advance the program, were impressed by the way faculty and administrators from the two schools collaborated to create something unique.

“It was very thoughtfully and intentionally put together,” said Associate Provost Erin Culbreth, adding that the combination of business and computer skills is “kind of a great match. Anything in the tech industry is super-hot.”

Some program details are still in development, but the new joint program will be first offered in fall 2019 and will, include extracurricular work such as a capstone program, a visit to Silicon Valley, and an internship in the startup technology space.

“This is definitely a real differentiator,” Malter said. “There will be experiences that are unique to this new degree.”

Building interdisciplinary expertise

The new joint degree won’t be the first interdisciplinary program at Olin, where Dean Mark Taylor has encouraged approaching business education from different perspectives—aligning with several pillars of the school’s strategic plan, including innovation and a global focus.

For example, in 2017-18, Olin began offering a minor in the business of social impact.

The new program was the brainchild of a group of students who pitched it to Olin faculty and administrators after conducting a survey of their peers and reviewing similar programs at other institutions. They aimed to bring an ethical dimension into business decision-making and to foster the use of market-based techniques to address social problems, particularly in the nonprofit sector.

Heather Cameron, hired in 2016 by the Brown School of Social Work and installed as the Michael B. Kaufman Professor of Practice for Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, was asked to take the lead in creating the new program.  Cameron, who also holds a courtesy appointment at Olin, designed several new courses, several of which she herself taught during the program’s first year.

“There is an increasing focus on using market-based tools to address social problems,” Cameron said. “Students want to use their business training to work with government and civil society actors to address social and environmental challenges.”

Offerings for the social impact minor include Olin School classes in “Not-for-Profit Accounting” and “Ethical Issues in Decision-Making,” along with classes from other schools in architecture, urban studies, political science, and environmental studies.

Among the classes Cameron has taught as part of the new minor was “Social Entrepreneurship,” where Shivakshi Rana, MBA ‘18, served as a teaching assistant. For many of the students, Rana said, the class marked a departure from their usual studies in one discipline.

“This was the first time in school they were able to branch out from the regular business or arts and sciences curriculum,” Rana said. “There was a definite sense of enthusiasm and excitement.”

New perspectives on business

Among the students was bioengineering major Grace Tedder, BSBME ’20. She said she took Social Entrepreneurship partly to escape the isolation she sometimes feels in the engineering school, but mostly because she had become interested in the subject after reading a book on it in high school.

‘The class broadened my ideas about methods we can use to create social change, and allowed me to explore different challenges and approaches in social enterprises, nonprofits, and other forms of social entrepreneurship,” Tedder said.

Tedder got first-hand experience with that type of work while participating in the Madagascar Sustainability Initiative through Olin’s Center for Experiential Learning. She was part of a team that worked with a local carpenter to build a solar dehydrator to preserve produce—and also taught local women how to pickle.

Drawing from those experiences, she is considering working in the medical devices field after graduation. “Having that kind of crossover could really help,” she said.

Business major Michael Kramer, BSBA ’18, MSCA ‘19, took the Social Impact class partly to learn how business principles could be brought to bear on nonprofit social enterprises like the Special Olympics, where he had long been active.

Cameron’s class “provided the perspective to stop evaluating social enterprises as donation-seekers and (instead) as potentially scalable businesses,” Kramer said.

Olin also offers several other minors, which, while not strictly speaking “interdisciplinary,” provide new perspectives on business for somewhat “nontraditional” business students.

They include a minor in the business of entertainment, led by Glenn MacDonald, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Strategy. The minor is designed to appeal to two groups of students—Olin students thinking about working in the entertainment field, and students from the creative disciplines who want to make their artistic pursuits economically sustainable.

“The courses are full of actors and singers and artists,” MacDonald said. “We’re going to teach you how to run a little business, how to eat, how to protect your intellectual property, how to do things like licensing, how to deal with galleries and managers.”

All these efforts, and particularly the new joint degree, have the same general aim: to make Olin students as well-rounded—and employable—as possible in an age of increasing specialization.

“It will be very obvious, the value it’s going to have,” Kroeger said. “We believe there will be strong interest.”

BUSINESS WITH A TWIST

Several Olin programs meld different disciplines with business principles for a nontraditional b-school education.

• Bachelor of science in business and computer science. Coming fall 2019. WashU’s first true joint degree program, through both Olin and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
• Minor in the business of sports. Begun fall 2014. Launched with a $1 million gift from Joseph S. Lacob, co-executive chairman and CEO of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
• Minor in the business of entertainment. Begun March 2016. Students are required to take three of their 15 units outside of Olin.
• Minor in the business of social impact. Begun fall 2017. Offered jointly through Olin and the Brown School of Social Work.
• Minor in the business of the arts. Tentatively coming spring 2019. Made possible with a $1 million gift by Richard Ritholz, BSBA ’84, an equity partner at New York City-based hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation, and his wife Linda.

