Extending Learning Beyond the Classroom

Those of us working with businesses aiming to have a social impact have long promoted the idea that purpose and profit are not mutually exclusive. More recently, a companion idea has emerged. Like so many things at Berkeley-Haas, it was driven by students. This is the idea that you don’t have to wait until you graduate to apply your learning in meaningful ways. At the Center for Social Sector Leadership, we work hard to keep up with the student drive to have an impact, even before receiving their MBA degrees.

Enter Social Impact Metrics, a new MBA course that is offered in partnership with Amgen. The course is designed to advance nonprofit organizations’ ability to measure their programs’ effectiveness. The four participating organizations won a competition out of 16 applicants. Throughout the semester, teams of students will work with each organization to figure out a meaningful way to define and quantify hard-to-measure impact.

HSIF: How I Spent My Summer Internship – Amy Chou

This is the first post in our Haas Social Impact Fund (HSIF) series.

Nisha Wadhwani (Intern at Character Lab, Chicago Booth MBA 2015), Dr. Angela Duckworth (founder of Character Lab), and Amy Chou

Every year, the Haas Social Impact Fund selects students interested in using their internships to work in the social sector. The program is funded mostly by current Haas MBA students who divert a small part of their summer salaries to support their classmates. “I’m extremely grateful for the generosity of my classmates. It was very touching to see how many of them contributed to HSIF to support me in pursuing my passions,” said one of this year’s Fellows, Amy Chou (MBA16).

This summer, Amy “nerded out” at Character Lab, a nonprofit startup whose mission is to bridge the science of character development with the daily work of teaching so students can reach their potential. Amy’s project had her serving in a consultant-type capacity with work ranging from analyzing the existing product pipeline to identifying external dissemination platforms, from synthesizing their project landscape to volunteering at a conference for researchers and teachers and a professional development workshop for teachers hosted by Character Lab.