Returning home again - and seeing it in a new light

Erik Bengtsson, MBA / MA Education, 2009

We've been back from the New Orleans Service Learning trip for about a month now. I already feel like it was a long time ago, and yet that distance makes it easier to see how significant an experience it was for me.

With a nudge at a critical moment, the New Orleans Service Learning trip is changing the plot line of my life. This summer, I will be back in New Orleans to work for NOLA 180, a non-profit that aims to use the charter school it operates as a base to take over failed public schools. http://www.nola180.org/ I was focused on work in the social sector prior to the trip, but I wasn't dead set on New Orleans. What moved me was the realization that the city is at a crucial moment. There is considerable energy for progress and reform that could lead to significant shifts and lasting gains. While having the experience of the Service Learning Trip, I got excited about going back to NOLA to be a part of this process.

I should probably tell you that I grew up in New Orleans. I lived there through high school. My folks still live there. They were flooded in Katrina. It's has been a long, slow road to recovery. This trip was an important step.

For me and for many who know it well, New Orleans sparks mixed reactions. There are so many things I love about the city and that are part of me; and there are many problems and frustrations. Since the storm, this has been truer than ever. For many who were hit hard by the storm, there is a sense of frustration and fatigue. I feel this sometimes through my parents. Sometimes the disappointing headlines can be overwhelming.

One thing the trip did for me was to give me a booster shot of exposure to many dynamic, committed people who are in New Orleans, because they see possibility and because they intend to participate in change. We worked directly with entrepreneurs who had faced significant setbacks and who were charging forward to build businesses in a devastated community.
Our partner non-profit from the trip, Idea Village, http://www.ideavillage.org/, is staffed almost entirely with of the kinds of people I am talking about. Daryn Dodson is a great example. He is a GSB graduate who led the first two NOLA Service Learning trips before coming to work full time at Idea Village. This year, he sat on the other side of the table as a non-profit professional helping Jack Lynch and me to organize this trip and carry on the tradition he started. There has been a flood of talent into the city since the storm - particularly young people, social sector professionals, entrepreneurs, and native sons and daughters of the city who had left the nest. These people bring a palpable presence to the city - literally. (I noticed that nightlife is blossoming at local venues and music spots and the crowd looks and talks different these days.) It was something to see. On a similar note, it is encouraging to see promising initiatives bubbling up in many aspects of NOLA and Louisiana society - from government to the private sector to the social sector to education.

Before this trip, the last time I was in the city on any kind of a regular basis was two years back. I was working with New Schools for New Orleans as a consultant and helping them write their initial business plan. That was a cathartic experience for me, and it represented some of the most meaningful work I've done. It was also a very intense experience because of the great needs of the startup, because of the way I threw myself into it, and because of what I was going through personally at the time. I left exhausted and a bit burned out.

This trip had a healing impact on me. It was a chance to return and see the city afresh through the eyes of my GSB peers. It was a chance to share the things I love about the city (like creole food or brass funk music) and feed on the enthusiasm with which they were received. It was a chance to return home with new friends. (We had dinner with my parents and visited the carcass of my childhood home.) Perhaps most importantly, we joined with others and worked hard to make a contribution. Through that process, we shared experience that will now bind us together. The trip was everything I wanted for myself and for the group. When it was all done, I felt quiet and at rest. That is a special thing - it doesn't happen often. I am tremendously thankful for this experience and for all who made it possible.

New Orleans from a foreign eye

Mona Gao, Class of 2009

I have always shied away from writing in English. Why, it is like using chopsticks with my left hand. But the NOLA trip left such deep and treasured memories that I cannot help but write about it. Well, if the food is this delicious, I will have it, chopsticks or not.

New Orleans from a foreign eye

I came to America, fascinated by the “can do” attitude, the American dream. I went to New Orleans, and saw that dream coming true.

Prior to landing, the few words that I would use to describe New Orleans were: Katrina, racial tension, jazz, seafood. When I left, these words became: re-build, passion, entrepreneurship, talent, loud jazz, fried seafood.

