Abhishek Maity '08 was a 2006 fellow of StartingBloc, a non-profit institute of social innovation for social entrepreneurs. Maity (Kolkata, India) was one of 200 students chosen from a pool of more than 3,000 applicants.
As a StartingBloc fellow, Maity attended a series of training and networking events at Wharton School of Business (University of Pennsylvania), Columbia Business School, Yale School of Management and Wagner School (New York University). These conferences included lectures, interactive discussion sessions and case studies on for-profit and not-for-profit entrepreneurship, consulting, corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, microfinance and social innovation. Speakers included ceos, Harvard and Columbia professors, authors, journalists and young entrepreneurs, including former StartingBloc fellow Tom Szaky, founder of Terracycle ®.
Part of the fellowship was the Social Innovation Competition which included a four-month long consultancy project with Starbucks©. The goal of the project was to seek recommendations on how to use corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a leverage tool to break into the college coffee market. Maity worked with four other students from Harvard, Duke, Columbia and Cornell and a team leader, Moses Choi (junior trader, Citibank). The team conducted studies, competitive analysis, market research, and nation-wide polls to produce a conclusive recommendation including implementation costs, scale and time frame.
Maity's team was one of the three teams, out of about 20, to be chosen to move on in the competition and present their recommendation to the fellows and a panel of judges, which included the ceo of Zipcar ® and director of CSR, Starbucks, at the Wagner School. Maity's team placed second overall.
"The Social Innovation Competition was a great experience. I built an entirely new set of skills and learned a lot about corporate consulting and research methodology. It provides you with the tools and most importantly the confidence to believe in social change through business and leadership," said Maity.
StartingBloc provides all graduating fellows with several job and internship opportunities and early-deferred admissions to partner graduate schools including MIT Sloan School of Management, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Duke Fuqua.
"For me the StartingBloc experience does not end here," said Maity, who is spending next year abroad at the London School of Economics. "I plan to be an active member of StartingBloc and perhaps volunteer at the Summer 2007 Program in London [next year]."
-- by Laura Trubiano '07
