As Matt Segneri approached the twilight of his MBA career at Harvard Business School in 2010, he was asked a question through the HBS Portrait Project.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
His response was prophetic. “I find the greatest happiness in serving others,” wrote Segneri in his brief essay. Six short years later and Segneri is back at HBS–doing just that. After stints in the offices of Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York and Mayor Thomas Menino in Boston, Segneri is directing Harvard Business School’s Social Enterprise Initiative (SEI). If anyone knows the smorgasbord of resources offered by the initiative, it’s Segneri. He stepped onto the Cambridge campus as a consultant and left as a full-fledged do-gooder entering the public sector. Now he’s helping others do the same.
“Personally, having spent four years before coming back to HBS working with two mayors of major American cities, I think CEOs and mayors’ roles are converging a bit,” says Segneri, who took over as the director of the SEI in 2014. “Because they’re just called upon to tackle so many different challenges in the communities in which they work—both delivering economic value but also social value and improving lives, whether it’s customers, citizens or stakeholders.”
Matt Segneri, director of the Social Enterprise Initiative at Harvard Business School. Courtesy photo
BUILDING AN ARMY OF ‘TRI-SECTOR’ MBAs
Segneri often speaks of creating “tri-sector” MBAs who are able to “deftly navigate” across public, private and non-profit sectors. And to be sure, HBS has the robust resources to make that happen. The SEI, which was founded in 1993 from the backing of finance guru and HBS alum, John Whitehead, truly has a deep impact on the HBS community. Each year about 320 MBAs take at least one of the five SEI-specific electives and around 650 executives participate in some form of social enterprise executive education program. Nearly 100 faculty members have published around 300 cases, articles and books focused on social enterprise since 1993. After the school created a social enterprise track in the New Venture Competition in 2001, more than 400 teams have participated. And the number has leapt from 53 teams in 2015 to 62 this year. With 275 members, the Social Enterprise Club is one of the largest on campus.
There are also a plethora of deep-dive options and resources for students. For instance, up to 10 MBAs coming from the non-profit sector can apply to and receive $10,000 in tuition grants as part of the Goldsmith Fellowship. Once in the MBA program, students can apply to receive Social Enterprise Summer Fellowships to help fund an impact-oriented internship. After graduating, students may apply for the Leadership Fellows program, which awards a total of $95,000 to place MBAs immediately into high-impact management positions at nonprofits or public sector organizations. Since the program’s inception in 2001, about 157 fellows have been placed in 64 different organizations, including Segneri in Mayor Menino’s office.
MORE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS, MORE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS WELCOME
While HBS claims to be the pioneer in the space and surely offers as many or more resources than any other elite B-school, Segneri says social enterprise education is a phenomenon he only sees growing. “It’s no longer a rarity for a leading business school in the U.S. and globally to have a center or initiative that focuses on this kind of work,” Segneri believes. “What that says to me is that there is a recognition that business can be an incredible force for good in taking on these challenges.”
The reason for this drive, Segneri believes, is the booming opportunity to solve social and environmental problems–through an early stage venture or within an established organization.
“As you see more and more folks going into this work, ultimately what it’s saying is you can do this work in a big company or small company because you can start your own company or make an existing one better,” Segneri explains. “There is no limitation in a global world of doing this work, whether it’s doing work in a place like Boston or going to struggling communities in Kenya and Uganda.
“Increasingly, a more democratized and globalized world means the challenges that people are facing are more abundantly clear everywhere. So when there’s no shortage of challenges to take on, and an increase in the number of young people who are willing to take on these efforts, I think it’s only going to grow.”
In an in-depth interview with WeSeeGenius, Segneri delves deep into all potential SEI touch-points for a Harvard MBA, gives his advice on what every social entrepreneur should consider, and speaks to the evolution of the sector broadly.
