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FMS Operations Assistant (10-15 hours/week)
Primary responsibilities: Coordinate key operations including special events logistics, and budgeting support.  Oversee incoming applicant data management and information/systems processing.
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Hiring Contact: George Alex Wilbanks (gwilbanks@miis.edu)

Student Impact Coordinator (10-15 hours/week)
Primary responsibilities: M FORCE, Pipeline: B Corps, Millennial Speaker Series, Office Hours with Jerry.
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Hiring Contact: Jerry Hildebrand (jhildebrand@miis.edu)

Domestic Microfinance Director (10 hours/week)
Primary responsibilities: Perform research, strategic recommendations, and public representation of the CSIL Microfinance Initiative.
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Hiring Contact: Jerry Hildebrand (jhildebrand@miis.edu)

Strategic Initiatives Coordinator (10-20 hours/week)
Primary Responsibilities: Support Ambassador Corps Programs including Digital Storytelling Curriculum and CSIL Hub Management.
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Hiring Contact: Annie Makela (mmakela@miis.edu)

CSIL Collaboration Assistant (10-15 hours/week)
Primary Responsibilities: Coordinate initiatives between the MIIS CSIL team and the Middlebury CSE team as well as help organize the CSIL Advisory Council meeting happening in November.
Hiring Contact: Annie Makela (mmakela@miis.edu)

Join Us! The CSIL Open House – September 9^th 4-:30-6:30pm

RSVP: socialimpact@miis.edu

Center for Social Impact Learning | Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey

Blog: sites.miis.edu/csil | Instagram: center4impact | Twitter: @center4impact| go.miis.edu/csil

We provide training and research programming for purpose-driven professionals seeking to develop careers centered on social enterprise and responsible investing.

Interested students have the opportunity to lead in bringing together the change agents that cultivate and launch compelling social business ideas poised to change the world.

The US$1 Million Hult Prize@, the world’s largest student competition is recruiting student Campus Directors from around the world! Campus Directors will work to organize local, “Hult Prize@” events on campus.

One of the tasks of the Hult Prize@ campus director is to recruit judges and influencers for on-campus events. Students worldwide are putting their energy, their experience, their intellect, and their passion toward a common goal of eliminating one of the most pressing global crises of our time.

It’s not everyday that you have an opportunity like this to change the world. Sign up now to compete in the 2015 Hult Prize@ Competition and launch your social business idea. All you need is an idea and a team to compete. Give us your 5 minute pitch on November 21st and you could be selected to represent MIIS at the upcoming Hult Prize@ Regional Finals in the Spring of 2015. Here is your chance to make an impact!

~ Slater Matzke, MPA 2016 Candidate and 2015 Hult Prize@ Campus Director @MIIS

Click here to learn more and apply.

About CSIL: With a focus on the social impact of business and responsible financial investment, CSIL creates opportunities for valuable and practical experiences for undergraduates, graduates and professionals and a network for a future career.

Ready to learn more? We’d love to connect! Get in touch: socialimpact@miis.edu.

“I get my mind blown every time, and every single day. I’m learning so fast and so much”

Brittany Lane (FMS ’15) chatted with us recently about her new position as Editor at Unreasonable Group in Boulder, Colorado. We wanted to know more about what makes Unreasonable Group such an inspiring and exciting place to work.  Brittany shared insights about life and launching her purpose-driven career after FMS and graduate school:

Tell us about your new position

I love my job. Unreasonable Group works to drive resources and knowledge to entrepreneurs in emerging markets. I focus on our blog at unreasonable.is and edit everything that comes my way. I also pitch ideas for content and have great conversations with current thought leaders and mentors that are connected to Unreasonable Institute and Unreasonable Group. We are planning to feature more writing from the entrepreneurs who have graduated from Unreasonable Institute as well.

What has been the most exciting part about working with Unreasonable and professional life in the impact space?

For me, the people are the most exciting part. I’ve heard Daniel Epstein and many others at Unreasonable believe that business is really just about people, not the strategy or the marketing, and that holds really true for me. The variety of people who are interested in Unreasonable and have worked with us in the past or that do work with us now is fascinating. These are people from all over the world, and people from all sectors. Having conversations with such bright minds is great. I get my mind blown every time and every single day. I’m learning so fast and so much; it’s really rewarding work.

How are you directly applying some of the skills learned through FMS?

Without FMS and CSIL, I wouldn’t have discovered Unreasonable. I definitely wouldn’t have gotten this position if I hadn’t gone through the program. I highly encourage the training, and FMS Fellows have the opportunity to place with Unreasonable East Africa, which would be awesome.

For me, coming from a policy study background, the most important thing was being introduced to this whole world of responsible investing and social enterprise. It gave me notions of business for good and an introduction to the general ecosystem. Through FMS training, I learned who the key players are in this space, how investment plays into it,   about the lifecycle and different levels of startup. To be able to speak the language of whatever industry you’re in is a really important baseline. Especially for me working with words on the journalism side of things, language is really important. Plus the connections were amazing.

It was the PERFECT introduction and launching point for me. Without the FMS training experience I don’t know what I would be doing right now. I was studying policy but realized traditional development work wasn’t for me. This is a fresh and energetic approach to solving big and seemingly impossible problems.

What are you most excited to learn in your current position?

I’m most excited about how I can grow within Unreasonable and position myself as a leader as the company grows. Learning how I can improve in my role and continue to spread the culture of giving is very important to me. I just started and already I’ve learned so much, I’m just excited to see what’s next.

What are your top three recommendations for someone looking to start a purpose-driven career?

