Summer- Fall 2013

Whitney Hales

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Summer- Fall 2013, Whitney Hales 0 Comment

Location: BelizeWhitney Hales

Village Capital Partner: Maya Mountain Cacao

Whitney is originally from bayou country Louisiana. She completed her bachelor’s degree at Lake Forest College, a small liberal arts school north of Chicago, where she studied environmental studies and politics. She just recently completed a year of social service in Miami, FL working in the mathematics department of an ‘at-risk’ high school as an AmeriCorps volunteer. Here at MIIS she is thrilled to be studying business administration and environmental policy!

 

Be sure to read Whitney’s blog!

Hannah Wasserman

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Hannah Wasserman, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Bangalore, IndiaHannah Wasserman

Village Capital Partner: Unitus Seed Fund

Blog: http://itsmehanstheblog.tumblr.com/

Hannah is from Sacramento, California, but has been living in Los Angeles for the past 5 years. She graduated from the University of Southern California in May of 2012 with a degree in Public Policy and a minor in Social Entrepreneurship. She was a StartingBloc Fellow, which is how she was first introduced to FMS! For the past year she has been working at GOOD, a community driven platform for people who give a damn. At GOOD she worked on the marketing team as a community manager, but she had her hands in pretty much everything. Outside of work, she takes improv classes, tutor at 826 LA and cook. In the kitchen, her specialties are cookies and pesto, not together, of course. She is passionate about social change and is excited to gain knowledge and experience working with entrepreneurs in the field.

 

Be sure to check out Hannah’s blog!

James Shirreff

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, James Shirreff, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Santa Cruz, CAJames Shirreff

Village Capital Partner: Cloudpay

Jamie is a first year graduate student in MBA/MA International Environmental Policy joint program. Before coming to the Monterey Institute he worked for 6 years in environmental education and youth development. He spent much of my childhood living in England, and completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Exeter. He has been fortunate to travel to many parts of the world including Western Europe, China and South-East Asia and Southern Africa.

 

 

Keep up with Jamie’s experience through his blog!

Calvin Shabb

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Calvin Shabb, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment


Calvin Shabb

Location: Seattle, Washington

Village Capital Partner: Moving Worlds

Calvin is from the country near the West Virginia border in north-western Virginia, grew up on a farm and was fortunate to travel at a young age. His first trip was an amazing program in Spain, and from then on it’s been one crazy ride. Calvin graduated in 2011 from George Mason University and has completed a fellowship with Agora Partnerships and a consultancy with the Inter-American Development Bank.

Alaina Robertson

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Alaina Robertson, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Mumbai, IndiaAlaina Robertson

Village Capital Partner: Pearson Affordable Learning Fund

Blog: http://sites.miis.edu/alainafms/

Originally from Seattle, Alaina graduated Middlebury College in 2009 with a degree in International Studies and is a current MIIS student in the Trade, Investment and Development track. Her career path was inspired by two years spent living in rural India working on the ground with aid organizations. On the other side of the world, she also spent a semester in Argentina and has travelled extensively in Latin America. She is using graduate school to focus on development solutions through policy, infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and improving the business climate. When not studying, she can be found in the dirt teaching middle schoolers about organic farming or a few hundred feet up a cliff in Yosemite.

Natalia Perez

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Natalia Perez, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Antigua, GuatemalaNatalia Perez

Village Capital Partner: ByoEarth

Natalia is in the process of conducting a year-long thesis project that explores social entrepreneurial models to sustainably manage organic waste in marginalized communities using case studies in Guatemala and Kenya. She is an adult re-entry student, currently in her senior year at Arizona State University (ASU) looking forward to graduating with a dual major (Global Studies and Psychology) in December 2013. She is also proud to be a bilingual/bicultural student, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and raised in the Washington, DC area. Prior to returning to academia, Natalia gained skills in business management working with various small businesses and non-profit organizations in Arizona, California, Venezuela, and Costa Rica. The most interesting position she held was as the business manager of a sustainable living center in Costa Rica where they held educational programs for local school children, as well as interns and visitors from all around the world. Unique talents? She has an innate natural ability to gather women. She has organized and facilitated women’s empowerment groups for many years in her local community and, for her, doing this comes with much ease. She hopes to apply this talent to working with women within the realm of social entrepreneurship. She is excited about the FMS program because she knows the program attracts a diverse group of passionate people and she is confident she will learn as much from her fellow scouts as from the course and fieldwork.