Open All Close All The Social Enterprise Initiative started in 1993 and I think at that point in time it was a new and emerging idea that business and business principles had a strong and compelling role to play in solving complex social problems. So, when John Whitehead—one of our alums who has worked across sectors as the managing director of Goldman Sachs, as deputy secretary of state, as the leader of a number of non-profit organizations—saw a real need to bring some of that business thinking to the nonprofit sector, I think he was excited along with Dean McArthur and others at the school to help spearhead this work. As I came into this role about a year and a half ago, I had a sense of the history when I was here (as an MBA) but now looking back on it, it’s striking to see how pioneering it really was—to be the first business school to launch this type of work. If you fast-forward to today, what’s exciting is that it’s no longer a rarity for a leading business school in the U.S. and globally to have a center or initiative that focuses on this kind of work. I’ve talked to colleagues at Loyola University in Chicago and a number of other places where it’s now part of the fabric of business thinking that business leaders can be tri-sector athletes–that they can solve problems across the private, public and non-profit sectors. What that says to me is that there is a recognition business can be an incredible force for good in taking on these challenges. And working across sectors to solve these problems is essential in the 21st century. The interesting thing about the evolution of social enterprise at HBS—and I think the field at large—is that when we started in 1993, the focus was more on bringing business thinking to the not-for-profit sector. So the school was thinking about more traditional non-profit organizations—both large existing ones and new ones. Today, the mission is to educate, support and inspire leaders across all sectors to tackle society’s toughest challenges and to make a difference in the world. And I think that “all sectors” piece is really relevant because when I look at our students and alumni, both the work they are doing and the cases we are writing, it really is a combination of folks going into existing early ventures or launching their own new ventures or smaller organizations and folks going into big companies and working on CSR and corporate citizenship. It’s also folks going to public sector agencies or leading parts of government or states or cities to drive this work. In more than anything else, I think what it adds up to is either some combination of entrepreneurship, which can be starting your own thing anew or part of something else. There also is a healthy bit of entrepreneurship when I see folks going into existing organizations. For example, when they help shape or reshape the focus on environmental social governance goals or simply helping them think about the role they play in their local communities and the global community. There’s a lot happening on multiple levels. There is certainly at HBS as well as other places, a strong interest in new ventures. But there’s also a clear recognition that you can disrupt organizations or industries by creating new ventures, but in many cases, the larger organizations themselves need to be disrupted. There are a couple areas where there’s a strong combination of student interest, executive interest in our executive education programming, faculty interest and just general excitement in the space. First, I point to K-12 education as one long-standing interest both here at the business school and across the university. We have the Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovations in Education elective course that a number of students enroll in. We also run an executive education program in partnership with the education school called Public Education Leadership Project, where we bring in school superintendents and their teams for leadership development and innovation over the course of a week during the summer. And more than that, of course, is the Social Innovation Lab and other independent projects folks are doing that are taking on education technology issues, thinking about starting new schools or blended education methods—there’s a lot happening there. I’d also point to impact investing as a space where we’ve done a lot on multiple levels. We’re launching a course next year on creating shared value in impact investing and have a lot of impact investing content in our Business at the Base of the Pyramid course. A number of faculty members who are working in this space have held faculty research convening around social impact investing and business for social impact. And more than that, there’s a lot of student activity and interest in launching their own funds, getting engaged through the MIINT competition and looking for internships and full-time opportunities in this space. One thing that’s interesting on the teaching of entrepreneurship is there is a fantastic entrepreneurial unit now. Our faculty are organized in units around marketing, organizational behavior, finance, and there’s one on entrepreneurial management. Professors like Howard Stevensen, Bill Sahlman and Tom Eisenmann have had deep experience in the academy, in practice and through working with hundreds of students working through entrepreneurial finance. So I think in many cases, the teaching of entrepreneurship is the function of both the case method, classroom learning, the Socratic method, but also, increasingly, the introduction of field-based learning at HBS. In FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development), students are launching and creating their own micro-ventures. So, I think the teaching of entrepreneurship blends the best of both worlds at HBS, which is the case-based learning and the field-based learning. Because it’s learning and doing at the same time, which is critical to actually getting these ventures off the ground. On the curriculum side, it’s a combination of thinking about how to create focused courses on social enterprise topics. So, just to lay out a few of our elective offerings, we have Leading Social Enterprise, which is a general course and in a previous life was called Leading and Governing High Performing Nonprofits. Today it