By Kara Sherrer
The Turner Family Center for Social Ventures’ (TFC) trek to Seattle isn’t just a learning opportunity, it’s also a chance to network with practitioners in the burgeoning social impact space. Mike Woodnorth (MBA’18) would know: he landed his summer internship partly as a result of the Seattle trek last year.
During the inaugural Seattle trek in 2017, the TFC team visited Threshold Group, a Seattle- and Philadelphia-based wealth management firm focused on social impact investing. While there, Woodnorth met up with Teresa Wells, Director of Investment Strategy for Threshold. After several months of staying in touch (plus some help from a TFC Summer Fellowship) Woodnorth landed a summer internship at Threshold.
“A large contributing factor to my internship last summer was that I showed up to the trek and said ‘I’m interested in working for you, can we talk about this?’” he recalled. “I showed that I knew about what (Threshold) did and that I was genuinely interested in what they were.”
Woodnorth, the TFC board member who manages the treks, used his connections from his summer internship to plan the 2018 Seattle trek. The 10 students who participated, including six Owen students, met with nine different social impact companies in just two days. (The TFC partially subsidizes the trip to help defray students’ costs.)
Learning About Social Impact
As with the other treks available at Vanderbilt Business, many students are drawn to the trip to learn more about the social impact space. Social impact work can take a variety of forms, and the students explored them throughout the trek’s nine stops.
“We had students who want to work in wealth management and want to speak intelligently about impact investing, we had students that are interested in getting into social enterprise consulting who want to come and learn,” Woodnorth said.
One highlight of the trip included Newground Social Investments, a wealth management company that invests in a company, then asks it to reexamine its policies on social impact issues such as labor and sustainability. For example, founder Bruce Herbert bought shares in McDonalds, partnered with other shareholders, and asked the company to investigate the level of pesticides in its potatoes. McDonalds eventually rolled the study out to all of their potato suppliers.
Another standout was FSG Consulting, a mission-driven consulting firm that draws on many different stakeholders to find lasting solutions to social enterprise problems. Clients include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Civil Rights Museum, and the YMCA of the USA.
Learning about the different ways that people are trying to do this (social impact) work is really helpful in figuring out where you fit in the puzzle, because it’s complicated. – Mike Woodnorth (MBA’18)
Woodnorth says that visiting the different companies gives trek attendees hands-on exposure to what social impact work on the ground. Job functions can vary from company to company in this relatively new space; the Seattle trek helps students develop a clearer picture of what social impact roles actually involve.
“Learning about the different ways that people are trying to do this (social impact) work is really helpful in figuring out where you fit in the puzzle, because it’s complicated,” he said.
The Power of Networking
The TFC Seattle Trek also met up with the Tech Trek for a Closing Bell in Seattle, affording them an opportunity to meet alumni and swap notes with other students about what they had learned.
Of course, Woodnorth had to network to schedule the company meetings in the first place. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s the power of the cold email,” he laughed. “I just really love talking to people, and as far as recruiting goes, there’s nothing better than going to these places.”
According to Woodnorth, the interdisciplinary nature of the TFC also opens more doors — in Seattle and elsewhere — than a single department or school could. While the TFC is housed in Management Hall, it serves graduates students from all departments; students from the economics department and the education school also attended the trek.
“It’s very apparent from all these meetings that the interdisciplinary nature of the center is one the largest, if not the largest, selling points,” Woodnorth said. “Every partner we went to (in Seattle) said, ‘The way you guys are doing (social impact) is the way it needs to be done: an interdisciplinary approach.’”
To learn more about the Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, visit the TFC website. To learn more about getting an MBA at Vanderbilt Business, visit the MBA home page, or request information.