So many things amazed me. The contrasts between different areas of town were striking: The grand mansions on St. Charles Avenue, the shattered surroundings of the Upper 9th ward. There was clearly racial tension too, passed through generations, and may take many more generations to completely change. However, what was so refreshing was seeing a street performance on Sunday, a group of African Americans doing amazing stunts and attracting a huge crowd. “We accept 5 dollars, 10 dollars; and 20 dollar notes from you white man.” Almost every sentence the performers shout out have something in there to contrast the different races. Yet to the listener, there is all humor, no bitterness; there is such openness to it. And if harmony is ever to be achieved, I feel this is the way it happens. Next day, we had an inspirational speaker- Ted, at Hope House. He spoke passionately about the racial issue. I don’t think we all agreed with his views. But having such a channel of communication is so valuable to solving many issues.

Then there are the talents who gathered to New Orleans to build charter schools, promote entrepreneurship. People who have many other choices but who have decided to put their financial interests, and themselves into New Orlean’s development. The passion is contagious, the efforts immense. Like a snowball, a critical mass of talent will attract more and more like them. There are so many problems, but so many hands working hard to solve them. One might argue that talents can be put to more efficient use if you have them working on problems with bigger financial returns, or on higher level strategies and vision. Yet I would argue that in a barrel that we call a nation, the strength is determined by the shortest stave, unless that is repaired, all else will eventually be slowed. More often than not, there is not enough social attention and buzz on the shortest stave. I think part of the reason that Idea Village has been successful is its ability to draw media attention, to create social buzz and to draw talent. This is something very valuable and tactics worth taking home with.

Team work

It is during team work like this that I want to congratulate myself for coming to the right school. Compassionate, cooperative, responsible, hard working, wanting to be fair and unbiased towards the entrepreneurs we were working with, all these qualities that I really value in a person, I see in our small team of four, and in our larger team of 16. I was also amazed by everyone’s ability to get by with so little sleep, and still enjoy the fun.

There were times when we were so emotionally involved with our entrepreneur that we just wanted to fight for her cause. There were times when we had to pull back and remind each other of the bigger picture. There were times when we just can’t wait to put in our own words, times when we’ve heard that question asked and answered more than once, by different people. There was roaring laughter, silent tears, yet all extremely rewarding.

Rewards

The moment I saw the expression on the winning entrepreneur’s face, I knew we had awarded the retail space to the right person. To her, it is a dream come true, after so many year’s of planning, to be able to finally open her own hair saloon and contribute to the community she hold so dear. To me, it is the most satisfying piece of work that I have been involved in in three days. Makes me think that the skill sets I have acquired through previous work, through business school, are not just good for becoming a young peg in a well lubricated institutional machine, it is useful in creating something too.

My first spring break

Amy Gu, Class of 2009

It is my first Spring break ever. (since I only got winter and summer break in college back in China). and I feel I've learnt a lot. If one day I am able to improve the education system in China, I will definitely include Spring Break on my agenda, since it is a great time to travel with classmates and learn about the world.

New Orleans is an amazing city. It is definitely different from any other American city I've ever been. The distinctive difference could be seen everywhere. On one side, it has the elegant European-style buildings around Jackson Square and French Quarter; on the other side, it is one of the poorest cities in U.S. with the highest crime rate.


Jogging along the Mississippi river, I feel I sensed the power from the water which has fed one generation of American; Food is good too, with Gumbo, Po-boy, Oysters and all other unique dishes; however, the homeless people sleeping on the street and under the bridge has kept reminding me that this is a poor area. The mix gives me a unique sense of the city, and thus attracts a lot of tourists as well as young generation.

Entrepreneurship

The trip is sponsored by the school as a way to help local entrepreneurs to start their businesses. This is the third year Stanford is doing this. Our task this time is to help select an entrepreneur to open his or her business in a retail space opening in Upper 9th Ward, one of the poorest area and most destroyed places in the city during Katrina. 16 MBAs spent five days to interview the four candidates, analyze their business model, debate among groups on figuring one which one is most beneficial to the community and most sustainable. The new vocabulary I learnt is double bottom line, to balance the business between social benefit and economic return. It's difficult to measure. After hours hours debate/discussion/brainstorming, we finally made our decision on selecting a hair salon business to occupy the space. The hair salon will enhance employment and draw traffic to the area. And hopefully, she will open her store very soon.