focuses on social enterprise—that for-profit hybrid or nonprofit business models. In addition, we have the Entrepreneurship and Technology in Innovations and Education course. We have Business at the Base of the Pyramid that’s a multiple-section course. Public Entrepreneurship, which is thinking about how public leaders and private entrepreneurs work effectively to design better outcomes for citizens and cities. We also have the Social Innovation Lab course, which is a field-based course and includes that class-based learning as well as field-based learning. Also, the Creating Shared Value in Impact Investing course I mentioned. That’s a little bit of flavor for some of the EC (Elective Curriculum) courses. In the required first-year curriculum, we took a look at the composition of cases across the intro courses—entrepreneurial manager, technology operations management and about 12% of the RC (Required Curriculum) cases have social enterprise elements in them. So it’s equal parts finding ways to create focus on these issues in elective courses, but also infusing in the broader curriculum these elements. Because I think the MBA of the 21st century—let alone the business leader or CEO of the 21st century—has to think in many more ways about the stakeholders with whom their working. Personally, having spent four years before coming back to HBS working with Mayor Menino in Boston and Mayor Bloomberg in New York, I think CEOs and mayors roles, in my own mind, are converging a bit because they’re just called upon to tackle so many different challenges in the communities in which they work—both delivering economic value but also social value and improving lives, whether it’s customers, citizens or stakeholders. On the community side, I can say with great confidence and excitement that social enterprise is a central part and core priority of the school. The initiative has about five stakeholder groups—MBAs, executive education, faculty, alumni and leaders in the field. Within the MBA program, the social enterprise club is one of the five largest student clubs on campus, which is a real evolution from the days of pre-SEI, when it was a smaller group of folks. Today it is incredibly cross-cutting in terms of folks who have had deep experience in this work or those who are coming to HBS to transfer into it or folks who are dabbling, who know they want it to be some part of their personal and professional interest but it may not be a primary career focus. And within the social enterprise club, there are interest groups around education, impact investing, philanthropy and international development. So it’s a big tent, which I think is one of the other things that’s important to describe the way we think about social enterprise at HBS—that it is a big tent in terms of sector, but also acknowledging that for some folks this will be their primary or secondary career. For others, they’ll be meaningfully engaged in board service and board leadership. For others, they will be active in service and volunteerism and others will be thinking about their personal philanthropy and ways they give back in their own communities. The Social Enterprise Conference (SECON) is a partnership with the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School students that is a phenomenal conference and happens every year. I’m not sure of the year, but Forbes did a profile on 12 great conferences around the world and SECON, I think, was the only student-run conference on the list. Faculty and SEI both provide support but the students—as is the case in many things—are doing an incredible job leading the charge. In addition, there are focused clubs around an array of topics. It’s everything from an Energy and Environment Club to a Health Care Club. And there are clubs with focus areas on social enterprise. For example, there’s the Board Fellows and Social Enterprise Consulting Club, the HBS Volunteer Corps, the Harbus Foundation, which actually disperses grants to local community organizations. So there’s a pretty wide swath that is representative of the diversity of interests among students here. And in addition to the club space, it’s constant speakers and conferences similar to the SECON. There’s a Women’s Student Association Conference and other conferences that have social enterprise tracks and panels, because in some ways social entrepreneurship is an intel inside of HBS. It really is a core part of coming here for two years. But also when we look at lifetime of the alumni, over 70% over the course of their alumni careers are involved in social enterprise in some way. For somebody who’s interested in social enterprise, we have the Goldsmith Fellowship for incoming students that provides a fellowship of financial support for those who’ve worked in the nonprofit sector previously and have interest in persisting in that work. Our Social Enterprise Summer Fellows Program supports 65 to 75 students every year who could be launching their own venture, working in the public sector or working in big companies and helps them pursue that summer opportunity with passion and purpose. I think one of the things that is really differentiating is the HBS Leadership Fellows Program. That’s a fellowship for anywhere from 15 to 20 graduating MBAs each year to work in leadership roles with senior executives in the public and social sectors. I had the good fortune to work in the mayor’s office in Boston for a year. That pathway between HBS and the mayor’s office has been incredible. Over the past 14 years, we’ve had 15 fellows including the current mayor’s Chief of Staff, the previous mayor’s Chief of Staff, the CFO, the Co-Head of Innovation, the Chief of Staff of the schools department. So in some cases it’s saying there are these individual programs, but also in the collective, they add up to tremendous impact in the organizations we’re apart of. More than that, our Loan Assistance Program, which provides loan assistance for graduates zero to 10 years out. In many cases, it enables folks who are going into social enterprise right out of school to be able to make that choice and have the security financially to do it. But what we also see is folks after two or five years in a different career, whether in the private sector or elsewhere, transition into these roles knowing they