Tag: CEL Practicum

Students in the International Impact Initiative provide real-world, team-based consulting for business leaders in a global setting.

This is part two of a look at a student consulting trip to Ethiopia, where MBA students Molly Goldstein, Brenna Humphries, Paul Dinkins, Jerrod Anderson, and Raisaa Tashnova worked with US-based nonprofit Dignity Period. You can read Part One here.

Raisaa Tashnova writes about the team’s experience.

Our first destination in Mekelle, Ethiopia, was the factory where the reusable sanitary pads are produced. A traditional welcome of carefully laid palm leaves guided us from the gate of the factory complex to the main building. There, we found more than 50 women working in a neatly organized production floor.

It was impressive. Since its inception nine years ago, Mariam Seba Sanitary Products Factory has grown into a well-organized, mid-sized production facility. Many of the employees have worked there since the beginning.

As her first employees in the factory started their families, founder Freweini Mebrahtu started a day care center in the factory complex to accommodate new mothers and allow them to continue working. An unexpected delight was our visit to the day care center, where seven tiny inhabitants looked at us intruders in awe as we “oo-ed” and “ah-ed” over them.

On another day, to understand the full value chain of the Dignity Period project, we visited two of the project schools in the nearby city of Wukro. Each of these public schools had a “Gender Office” where students could lie down in a rest corner—a cool, inviting, curtained-off segment of the room reserved for the girls. The facilities were amazing for us to see. But what took the prize for the day were the students themselves. Thanks to Dignity Period’s education and intervention, the students were confident and strong as they told us about the positive impact the sanitary pads made in their lives.

Over the next few days, we set off to find more opportunities for Mariam Seba Sanitary Products Factory and Dignity Period to expand their reach and impact in Mekelle and all northern Ethiopia. To design a commercial distribution network, we needed to understand the competitive landscape, so we set out to research available brands of menstrual pads and their prices in the local markets.

We uncovered the dominance of Chinese manufactured imports in the markets and the high prices for low quality, disposable products. There definitely was opportunity to introduce a higher quality, locally manufactured product in the market.

In our week of exploration in Ethiopia, we gained more from this project than ever imaginable—for us as students, but more importantly, for our clients. We did not only learn about doing business in Africa, but also about education and the extensive healthcare network of the country.

We met with people from diverse industries—from nonprofits to business to psychology and healthcare—and came back with a holistic understanding of how Ethiopia works.

We learned to look beyond the obvious for inspiration and to be inquisitive as we shifted our expansion plan from a traditional retail market route to the healthcare channel route. In the process, we helped empower our clients to think differently and gave them what they wanted most from this engagement: hope.

Students interested in learning more about the Center for Experiential Learning’s Practicum experience can find information on the CEL’s Website.

Students in the CEL Practicum: International Impact Initiative provide real-world, team-based consulting for business leaders in a global setting. Second-year MBA student Raisaa Tashnova describes the experience of working with Professors Al Kent and Hillary Anger Elfenbein and fellow second-year MBA students Molly Goldstein, Brenna Humphries, Paul Dinkins, and Jerrod Anderson to consult for US-based nonprofit Dignity Period. 

Puberty for girls in Ethiopia comes with a double whammy. First, menstruation is a taboo subject, causing embarrassment, shame, fear, and surprise as girls have their first period. Second, this cultural taboo creates a shortage of menstrual hygiene supplies, causing makeshift remedies, accidents that cause embarrassment, missed school, and more.

Interviewing the director of a rural health center

Dignity Period, a US-based nonprofit that’s addressing the issue through education and access to sanitary pads, has seen tremendous results. But through Olin’s Center for Experiential Learning, I had the chance—with a group of fellow students—to help Dignity Period’s mission become more sustainable.

Few of us have traveled to Africa. Even fewer have seen how business is conducted on the continent. Learning about the African economy is what motivated me to apply to serve on the Dignity Period student consulting team. Because of the client’s visionary social impact, the opportunity was even more exciting. After our recent trip to Ethiopia, I was inspired by business opportunities in Ethiopia and humbled by this opportunity to represent Olin and the CEL in Africa.

Dignity Period came into existence through Freweini Mebrahtu. Freweini grew up without access to menstrual hygiene products, a fate common to women in Ethiopia. Upon graduating from high school, she was awarded a scholarship to attend college in the United States. When Freweini returned to Ethiopia in 2009, after a successful career as an engineer, she decided to address the lack of access to menstrual hygiene products.

Inspired by Freweini’s vision and leadership, Dr. Lewis Wall and his wife, Helen Wall, founded Dignity Period, a US-based nonprofit. Its mission: Keep Ethiopian girls in school by providing free access to sanitary pads and the health education needed to break the powerful social taboo around menstruation.