Carmen Paraison

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Carmen Paraison, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: HaitiCarmen Paraison

Village Capital Partner: Yunus Social Business

Blog:  http://internshiphaiti6.wordpress.com/

Carmen is a first generation Haitian graduate student studying International Trade, Investment and Development at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She is passionate about agriculture and micro-finance, both of which have the potential to pull out those in poverty in low-income countries. Carmen received a Bachelor’s degree in French and she taught English in the south of France after graduation. After obtaining her master’s degree, she looks forward to taking the hands-on experience gained through Frontier Market Scouts and applying it to support the enterprising poor in Haiti.

Joony Moon

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Joony Moon, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Ahmedabad, India Joony Moon

Village Capital Partner: CIIE

Blog:  http://joonymoon11.tumblr.com/

Joony is a former management consultant at Deloitte looking to change fields and begin to reposition himself for a future career in nonprofit management. At Deloitte he was primarily involved in working in federal healthcare, serving in a number of different capacities, ranging from being the team’s “data guru” to convening and running stakeholder meetings. It was a great experience being able to have a hand in implementing Obamacare, but ultimately he decided that it wasn’t where he saw himself for the long term. Joony graduated from Harvard University in 2010 with a degree in Economics and Evolutionary Biology. Originally from the DC area, he is now living back in my hometown of Fairfax, VA after his brief stay in Boston. He finds his balance in life to be healthy and enjoy being able to share experiences with and help others. Even if you don’t scratch his back, he’ll likely scratch yours — that’s just how he rolls!

Serenity Siya Mlay

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Meet our Scouts, Serenity Siya Mlay, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: San Francisco, USASerenity Siya Mlay

Village Capital Partner: William James Foundation

Serenity was born and raised in the East Bay of SF, a product of parents who emigrated from Tanzania in the 1960’s. Her parents believed that no child should be left idle and therefore was put into every activity ever created for children; from karate, gymnastics, baton twirling, sewing classes, ice skating, fencing, dance, theater,  modeling to even participating in pageants. By trade Serenity is a dancer / choreographer and has studied dance and performed in a few companies in the bay area. While studying for her undergraduate degree, she established SeDaCo, a dance company in 2003 and presented her work at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. and many others. She then graduated from SFSU with B.A. in dance and a a minor in International Relations. Serenity’s interest and deeply rooted passion for economic development began to bubble over and in the summer of 2010 she traveled to Bangladesh to intern with Grameen Trust, a sister organization of Grameen Bank, a microfinance organization ,and met Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Muhammad Yunus. Serenity is a recent M.B.A. graduate from Mills College, has worked with Social Capital Markets and serves as Program Director at Shinda Foundation and teaches dance in her spare time. Serenity has recently returned from a 2 month trip in Tanzania in 2012 to visit family, friends to also see how much progress has been made since the last time she visited Tanzania 20 years ago and where she can best use utilize herself in accelerating access to the BOP.

Anupriya Kohli

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Anupriya Kohli, Meet our Scouts, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Delhi, IndiaAnupriya Kohli

Village Capital Partner: Pearson Affordable Learning Fund

Anupriya Kohli was born and raised in New Delhi, India, went to high school in Mumbai and then moved to New York City to attend Columbia University. She graduated magna cum laude with double majors in Economics and Psychology. She works as an operations strategy consultant at Booz&Company and in the past has worked on Western Union’s mobile app and online operations as an intern on the global emerging channels operations team, on theatrical promotions management for Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers as a promotions intern with Marvel Entertainment and direct marketing at RMGConnect/JWT. She is passionate about new technology and psychology in everyday life.