have the capacity if they’re thinking about loan repayment, to work through that. And more broadly, one of the assets of the university, at the I-Lab there is an assistant director focused on social and cultural entrepreneurship. We just launched the Launch Lab for alumni doing new ventures there. We just launched the startup studio in New York where folks are launching a new life lab in the life sciences space. And more than that, I think it is the deep commitment that exists to alumni in this work. Another development in SEI over the last six months is we’ve hired a new associate director of alumni engagement—an MBA 2001 alum. We’ve always been active with our alums, but thinking more strategically about how we can work together with them on their interests, connect them to one another, educate them to the work that’s going on in the space and work through the alumni clubs. What it adds up to is a huge community at different places along that continuum of interest. I feel confident that no matter what your interest is as your developing a new idea on campus or pursuing a potential career possibility, there’s a wealth of folks you can draw on, both here at HBS and the alumni community, but also having the benefit of having a great university is drawing on folks across disciplines and across a number of different schools. When I think about the HBS academic trajectory over the two years is in the first year required curriculum, everybody, no matter their background, is getting the same intro to a number of different courses. And the fascinating thing to me is you’re having discussions on an issue and there are almost always some people who have some expertise on the issue. There’s a lot of education happening in that room and for me, it was the greatest learning experience. The thing that’s most remarkable about the case method, which is different from how the real world operates, is you spend 98% of your time in that seat listening versus talking. And as you transition to leadership roles, your leading the conversation much more, so it builds a sense of empathy and a need to listen to all the diversion viewpoints from your own. And for the question about what employers think about those who are focusing, I think what actually happens is you have that grounding in the first year and then the second year is a bit of a choose-your-own adventure as you’re putting together courses in areas where you feel like you want to build out your skills. In some cases there is not a clear answer in terms of what we’re hearing from employers. They deeply value the MBA skill set and again, I think this notion of a tri-sector athlete, who is able to navigate deftly across all three sectors, who is thinking about ways organizations can partner to solve these complex problems is appealing and I think in many ways, whether it’s learning teams, whether it’s Field where people are working in teams. The individual entrepreneur is driving incredible change, but the teams they are building around them are also important. And I think we’re creating great leaders—great individual leaders—but also great leaders of teams. And those two things are highly prized for people coming to look for graduates who are taking on in many cases, undefined projects and trying to set clear action plans, drive towards solutions and create meaningful impact, whether they are working in big companies, small companies, public sector, etcetera. We’re excited by a lot of the great progress to date. It’s our 25th anniversary in 2018. And we’re always keen to be responsive to the emerging trends in the field and how to better educate the next generation of leaders to take on these tough challenges. Some of the things I’d say we are constantly thinking about are, when it comes to academics in MBAs and executive education, we’re looking at new courses, we’re increasing our research and work in the impact investing area. On the faculty research side, I should also point to the breadth of work that’s happened there. From 1993 to today, there have been over 300 cases, articles and books—so there’s been a huge emphasis on the research side because in many ways, great teaching is rooted in groundbreaking ideas and great research. So on that side, I think we’re always looking at the next generation of faculty leadership and drawing in the best ideas from the field to the classroom is incredibly important. I do think in 2018, we’re eager to use that as a milestone moment to celebrate all that we have done in the last 25 years but also look ahead to the next 25 and see the ways in which HBS really wants to continue to be a field leader and continue to have a significant impact on social entrepreneurship pedagogy in the classroom, but also educating, inspiring and supporting those social entrepreneurs who are out in the world doing it. There is a lot of good stuff to come and I think there’s a real recognition that we want to keep being responsive to what’s happening in the field. Another thing I’d point to there is we’ve done some transformative impact looking at how traditionally the unit of scale has been the organization thinking about how an individual organization could solve these problems. But a lot of leaders in the social sector are also looking at transformative impact—system level impact—and what it takes to achieve that because it’s often not just the domain of a single organization alone. I think it’s at the vanguard of the work that’s happening in social enterprise to understand how to crack that nut. There are a couple. One is around resources. So, the combination of attracting financial capital and human capital to work on these problems. There’s definitely been a lot of great research on this nonprofit leadership deficit and how there’s always an eagerness to bring new leaders into the sector to drive these long-standing stalwart organizations that are doing good work and continue to be innovative and entrepreneurial within them. And also to get stronger capital flows into doing the work that social entrepreneurs are doing. I’d also point to the growth in the number of organizations. Our HBS Association of Boston recently did a great convening panel on mergers and acquisitions in the nonprofit and social enterprise space and how that’s not yet as common but it’s something where