Entrepreneurship is everywhere. MBA is not necessary, wealth family is not necessary as well. In the Hope House, a charity organization in town, we learn from Jonika(if I spell it right), a single mother who raised two kids by herself, to start a pasta venture. She sold pasta everyday, and managed to make a living. She didn't go to high school, though she dreamed to go to play basketball there. Her mother went to prison because of drug abuse, and she almost lost her life in the hurricane. However, she survived from all of that and became an entrepreneur. The same stories are heard in New Orleans every day, and it's very encouraging to anyone who is hesitating.

Glass, class

New Orleans is a city to sense the power and class. For examples, there will be seven tables in the room, with only two having glasses and waters, which means higher-class people will sit in those two tables. The city has a higher percentage of Black Americans, which is described by some columnists as "the corner that is being forgotten or tried to be forgotten by the American mainstream". Education is a big problem, since the city has the worst public school system. Luckily, after Katrina, most of the public school system were destroyed, which gave the opportunity for a lot of young educators to come to the city and set up charter schools. A HBS graduate in his 30s is working in a charter school to bring advanced education system to try to get more kids into better schools. "Is it worth"? someone asked me. "Yeah, it is. Imagine how much impact you could make in a big corporate? here, in this school, this 30 something is going to change the lives of 400 kids".


Leadership

How to rebuild the city? Leadership matter, said one of the GSB alumni working in New Orleans. He believes someone with the leadership skill will change the city. The city, once suffered from inefficient leadership of the mayor and unresponsiveness from the Federal government, is on its way to lead itself. A lot of non-profit organizations, such as Global Green and Solar Energy Systems Group, have been to the city and worked on different projects. The Make it Right foundation, led by movie star Brad Pitt, is now building energy-efficient housing for the local people. It's a new and insightful direction, and the city is hoping to become the leader in the next-generation urban planning technology.

To me, the most sad thing is to learn that the New Orleans is sinking. According to NASA, New Orleans will sink about 0.17 inches a year, or near three feet over the next 200 years. Parts of the city are 5-10 feet below sea level now. People are building and rebuilding every year, but there is chance that water will come again and wash everything away. I will pray for the city and hope there will be better solution and technology to protect the city. Hope people will continue to be happy there.

Day 7: it's adieu time

today was the best day of all... we had a chance to look back, evaluate our work, give and get feedback.. have a great dinner at Antoine's.. and spend the night alternately in a jazz bar and reggae bar... and most important of all, announce to our entrepreneurs, give them our deliverables and feel the sense of closure (albeit there were a few questions left at the end of it all)

the day started with our sleepy selves presenting our decisions to the advisory committee.. who then raised some tough questions about the entrepreneur and about 14 gsb students, a staff and a professor working very hard for three days to give a 1000 sq ft space and 25 k grant to a lady who wanted to start a beauty parlor named "reflections of beauty" different people interpreted it differently and had different responses to it.. as for me, i am still not sure of how idea village gains from this or what. but as students, we gained a lot of insight into how the mind of an entrepreneur works and what it is be so poor that to save 10k for a worthy business is a monumental task.. but still the question remains of whether we could have all done something more..

next was my favorite moment.. when we told our entrepreneur that she won the space and some money.. she started crying and all our group members (except leo, who saved it for later ;) ) shed a few tears too.. it was actually a vague feeling.. i felt like we were giving someone else's money to someone else just because she was the best of the four options we had a choice of evaluating... i was not very sure of the value we created by being there.. i do question myself if Idea Village could not have done all this themselves.. but then, as i said, there are some questions that remain unanswered...

we spent the next hour going through the facts and figures with our entrepreneur though i wonder how she was able to think at all given that she would keep melting into tears every few minutes and speak about how when she grew up, she did not that there was a city beyond the bridge that separate new orleans from the lower ninth ward.. and that she wanted to help the people of ninth ward... so much... it was all very touching and we tried our best to convey our confidence in her and reassure her that she will be great...

we then had a couple of great speakers, Dr. Francis, who had won the Presidential medal of honor, the highest civil award given to an American who spoke to us about what was lacking in the post katrina efforts (decision making) and what is required to be done now. and then we had one of the gsb alum, mike, who spoke to us about what you need to make a career out of new orleans (be a new orleanian!)..

and then came our feedback and thank you and award certificates.. all of which was fun... and gave us a "warm fuzzy feeling" (I may seem a bit cynical here, but i did feel that way at that time), though nothing critical was revealed in the feedback we gave or received.. probably we reserved it for the written format...