Timothy Francis

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Summer- Fall 2013, Timothy Francis 0 Comment

Location: Jakarta, Indonesia Timothy Francis

Village Capital Partner: Kinara Indonesia

Tim studied economics as an undergrad where he gained an interest in economic development. Then, a side job in the hospitality industry led to an invite to spend a month down in the Dominican Republic living with a family in a small city. The experience was eye-opening and led him to veer away from the corporate finance field he began working in to explore a field now called impact investing while he achieved an MBA to enhance his skill set.  Tim wants to take his education and enthusiasm to helping develop SMEs in the emerging world to create the positive social externalities to the local people.

Duncan Forbes

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Duncan Forbes, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: The NetherlandsDuncan Forbes

Village Capital Partner: The Hub Amsterdam

Duncan’s passion is leading others to achieve positive social change. As a sociology major at Colorado College, he led two separate international projects; one to study fair trade and organic coffee farming in Oaxaca, Mexico and the other to implement a small-scale biogas project in rural, Southern Vietnam. After college, Duncan taught sexual health education for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado Springs, CO, to youth across eastern and southern Colorado and he was promoted three times in nine months, eventually becoming the Manager of the Education Department for the region, a position he held for over two years. In this leadership role, Duncan expanded the scope of their work to include 26 new collaborating schools and community organizations, tripled their annual revenue, and solidified partnerships with numerous conservative, religious organizations during a period of extreme political volatility. He recently finished a three-year term on the Board of Directors of a small child-abuse prevention organization, where he facilitated a strategic plan that led to new partnerships and fundraising initiatives resulting in a 33% increase in annual revenue. These experiences allowed him to understand the leadership necessary to run a social organization, hone his facilitation skills, and develop his fundraising expertise.

Mary Catherine Fixel

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Mary Catherine Fizel, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Ahmedabad, IndiaMary Fixel

Village Capital Partner: CIIE

A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Mary Catherine is the eldest daughter born into a family of self-taught business owners. Very early on, she developed an entrepreneurial understanding of creating change; she is comfortable getting in on the ground floor and spending an awful lot of time there. Mary Catherine caught the travel bug – and an interest in partnerships between social entrepreneurs and big business – in 2004 after an internship in Mexico City. She graduated from Georgetown University in 2009 with a background in international business and went on to get an MPA and certification in Sustainable Development from University of Texas Austin /ESCP-Europe. Since joining PwC in 2010, her focus has been divided between the Banking Capital Markets and Sustainable Business Solutions consulting practices. This exposure has provided working visibility into the dynamic relationship between corporations and society and the role of heavyweights – stock exchanges, venture capital, industry, and accounting and consulting firms – in consideration of the multiple dimensions of value creation, including the environmental, social and economic. She’s worked with some of the world’s largest companies in trying to embed social and environmental principles and innovation into their businesses and investment strategies. Mary Catherine wants to be in a position to make the transformative connections between innovative entrepreneurs and the capital markets.

Indie Service Officer

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Summer- Fall 2013 0 Comment

Location: Nairobi, KenyaISO Picture JPEG

Village Capital Partner: Growth Africa

Prior to becoming a Frontier Market Scout, the anonymous blogger Indie Service Officer, was a planner at the NYC Office of Emergency Management’s Human Services Unit where he coordinated with nonprofit organizations to develop emergency plans to meet the needs of New Yorkers affected by disasters. Previously he worked at the U.S. Department of Justice’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP). He has had internships at the United Nations, New York City Police Department, the National Defense University, and Foreign Affairs Magazine. He has an International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance from Fordham University, a MIA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a BA from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Yassine El Mansouri

Carolyn Meyer 2013 Scouts in the Field, Summer- Fall 2013, Yassine El Mansouri 0 Comment

Location: SingaporeYassine El Mansouri

Village Capital Partner: VilCap Singapore

Yassine El Mansouri is currently pursuing his bachelor’s degree with a major in International Affairs and a double minor in Social Entrepreneurship & Business at Northeastern University. He recently worked with an early-staged microfinance institution in Pajarillos, Honduras. Prior to that, he gained experience in public relations through his work with the Ogilvy & Mather office in Sydney but is currently dedicating his focus towards social innovation and impact investing.  Before joining IIX, Yassine completed the Frontier Market Scouts training program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

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