Educational background: National Taiwan University, Economics
Past position: ESPN Star Sports Network, Marketing and Business Development
Before I came to MIT Sloan I never seriously thought about social enterprise and social entrepreneurship. But during my first semester I began to think about business models in a completely different way. There are so many innovative business models within the social enterprise movement and I realize now that you can still make a profit as a company while doing good things.
That is the main reason I chose to participate in the G-Lab project. For three weeks in January our group went to work as consultants for a network of silk handicraft producers in Cambodia. Our goal was to help the company export their silk products to the United States, so we did a lot of research on the external markets, looked at their internal operations, and visited all their producers. At the end of the internship we presented the client company with some recommendations of internal operations. They really liked our ideas and they are considering adopting some of them into their operation systems.
I am very happy that I was able to have some impact on this company, and the experience was strikingly meaningful for me. Many MBA students go to work as consultants or investment bankers and those are good choices; you are making a difference. But if you work with a social enterprise you make a contribution in a very different way. You can make a more significant impact on more people.
I come from Taiwan and my long-term goal is to go back to Asia. I look forward to starting a social enterprise to help people in China or Taiwan. I think the idea of social enterprise is not as popular in Asia as it is in the United States, so I definitely want to work to change that.
There are so many opportunities here at MIT Sloan, and the environment here is so exciting. Everyone is talking about information and new technology and entrepreneurship and I have quickly become very integrated into this atmosphere. This semester I am involved in many projects in which I work with different companies and I’ve gained a lot of hands on experience. For example, I joined the market lab and my client company is Reebok. So, during this two-month project, I need to come up with a local, grass roots marketing campaign for them to target Boston customers.
I never used to be a very tech savvy person. I worked in traditional media companies but because of my classes and the projects I am involved in I have had a chance to get to know more and more new media. I have built up my knowledge of high tech and new media industries (on top of my marketing skills) and that has influenced the career I am pursuing now.
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