Since 2014, Dignity Period has reached more than 73,000 boys and girls with menstrual hygiene education and sanitary products. In selected schools, girls in grades 5 and above receive a free kit of four reusable pads and two pairs of underwear, all sewn in Freweini’s factory. Both boys and girls receive education around menstruation so that all may help break down taboos. Research conducted by Wall and his colleagues identified a 23 percent reduction in school absenteeism for girls after the Dignity Period intervention. With such a powerful effect on the community, Dignity Period is now looking to expand its reach and create sustainable change in society with the help of the CEL student consulting team.

Our five-member student CEL team and two faculty advisers were tasked with assessing the question, “How does Dignity Period grow?”

Motivated by the organization’s mission, we wanted to bring our business knowledge to help Dignity Period reach more women and girls in Ethiopia and become a sustainable business for the long term.

Before our client visit in Mekelle, Ethiopia, we distilled our project focus into two areas: operations and market expansion. The operations agenda included analyzing Freweini’s factory’s value chain, identifying her pain points, and recommending solutions to streamline the production of the pads given her high-quality, patented design.

The market expansion agenda involved identifying new channels to distribute the reusable menstrual pads, creating a market for them.

But the biggest solution we could provide for our client was hope: Hope that what they created from nothing could and would continue. Hope that the mission they embarked upon could be accomplished.

Stay tuned to hear more about our student consulting trip to Ethiopia in Part II!

Students involved in the Center for Experiential Learning Practicum have a unique opportunity to consult for large Fortune 500 companies. One such notable partner is Red Bull, which the CEL collaborated with last spring.

The Red Bull consulting team was tasked with leveraging analytics to align consumer and retailer views of business performance. By building a comprehensive understanding of how different demographic and geographic segments intersect and engage across the full spectrum of the business, Red Bull can acquire new customers and identify better metrics for measuring success. Students worked directly with Josh Muncke, Director of Data Science at Red Bull. His previous experience in data analytics at Deloitte and IBM made him a great resource and mentor to the team.

During after the team’s work, the CEL talked directly with Josh about his experience, in order to continue improving as an organization and as student consultants. To begin, we wanted to better understand the unique value and perspective CEL students could provide.

Josh said students showed a “fresh way of thinking about our consumer/user groups and found opportunities within them.” Beyond simply recognizing opportunities, the consultants identified metrics for measuring the success of pursuing those opportunities. This team of consultants delivered solutions rather than simply identifying problems.

CEL Red Bull Team working on site in California.

Josh’s feedback also helped us identify areas for growth as consultants: knowledge of more robust analytical tools and increased communication.

An understanding of data analytics tools is becoming increasingly more important in the workplace. While Excel is a great foundation, student consultants should be prepared to utilize more robust, professional-grade analysis tools when working with clients.

Josh also sympathized with the challenges that come from distance. The student team traveled to Santa Monica, California to meet in person with Josh, but increasing the number of video conference check-ins and on-site visits can better ensure alignment between the team and the client. Distance can be difficult, but using technology to our advantage can help decrease this gap.

However, the most important metric for success is: Would the client hire our student consultants again? Josh “definitely” would.

Like any team, our consultants faced challenges, but Josh believes the team’s output will help Red Bull drive more coordinated sales and marketing tactics at a regional level. We are excited to see how we can further our partnership with Red Bull and their incredible brand marketing tactics.

Guest Blogger: Allison Halpern, BSBA ’18, CEL Marketing Student Associate

Photo, above: This student team in the Venture Advising Consulting Course taught by Clifford Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship, spent 10 days in Budapest, Hungary immersed in the startup community and consulting for GPS Tuner, a leader in the field of software development for GPS navigation.

Olin creates powerful connections between businesses and our students—because we know the real-world measure of a program is how your academic experience translates into the workplace.

Of course, an internship is a time-honored way to gain experience and to demonstrate aptitude and skills.

But you’ll also find applied-learning opportunities in our classrooms, student clubs, and extracurricular activities—allowing you to explore new career options and gain substantive on-the-job experience, valuable mentors, and networking contacts.

1. The Center for Experiential Learning

Innovative learning. Real-world projects. Outcomes with impact. That’s the Center for Experiential Learning (CEL). The CEL matches highly motivated students at Olin Business School with organizations seeking strategic consulting services.

The CEL has five unique programs dedicated to innovative learning and delivering impact:

» Practicum pairs teams of talented Olin students with companies seeking smart solutions to management challenges.