AND THEN... we had an awesome french dinner at Antoine's, a 168 year old restaurant capable of seating 1100 people.. it is one of those miss not experiences... just to hear the chef recite his menu in his grand old fashioned flourish explaining to us the meaning of dishes in an accent that we did not quite get (or maybe it was just me!).. it was awesome food (I mean the bread and the salads) and some excellent wine chosen by one of our friends (yes, we had a wine expert in our group) and most important of all, some emotional moments, given it was our last dinner together. With that the trip officially got over. Hope you guys enjoyed reading the blog!!

no, was just kidding, how can I miss writing about our experiences later in the french quarter? we strolled in the frenh quarter till 3.30 that night only to go back to the hotel and leave by 4 am to catch our 6.30 am flight.. we had some hurricanes to help us unwind and spent a few hours at Cats meow, gaping at teenagers who were making fools of themselves (or just enjoying themselves) in the middle of the road.. it was a crazy experience... we also got a bit of exposure of the american culture (as our trip leader puts it) inside the bar... post that we split into two groups, some desiding to pursue more pleasurable alternatives while the rest of us headed to a jazz bar and later to a reggae bar, where we had a great time (it is always great when we know that it's going to end soon) dancing, taking our last snaps and bidding a warm spirited new orleans a reluctant good bye....

hope after reading this, you will all want to visit sun-kissed new orleans soon!
it is definitely worth it..

maalika

Day 6: Process, Process, Process

At 9am, we all knew this was going to be a long day. We already had a day’s worth of solid work behind us and felt confident we were moving towards consensus on the retail space allocation. When we met at 3pm, most of our questions from the previous night had been answered. We would never have all the information, but we were beginning to feel comfortable with each business. See photo for precise feeling rating :)

Jack at the whiteboard

Four number-crunching hours later, the vote was decidedly in favor of Phillina, the hair stylist. The group had arrived at its first decision of the night.

The funding decision remained and another round of deliberations ensued after a sumptuous Thai dinner that could not have come at a better time. The financing story had the twists and turns of a mild thriller but quickly turned into a lopsided $25,000 commitment to the hair salon when Tim threw out the possibility of financing the men’s formal wear business outside the N. Galvez. What was left were a bunch of contingency funds - $12,000 to Connie Jacobs of Unlimited Communications, conditional to her opening a store in the Upper 9th Ward & $35,000 to Rosalind Larkins of Next Level LLC provided that the grant would be matched by another philanthropic organization. We were now comfortably over our second major decision of the night.

The climax, though, had not yet played out. The uses for the remaining $28,000 were yet to be determined. Street lights, neighborhood beautification, bus stop benches were quickly shot down. IV was about Entrepreneurship. We decided not to stray from the cause.

Coincidentally, the hair salon team had determined that the cost of acquiring the parking lot adjacent to the building would be $28,000. Perhaps some saw that to be a sign. Others felt “parking” was not a cause they wanted to fund. Would the Stanford GSB students return claiming that they had funded a parking lot and one other business? IV was not prepared to fund the parking lot either. They had already injected $500,000 into the building and did not see fit to match Stanford’s bid to “buy” the parking lot. Miji and Darren assured us that they could work on several options including cobbling together a deal with Eldridge (possibly renting a few spots from him). Yet would this arrangement support the 8 hair stylists, their 8 customers, and technology center staff? Most doubted the sustainability of such measures but felt disinclined to commit a sum of money before all possibilities had been explored. $28,000 was eventually set aside as a contingency fund for parking and other entrepreneurial activities.