1. Take some time to really know your values because they are your distinct compass
2. Subscribe, Follow, Share, Tweet as much as you can about this field and its language. It’s ever-evolving and the time is ripe for you to actively participate.
3. Surround yourself with people who share similar values and see how you can support each other.

Like many of our alumni, Brittany joined FMS looking for a change from her previous field of work and study, and now directly credits her FMS training as the launchpad for her current career path.

If you are looking for a way to launch into the field of social enterprise and impact management, be sure to apply before September 4^th at go.miis.edu/fms and start your purpose-driven career.  After all, what are you waiting for?
Follow Brittany: @brittanylane515    |    Follow Unreasonable: @unreasonable   |    Follow FMS @FMScouts 

On the last day of the FMS Training program, Andrew Hewitt from GameChangers 500 came to speak on how participants could connect everything they had learned over the past two weeks to launching a career in the impact investment and social enterprise sectors. Participants were led in discussions surrounding what their values are, what really inspires them on a daily basis, and what their core strengths are. Andrew also mapped out the different sectors of for-profit, non-profit, and for-benefit in order to have a deeper discussion on where participants saw themselves heading for their future careers. Participants ended the session with a career commitment toast where they each pledged to do something in the sector as part of their career or life path.

On Thursday, June 11th, Steven Ellis from Colorado Capital Management came to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies to instruct FMS participants on the different aspects of portfolio management. He kicked off the class with a quiz to determine how “risk averse” each participant was with scores ranging from the 70’s – 80’s (“risk loving”) to the 30’s and 40’s (“very risk averse”). Steven broke down the different aspects of what goes into managing million dollar portfolios and got participants to evaluate what their values are when it comes to investing their money. Participants debated between the importance (or not) of companies being involved with issues such as tobacco, oil, alcohol, and even whether gender was taken into account when hiring senior level positions.

For the second week of FMS training, CSIL welcomed Amit Sharma, founder of Empowerment Capital to talk about how we measure impact when looking at multinational corporations and organizations. Amit challenged participants to think about how we measure impact in the investment space and to come up with other ways in which impact could be measured. Questions were posed to the class such as: Does intent matter when looking at this space? Would you work for a global corporation such as Walmart, Goldman Sachs, and AT&T? Participants worked on analyzing different impact funds of companies from around the globe and critically questioning if those funds were a core part of these companies’ business models.

By Kamilla Korsnes, FMS Fellow June 2015

During my five years as a business student at NHH in Norway I always felt like something was missing. I found business and economics interesting, but I was looking for some meaning beyond the focus on cost savings and profit maximization. That is how I ended up focusing on business ethics – studying how business can become more sustainable and ethical. However, business ethics has for me so far been mainly academic research. The philosophical and existential approach to business ethics is very interesting, but I would like to learn more about how to solve these problems in real life. I would like to learn more about how business can be used as a tool for solving social and environmental issues, rather than mainly focusing on how existing companies can do less damage. This is a more innovative, positive and future oriented approach. I think business can be a key to solving some of the problems we are facing today, and I strongly believe this is the future of business!

So why FMS? Because I believe I have the skills, knowledge and passion to contribute to a better world. The FMS Program will provide me with new and valuable insight supplementing my business skills and knowledge and help me utilize this knowledge in the best possible way. Why now? I just graduated and I am at the very beginning of my career. I cannot think of a better way to start my career than to do the FMS Training and Fellowship to learn about social entrepreneurship and impact investing.

What kind of social and environmental impact is most meaningful to you?

All kinds of social and environmental impacts are meaningful to me, but closest to my heart is gender equality. I come from one of the most gender equal countries in the world, but even in Norway there are still differences between men and women when it comes to income and career opportunities – and we should continue working towards complete gender equality. Related to this, one of my interests in my business studies has been to understand how to increase the proportion of women in business manager and board positions. I am grateful for growing up in a country where gender equality is taken for granted and something most people don’t fight for anymore. On the other hand I see an issue with taking things for granted – gender equality is something we should fight to maintain and something we should work to accomplish around the world. Empowering women is a key to economic growth and development and I think it will create synergies that can solve other social problems as well. This underlines the importance of giving women the same opportunities and rights when it comes to education, employment, financial inclusion and influence in society.

On Saturday, June 6th the Frontier Market Scouts program welcomed speaker Alex Lazarow from the Omidyar Network to speak on Managing Growth-Stage Enterprises. Participants discussed scaling business in terms of getting from a seed to stage to a scaled enterprise. What are the avenues that start-ups can take in order to get funding from investors?

Then on Monday, participants were able to go up to Redwood City to visit Omidyar’s office to meet staff and hear about their insider perspectives about the work that they are doing in the impact investment space. Participants were also given time to pitch a “Big Idea” for a social enterprise to solve a global or national issue. Pitches included everything from creating solutions to health problems in China to supporting social enterprise in Egypt and even using social enterprise and native food production in order to change communities in developing countries.

For the fourth and fifth day of the Summer 2015 Frontier Market Scouts training program, participants met instructor Paul Breloff from Accion Venture Labs who came to speak about the due diligence process in investment in social enterprise ventures. Participants were challenged to question impact metrics as well as dive into what the process is for investors looking to get into the impact investment space. Discussion ranged from taking into account environmental impact metrics when doing a business deal to what the difference between a “good deal” and a “good business” – what are investors really looking for? What’s the risk? What’s the return? What is the valuation zone? – these among other topics were discussion points throughout the two sessions. FMS participants also got to hear from guest speakers from the Director of CSIL, Jerry Hildebrand and the Cordes foundation, Ron Cordes.