» The Taylor Community Consulting teams of two to four graduate-level students provide pro bono consulting services to St. Louis nonprofits.

» The Olin/United Way Board Fellows program takes second-year MBA students from the classroom to the nonprofit boardroom to provide a unique lesson in leadership.

» CELect students consult for entrepreneurs at a tech incubator to better understand the challenges of a startup and advise on best-practice business strategies.

» Global Management Studies are student-directed courses that focus on industries, management styles, or emerging markets in a country or region outside the United States.

2. Investment Praxis

Guided by seasoned professionals, students manage $1.5 million of Olin Business School’s endowment.

3. Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation     and Entrepreneurship

Extracurricular entrepreneurship activities, such as business plan competitions, promote corporate innovation and the commercialization of new business ideas. The YouthBridge Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition has awarded over $600,000 in grants and in-kind services and also includes a $5,000 student cash prize.

4. Volunteering

Nonprofit organizations provide a wide variety of experiences to their volunteers. The Community Service Office serves as the major initiative of the Gephardt Institute for Public Service at Washington University, supporting cocurricular service among undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

One of the many incredible opportunities that Olin Business School offers its students is the chance to undertake real-life consulting projects with businesses around the globe. This spring, I was lucky enough to be placed on a project working with the Wine Tasting Network, a Napa-based website that sells wine to consumers across the United States.

My team was composed of two full-time MBA students, myself and Claire Hunt ’16, and two students from Olin’s new Specialized Masters Program in Customer Analytics, Wanting Wu ’16 and Peiyu Zhu ’16. We also had the support of Dr. Rob Poirier, a WashU Med School professor, Olin EMBA ’14, and Clinical Chief of Emergency Medicine, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, as our team’s adviser.

Claire Hunt (MBA ’16) examines a rack of bottles at the Wine Tasting Network offices.

Although not all projects are given the opportunity to visit their clients in person, the staff at the Center for Experiential Learning (or the “CEL”, as we like to call it), are experts at recognizing when a visit to the client can add real value to a project, and so my teammates and I set off to Napa Valley, California over Spring Break to get an insider’s look at the wine industry.

Our first stop was the Wine Tasting Network (WTN) offices, where company President Steve Schepman and the friendly team at this small but vibrant office welcomed us with open arms. After a tour of the grounds, we hit the conference room to talk business, reviewing our project plan with the WTN team and diving into more details on inventory movements and marketing strategies.

After a taco break, we headed to the Wine Foundry, a “custom-crush” facility where grapes are processed and made into wine, both under the Wine Foundry’s own label and for clients like Wine Tasting Network. The full-service facility gave us an idea of what the wine-making process looked like at each stage, from vat to barrel to bottle to glass.

Barrels of wine in storage at the Wine Foundry.

Our hosts at the Wine Tasting Network were also able to arrange a tour at the facilities of their shipping and fulfillment partner, WineDirect. Many wineries and websites work with WineDirect to navigate the complex shipping restrictions that govern the sale of wine directly to consumers, which can be difficult to adhere to since they vary state-to-state. The visit was essential to helping us understand the level of detail and planning that is required to successfully operate a facility of this size for a delicate product like wine.

A visit to Napa wouldn’t be complete without a stop at one of the most famous estates in all of Napa. Our hosts brought us to the iconic Joseph Phelps winery. Learning how to taste wine from one of the expert sommeliers at this exceptionally beautiful estate was a unique privilege that none of us would have had the chance to experience under any other circumstances. It also helped us put ourselves in the shoes of the avid wine consumer, so as to better understand what they consider important when they shop for wine.

Besides a new found taste for Pinot Noir, our visit to Napa brought me a much deeper understanding of the California wine industry, and a strong appreciation for the benefits of conducting meetings in person. Getting to know the WTN team on both a personal and professional level during our trip was an invaluable opportunity that will undoubtedly help us to bring even greater value to the Wine Tasting Network as our project nears completion.

Our friends at WineDirect show us how they pick and pack shipments.

The student team arrives at the Joseph Phelps winery in the heart of Napa Valley.

During Travel Week and Spring Break, a total of 82 students participated in experiential learning globally in 6 different countries spread across 4 different continents.

Students were able to travel to Colombia, Japan, and Cuba through the Global Management Studies course. During the Global Management Studies, student-led teams are able to conduct field research while engaging business leaders. Students who are enrolled in the CEL Practicum this spring semester were able to travel to places such as Africa and Vietnam to interact with their client. The CEL Practicum gives students from all disciplines the opportunity to apply and enhance their critical thinking skills while working on real-world, team-based consulting projects with business leaders.