IBSG officials desire to build robust relationships with businesses throughout the world, each in emerging economies, so that UNM will have developed strong and lasting relationships to guide cutting edge scholarship on the economies of the future, Audriana Stark, program manager of IBSG’s Ivan Karp Emerging Economies Program said.
“Our 10-year goal is to have the most robust archive of student-led international consulting projects in the Western United States, oriented specifically to understanding how to build business relationships with economies that will dominate in the 21st century,” she said.
She said through this program, IBSG has developed relationships with numerous organizations in emerging economies. Last summer, two UNM students, Patrick Hibbard and Victoria Pryor, participated in the IKEEP program and visited Guatemala and Ecuador. The experience has been viewed as life changing by the students.
Hibbard, an MBA student graduating this December with dual concentrations in policy & planning and international management, was able to obtain an internship with the Social Entrepreneur Corps and assisted in consulting efforts in Guatemala last summer.
“Our primary task was to consult with Solucìones Comunitarias. This organization provides high-impact items to communities through the entrepreneurial method: they set up individuals in communities to sell the products (water filters, reading glasses, fuel-efficient stoves, etc.) and support their activities,” Hibbard said.
He worked in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, which is mainly indigenous; peopled by varied tribes collectively known as Mayan to non-Guatemalans, he said.
“I stayed in home stays, living with Guatemalan families – was essentially Guatemalan while I lived there – and gained a depth of experience not seen from hotel balconies. What I learned about these people is that they have a strong sense of family and community,” Hibbard said.
He said living in Guatemala was one of the great learning experiences of his life.
“The families and individuals I got to live and work with in Guatemala were the survivors of a long, brutal civil war and had lived through events many times worse than anything I could even imagine,” Hibbard said.
These same people greeted our efforts with open arms, did their best to assist their countrymen, and maintained a substantially positive attitude, he said. Everything he does in the future will be better because of the lessons learned during his stay in Guatemala, Hibbard said.
“Such hope and optimism, following such tragedy, taught me the value of perseverance and how to move forward, eyes up and forward, even in the face of overwhelming adversity,” he said.
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Stark said they have started recruiting for the 2014-2015 cohort of students “who want to make differences in their lives and the lives of others around the world.”
“We are building relationships that make UNM and New Mexico globally relevant. Through these relationships, our students are able to share knowledge from UNM to emerging economies and from emerging economies back to UNM and the Albuquerque community,” she said.
The project has been funded by Anderson School of Management, GPSA, ASUNM and student self-generated funding .
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