By Kurt Greenbaum

This article was originally published in the 2017 Olin Business Magazine.

As a first-year business student, Hannah Perl found inspiration for a startup. As a sophomore in her first entrepreneurship class, she gained the motivation to launch it. As a senior, she had the savvy to sell it for a five-figure payday and parlay her skills into a job with one of the rock stars of St. Louis’ startup community.

Along the way, her entrepreneurial education at Washington University carried her to Budapest to consult for an Eastern European startup and to the streets of St. Louis for another classroom-based consulting gig.

In June, Perl (BSBA ’17) sold Pyramid Promotions, her event management and promotion company targeting young audiences. Today, she’s chief of staff for Jim McKelvey, the St. Louis entrepreneur and financier who’s had a hand in Square and LaunchCode.

In many ways, Perl embodies the entrepreneurial spirit at Washington University—a spirit Olin educators intend to infuse into every student, whether they’re destined for a career at a major corporation or a newly conceived startup.

“That’s the biggest effect Washington University’s had on me,” Perl said. “It completely defined my path for where I am today.”

Students are engaged in consulting projects for startups around the block and around the globe. They’re partnering with WashU’s Brown School of Social Work to learn about and launch social enterprises. They’re earning stipends from the Weston Career Center for internships with startups instead of traditional Fortune 500 jobs.

Dean Mark Taylor wants his message to be clear:

“Every business student today must understand how to think like an entrepreneur.”

Mark Taylor

“Being entrepreneurial, regardless of the size or scope of your organization, is absolutely imperative for the mindset of future business leaders,” said Taylor, who has made entrepreneurship a key tenet of the school’s new strategic plan.

Established companies increasingly demand bold ideas and innovative thinking, said Taylor, whose plans include putting students in close contact with entrepreneurs already in the marketplace.

Nimble, innovative, creative

For years, Olin has promoted entrepreneurial education and supported student startups through competitions, classwork, and experiential opportunities. That work has put Washington University squarely in the midst of a trend that has swept business schools since 1985.

At that time, according to the Kauffman Foundation, business schools offered about 250 classes in entrepreneurship.

By 2012, the number exploded twentyfold, with more than two-thirds of business schools offering courses on the subject. Of the 1,250 business incubators in the United States at the time of the study, about a third were based at universities.

Numbers also show that today’s businesses—large and small, established or emerging—need entrepreneurial leaders. A 2013 Harvard study showed failure rates between 70 and 90 percent for large corporate entrepreneurship efforts—often referred to as “intrapreneurship.” The numbers suggest demand for leaders with the time, talent, and vision to drive change.

“The war for talent has just started,” Deloitte asserted in a 2015 white paper devoted to corporate entrepreneurship. “However, some companies fail to foster a source of great talent: intrapreneurs. Encouraging employees in intrapreneurial thinking will lead to a growing number of high potentials.”

Meanwhile, startups have a growing appetite for MBAs with entrepreneurial skills.

The Graduate Management Admission Council this year reported that 75 percent of startups planned to hire recent MBA graduates, up from 52 percent in 2016.

“We’re looking for tenacity, grit, can-do, quitting-is-not-an-option attitudes.”

Daniel Bentle (MBA ’13), director of Olin’s Center for Experiential Learning, which leads several initiatives in the strategic plan.

They include a finance and accounting clinic in which master’s students provide free services to area startups and an international impact initiative that “takes our consulting services global” as select students work with social enterprises in developing countries.

“It’s about infusing the nimble, innovative, and creative spirit of entrepreneurial management through the cases we teach, in the projects students undertake, and in the community,” said Todd Milbourn, vice dean and Hubert C. and Dorothy R. Moog Professor of Finance.

Seizing on the need for proactive, nimble, and interdisciplinary thinking, several parts of the strategic plan focus on getting students outside the classroom, learning how entrepreneurs confront problems, grow their businesses—and even deal with failure.

Borderless classrooms

For example, students from across the university are invited to apply for two different entrepreneurship career treks. One trek will visit executives at mature startups, the other will go inside established corporations that have launched intrapreneurial teams. The Weston Career Center organized the first entrepreneurship trek in March.

In a whirlwind two-day visit to New York City, students visited six companies—some new, some well established—including Nomad Financial, which develops financial analysis technology, and Woosh Beauty, which develops innovative makeup and beauty products.

Karen Heise, interim director of the career center, said students appreciate rubbing shoulders with executives who demonstrate innovative thinking and problem solving across a range of industries and corporate structures.

“Our students have a very strong entrepreneurial spirit,” Heise said, “but they don’t all want to start their own companies.”