there is opportunity for consolidation and streamlining given how many different nonprofit organizations are started. There is Bridgespan research that points to how few (nonprofits) have cleared the $50 million hurdle in terms of revenues, which isn’t everything but does say there aren’t as many large players who are driving the work at scale. And in addition to that, it’s finding more on-ramps for people who are interested in this work—so thinking less from the organizational side and more from the individual side. The pathways into this work aren’t always clear. In many cases, for people who enjoyed great success in the private sector, it’s not always abundantly clear to them how to get involved with this work. So I think there is a lot of great institutional thinking that is happening at SEI that also happens with Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, which brings in professionals who are more seasoned at the end of their careers to come back to Harvard—it’s a cross university program—as they think about launching or becoming a part of a social impact venture. But one of the real challenges is matching great social societal need with the talent to get there. Ultimately, I think solving these problems comes down to great organizations, but at the heart of great organizations are great people so there is a lot of work to be done to make it easier for great people to take on this work. I always encourage folks to build a map of what it is they care about. Because the heart of so much of this work is finding—for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs alike—the problem they are solving. So people should ask themselves what problems they care about. And it could be issue-specific like education or poverty or clean water. It could be more operational in nature like sustainable supply chain issues. It could be building the next generation of great leaders. It could be workforce development. So finding what you care about and what you’re passionate about and feel purpose in is deeply important. The other types of questions are thinking about particular opportunities and getting a sense of the career path. What does it look like because there are a lot of similarities across sectors. In some ways, what I think is most compelling is finding a leader of an organization or movement or just someone you admire who is doing this work and getting an up-close and personal sense of what their day-to-day life is like. That seems a little simplistic but I think the work of a social entrepreneur—much more increasingly than a traditional CEO’s role is—is working across stakeholders and sectors. It could be in one hand raising capital for your organization while also building out your leadership team and restructuring operations. You could be working closely with public sector officials or regulators in the environment in which you are working. You could be collaborating with partners doing similar work in other countries. The work of social enterprise is so multifaceted and complex that achieving objectives in that context can be more challenging and complex given the number of stakeholders, given the barriers that exist. But in many ways it is some of the most fulfilling work that can be done and part of it is going in with eyes wide open on the unique challenges and opportunities you could face if you’re going into the sector. But in general, I would sound a note of strong encouragement that I think it’s fascinating work. It’s hard work but you have the opportunity to move the needle on really tough problems and it’s not easy but it’s very important. It’s very much on the rise and it manifests in a couple ways. The new generation of business school students and young people is thinking more deeply about how to pursue careers that create value in a lot of different ways. They are thinking about financial security and economic value, but they are also thinking about making meaningful contributions to society, finding purpose and meaning and adventure in the places they are working and they are surrounded by a group of people who share similar values who are focused on these kinds of priorities. Ultimately, the notion of social enterprise as a sector is driven fundamentally by people and their values and I think there are more and more folks looking at the structure of organizations, they are advocating more towards delivering value in different ways to different people, but having a broader definition of what value is. Secondly, as you see more and more folks going into this work, ultimately what it’s saying is you can do this work in a big company or small company because you can start your own company or make an existing one better. There is no limitation in a global world of doing this work, whether it’s doing work in a place like Boston or going to struggling communities in Kenya and Uganda. Increasingly, a more democratized and globalized world means the challenges that people are facing are more abundantly clear everywhere. So when there’s no shortage of challenges to take on, and an increase in the number of young people who are willing to take on these efforts, I think it’s only going to grow. And I think when you look at the data of whether it’s our prospective students, whether it’s young people around the country applying to AmeriCorps, whether it’s just folks pushing for change in companies and communities and cities, I think there is a hunger for this work—and you see it in this political climate as well. It’s something that is on the rise but it’s something that is becoming more commonplace at business schools and in society, generally, to recognize that leaders are creating value not just for their companies but also for their communities and cities. And to me it’s a very exciting thing that what once might have been something unfamiliar has now become commonplace. Both for younger generations and whether it’s baby boomers or folks later in their careers, getting more excited about this work. And the program for advanced leadership initiative is an incredible array of people who had more traditional private sector careers that are coming back, whether it’s an encore career or people who have had great success and now they want to give back and I think giving back takes a multitude of forms these days.