At 1am, we closed deliberations on our final decision. The final presentation team ploughed on, putting together a slide deck for the board advisory committee while the others put the finishing touches to the entrepreneur-facing deliverables. A tiring day in all, but one well spent.

- Anupama Sharma

Day 5; the day of meetings..

after the amazing brass band and the cajun food yesterday, i should say that we were all somewhat satisfied and were more than ready to take on "our day of work". but it was still intense. the day started with our team having worked out the number yesterday wanting to meet our entrepreneur to confirm each of our gut feel, that this was a woman who deserved galvez.. unless there was some other team with a more eligible entrepreneur..

to give a bit of background: our team of 16 had split into four groups and each of us worked with one entrepreneur and we had to decide on which entrepreneur we will allocate a space in the upper 9th ward to and which one we will grant up to a sum of 1oo grand to.

that said, we met our entrepreneur and realized that she was a solid business women and the ideal role model that the space required.. she was born and brought up in the lower ninth ward, had three kids and working two jobs and saving up for her business.. after that we continued typing away our thoughts and our models, for we had prepare for a meeting that night where all the teams had to pitch for what they wanted..

later that evening we had a happy hour, where i got to meet some interesting people over a glass of excellent wine and amazing food.. the chef was kind enough to bring me a bowl yummy (being vegetarian in nola is a challenge of a different kind).. and then we had an hour to ourselves to unwind, tie the loose ends with our team and head for what one be one of the longest meetings that i have had after 9 pm.

the meeting happened in my room.. which was good, because as the meeting proceeded through eleven, twelve and one am, i was losing my ability to concentrate on what was going on and was just waiting for everyone to leave so I could sleep! but that selfish thought aside, i think we all did our best to debate out every single point and gained a fair idea of what each of needed to do the next day to reach our crucial decisions which had to be decided by the end of the following day...

until friday...

maalika

Day 4: The Galvez Pharmacy

We rolled into the Upper 9th Ward on a bright sunny morning. A loud pop song echoed through the street as we were ushered into an erstwhile pharmacy, which the Idea Village would renovate and give away as retail space to one the four short listed entrepreneurs based on our recommendation.

The wrecked pharmacy must have once been a thriving store. Today, apart from the Visa and Mastercard stickers and the Exit sign, little else remained. A dozen shattered Gin bottles lay in a corner under the stairway that disappeared into the second floor. Idea Village plans to build a Technology Center and a satellite IV office in the space above.

Eldridge, a former fire fighter, local restaurateur, Laundromat owner and the neighborhood “godfather” is a simple unassuming man who runs Poppa’s Seafood Deli across the street. We were soon to realize how crucial he would be in the success of not just the business that we bring into the retail space but also in the development of the business ecosystem in the Upper 9th Ward. Miji, the director of the Innovative Space Program of the Idea Village, believed that small clusters of businesses could gather a critical mass that would attract residents and other businesses back to N. Galvez. Isolated businesses would not be likely to gain from Eldridge’s halo effect.

Eldridge spoke about his plans to open a hair salon and did not feel another hair salon would compete with his own. He also welcomed a baby clothes retail store and liked the idea of a bill-payment service for his community. The 1000 sq. ft. commercial space came with only one problem. Parking was severely constrained and Eldridge did not like the idea of customers stealing the parking spots in his restaurant lot. Ironically, the parking issue would soon return to haunt us at 1am on Friday morning.

Lunch turned out to be a torturously long wait, and the food never did arrive in time. That afternoon was our only chance to have face time with the entrepreneurs and we were already running late when walked out with our food in boxes. Miji drove our team to Harvey, Westbank while the other three teams returned to the IV offices. As we systematically went to work, peppering our respective entrepreneurs with questions, IV supported us every step of the way. They fed us well, chauffeured us around and facilitated our analysis in ways that always exceeded our expectations.
P&Ls were scrutinized, models were cranked, frameworks were (over) applied – all in a day’s work of us business school types. Caffeine and wireless from PJ’s, the coffee shop next door, might have been the single biggest driver of productivity after IV’s own charming staff. This could have easily been “a day in the life of a consultant” if ever there was one.

- Anupama Sharma