HSIF: Entrepreneurs Changing Communities — Dulce Kadise
This is the fourth post in our Haas Social Impact Fund (HSIF) series.
Traveling from New Orleans to Alabama to Little Rock to Nashville, Dulce Kadise (MBA16) worked to understand and assist four entrepreneurs’ varying needs and goals through MBAs Across America. A popular organization with Haas MBAs, Dulce and classmate Dan Fishman (MBA16) were teamed with a Harvard MBA and a Stanford MBA to, as Dulce described, “embark on a 5-week journey across the country working with four entrepreneurs who are changing their communities.”
In New Orleans, the team worked with Your Nutrition Delivered, a business focused on food as medicine, delivering meals tailored customers with certain diseases or conditions, brainstorming expansion strategy, including geographies, channels, and products.
Daleville, Alabama, brought them to Discovery Recycling, where they supported the owner, Kevin, as he considered the best strategy to grow his business. The team created an inventory management tool and suggested a revised product mix to help achieve better margins. “Working with Kevin was very inspirational,” Dulce said. “He has a job as a US Army pilot during the mornings, and worked on his business at night. He had not been able to make a great profit, but continued to be motivated, as he believed that his business was helping the community.”
The final two projects were with The Root Café in Little Rock — an enterprise looking to make local produce and foods more accessible to the community — and Life-Links in Nashville, which is focused on care management and is supported by Jumpstart Foundry.
Through this internship, Dulce saw how her fellow Haas MBAs truly embrace the “Beyond Yourself” principle. “I believe that the HSIF reflects what Haas is all about: a supportive environment that encourages you to go beyond yourself. I loved my internship because it changed me professionally and personally.” That, after all, is part of the HSIF’s goal, as Robbie Heath, Berkeley-Haas MBAA VP of Community and leader of the HSIF fundraising and award process explained: “Contributions support a belief in social careers at Haas, an important part of the Haas culture.”
Find out more about how to get involved in the Haas Social Impact Fund.
