MBA Students + Women Entrepreneurs = Inspiration and Success

Something I'm learning about myself, is that I love being a connector. An organizer of "good".

I love getting people involved in causes that I'm passionate about. Giving people a chance to volunteer their time, wisdom and experience in short spurts of time. I love seeing the change in people as they realize even the smallest efforts end up in big results. I want people to be appreciated for their strengths, and to be praised and appreciated for volunteering to share those strengths.

Rewind to Project Artemis Afghanistan. One of Thunderbird's professors has been donating laptops to all of our Artemis programs. so gracious.

We had 4 extra laptops at the conclusion of the 2013 Artemis, and I wanted to come up with a creative way to give the laptops to our 10,000 Women graduates in a meaningful way. I sent out a call-to-action to a few of our Thunderbird students who I knew were do-ers, go-getters, and highly motivated. I asked them to help me create a competition which would engage all eighty 10,000 Women graduates as well as any Thunderbird student who wanted to be involved.

We had almost 40 Thunderbird MBA students volunteer their time as business consultants within 2 days. It was an unheard of response!!! We were absolutely so excited and proud of our students - especially since they start their final exams on Saturday!

The 10,000 Women were presented with a survey as an application for the competition. Tell us why you need a laptop. Tell us what successes, improvements, changes, challenges, and biggest problems have been since you've been at Thunderbird. We had 30 out of the 80 grads apply.

10 women entrepreneurs were selected and paired with student groups who would act as business consultants over one month.

The month of consulting was over last night.

All 10 student groups presented their results, impact, and recommendations to a distinguished panel of local thought leaders, faculty and staff.

Today, I received several emails from women who have participated in the competition that melted my heart.

From Bolivia:
OMG!! This is unbelievable Thank you so much!!!!

Dear amy thank you for doing this! Can’t believe this is actually happening to me.
My team was excellent and I got the chance to meet 4 amazing boys that helped me with my business and had the time and patience of listening to my history.
AS always I send you all my gratitude and love!!
Love u and miss u!!

From Malaysia:


Hi Sisters & my Thunderbird Consulting Team members, 

First of all, Congratulations to the 4 winners (Min Yem, Valessa, Ika and Carmen) to win the laptop.  So happy for all of you !  :)   

I'm sincere thanks to my Thunderbird's MBA students  (Consulting Team) -  Peter Mayangi, Monica Millier, Sharon Qiao and Kentaro Takagishi.   All of you are awesome and so amazing.  I enjoyed to work with you all for this consulting project and I really learnt a lot of new knowledge from you all and thanks for all the recommendations.  These are very useful to me and I believed it can help me to improve my business. 

Lastly, thanks to Thunderbird School and Amy Scerra for giving me this great opportunity to analysis my current business and have such a wonderful consulting experience with Thunderbird's students.  

Have a nice day ! Love you all !!! 

I can't think of a more worthy cause! I am so inspired to get out there and continue working hard to identify new ways to support these women. Whether through US Embassies in their country, NGOs, Thunderbird Alumni, etc.

If you have any interest or ideas of ways you'd like to get involved, connections you're able to make whether domestically or on a global scale.... I encourage you to drop me a line! :)

Happy Friday everyone.