The career center is also the hub of another off-campus initiative: the Entrepreneurship Summer Stipend Award. Launched in the spring, the program awarded up to $5,000 to each of four students who wanted to forego traditional MBA internships for the freedom to explore and develop their entrepreneurial skills.

“There’s so much pressure to get a high-paying summer internship at a top firm,” said Josh Henschen (MBA ’18), a recipient of the new entrepreneurship stipend. “Thanks to this support, I could afford to veer off that corporate path and pursue alternative career possibilities.”

Inspired by classmates in Cliff Holekamp’s introductory entrepreneurship class, Henschen’s mind overflowed with startup ideas—diverting him from his intended career path in consulting. Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, academic director for entrepreneurship, and director of the Entrepreneurship Platform, persuaded Henschen to apply for the stipend.

“In certain fields, there are very clear career paths,” Holekamp said. “MBA finance students have traditionally gone to Wall Street or banking for summer internships that often result in job offers. But for those interested in entrepreneurship, the options aren’t as obvious or lucrative. We really wanted to normalize the summer internship experience for students who want to pursue entrepreneurship.”

So rather than “giving up” a summer internship, Henschen’s resume shows that he won a summer stipend fellowship, which let him spend the summer in Bulgaria evaluating the viability of several startup ideas. His first—a chain of hostels for Eastern European travelers—still needs development, due to unstable real estate prices.

He’s since spoken to Bulgarian diplomats, importers, automotive industry experts, and soybean growers as he evaluates other startup ideas.

“It’s changing as I learn,” Henschen said. “But honestly, that’s the whole point of this summer. I needed to learn by doing.”

The experience has given Henschen the opportunity to test what he’s learned at Olin across a variety of disciplines—corporate finance, operations, marketing, sales, product development, and accounting. That cross- disciplinary experience is key to what Olin educators say entrepreneurship demands.

“This can be a way of thinking rather than just about going off and creating a company,” said Barton H. Hamilton, Robert Brookings Smith Distinguished Professor of Economics, Management, and Entrepreneurship and the academic advisor for the Center for Experiential Learning. “Students can take this way of thinking about combining resources in a different way, empowering them to bring that thinking to their organization.”

Culture of collaboration

Increasingly, students are eager to apply their business savvy and entrepreneurial spirit to some form of public good. Oft-reported statistics show that social impact education was virtually nonexistent even 10 years ago. Now, half the world’s top business schools offer it.

Olin is expanding its commitment to that sector by collaborating with the Brown School of Social Work to create a social entrepreneurship innovation accelerator. Led by Heather Cameron, the Brown School’s Michael B. Kaufman Professor of Practice in Social Entrepreneurship, WashU has retooled its existing social entrepreneurship competition.

In the past year, Cameron’s classes have evaluated a host of social startups and recommended several for seed funding to explore their viability. Two students are interning for two of the startups. The idea, Cameron said, is to “move away from prize culture and into investment culture.” Meanwhile, the fledgling accelerator is actively seeking investors for existing startups that are ready to move to the next level.

The future, embodied

To see how far entrepreneurship education has come at Olin—and where it can continue to go—look no further than the experience of Elise Hastings (PMBA ’19). From a business incubator in downtown St. Louis, she embodies the many ways a WashU business student can intersect with entrepreneurship education at Olin.

She’s executive director for Givable, a microgiving platform designed to reach the next generation of charitable donors. Founded by Cultivation Capital, the Staenberg Family Foundation, and the Regional Business Council, Givable hired Hastings as its sole employee in October 2016. She quickly applied her accounting, management, and marketing skills from the classroom.

In the spring, Hastings worked with the Weston Career Center and hired intern Nathan Vogt (MBA ’18), among the first summer stipend recipients. He worked with Hastings to develop a marketing pipeline for Givable. “I can sit back and think a little more about strategy and the big picture,” Vogt said. “That’s incredibly helpful to Elise.”

As the operator of a startup, Hastings engaged one of Holekamp’s student consulting teams through the CEL’s Entrepreneurial Consulting Team course. For the market analysis project, the student team recommended that Givable target small businesses as customers.

“I’m wearing all the different hats of an entrepreneur.” Hastings said. “It’s been so valuable to take what I learned in class and apply it to my work at Givable.”

FOCUS St. Louis^® is pleased to announce the 34 young professionals selected for the Fall 2017 class of Emerging Leaders, including Angie Bauman, Director of Admissions Operations for Olin’s Executive MBA program.

The Emerging Leaders program offers a select group of St. Louis’ young and talented the opportunity to receive training to strengthen their leadership and management skills. This competitive program provides participants (ages 22-35) with an increased sense of engagement in the region, as well as the tools to take an active role as the next generation of St. Louis regional leaders.