Wharton’s EMBA program is known for having a global focus with its International Seminar; however the addition of global modular courses has taken this to a whole new level. Launched in 2010, the week-long  mini-courses offer students opportunities to learn about topics such as financial institutions in Abu  Dhabi, supply chain management in Shanghai, innovation in India, and leadership and conflict resolution in Rwanda.

Having recently returned from the course in Rwanda, we asked EMBA students Marla Bleavins and Bill Williams to tell us about their experience. Here’s what Marla, a second-year student at Wharton | San Francisco who is a special projects manager for Los Angeles World Airports, had to say:

“Most Americans know about Rwanda because of the tragedy of genocide that happened there in 1994, but we aren’t as familiar with the progress the country has made since then. It’s the fastest growing economy in Africa and one of the safest and least corrupt countries on that continent so I was intrigued to learn more about it through this course, which was taught by Prof. Katherine Klein and called, ‘Leadership, Conflict, and Change.’

Each year, second-year students in Wharton’s EMBA program vote on a location for their International Seminar trip. With options including India, China, Turkey and Brazil, it was a tough decision, but in the end both the East and West Coast classes voted on Brazil.

The BRIC country’s position as Latin America’s largest economy and its strength in a diversity of areas such as steel, oil drilling, and renewable energy attracted the students’ interest. During the week-long trip, they visited local and international companies to learn more about challenges and opportunities in the region.

After working for the government for 12 years, including positions at the White House and the National Security Council, Frank Lavin wanted to transition into the business world and saw an MBA from Wharton as the key to accomplishing that goal.

It didn’t take long, as he joined Citibank in Hong Kong immediately after graduating in 1996 from Wharton’s EMBA program. “Wharton’s MBA Exec program helped enormously because I wasn’t just changing jobs, but careers. I needed a new skillset to move into banking and Wharton provided those tools.”

Each year, second-year Wharton EMBA students spend a week abroad examining how businesses develop and implement strategy in a competitive global context. While that trip is the culmination of their International Seminar, it’s not uncommon for students to organize additional treks to gain further insight into the economic, political, social and cultural factors that influence business in other regions.

Last month, a group of 21 students from Wharton | San Francisco participated in a trek to Beijing and  Shanghai. We asked second-year student Hari Kannan, a technologist at VCE in the Silicon Valley, to share some highlights from the trip. Here’s what he had to say:

Before coming to Wharton’s EMBA program, Hanson Wong, a principal consultant at Risk Management Solutions in New Jersey, had never swum in the waters of Antarctica, hiked across a desert or summited a volcano. In fact, he had never even gone camping much less rappelled down mountains or zip lined   across steep chasms. However, during his two years at Wharton, he did all of these things through the Wharton Leadership Ventures Program.

“My first venture was to Antarctica, which most people only ever see from a cruise. We not only camped there, but a few of us also decided to jump in the water twice. How many people can say they did that?” says Wong, noting that he added on a week of hiking in Patagonia after that venture.

Bruce Crocker, a legal advisor and trustee for the Hillman family in Pittsburgh, applied to Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program in Philadelphia not only to enhance his understanding of the investment landscape, but also because he thought the rigorous academic program would be good for his “60-year-old brain.” So far, he’s gotten a lot more from the program than he originally planned, including a vast knowledge about India’s healthcare system, new friends in India, and first-hand experience as a consultant.

When Feng Deng applied to Wharton’s EMBA program in San Francisco, he was a successful entrepreneur running NetScreen Technologies in the Silicon Valley.  His company employed 1,000 people, but to eventually manage a larger team, he knew he needed a formal business education.

Working as an associate vice president of “everyday banking” at TD Bank, headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Jason Thacker became interested in earning an MBA to sharpen his financial skills and become a stronger leader.  He also wanted exposure to the best possible business minds, which for him meant one school -- Wharton.

Ian Lombard was director of the technology products group at his computer products company when he decided that it was time for a change.  He wanted to transition into a different industry, but his undergraduate degree was in molecular biology, which limited his options.  His path forward turned out to be Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives in San Francisco.

Registrants from 30 states and 14 countries joined us last week for our first-ever Webcast event.  During the interactive presentation, streamed live from Philadelphia and San Francisco, participants heard from administrators, faculty, students, and alumni.  It was a great opportunity to learn more about Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives.  If you missed it, it’s not too late. You can watch the replay.

The interactive presentation began with Vice Dean Anjani Jain providing an overview of our program.  He was joined by Wharton Professors David Bell, Peggy Bishop Lane, and Witold Henisz who shared their experiences teaching in our program.  Students and alumni on both coasts then discussed the benefits of the Wharton MBA degree and how they handled the challenge of working while they earned it.

Although we covered a lot of topics during the Webcast, you still might have questions. If so, please contact us at either our San Francisco or Philadelphia Office. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Whether it’s the legality of having your favorite clothes copied in China or the ins and outs of mortgage refinancing, second-year Wharton | San Francisco executive MBA student Jennifer Saranow Schultz covers it all as the lead writer for the Bucks Blog of the New York Times.  Writing three or four posts a day, Schultz provides tips and tricks to help consumers better manage their bucks.

While coming up with that many topics to write about every day might sound challenging, Schultz, who has been writing for the New York Times for a little over a year and was previously a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, says that Wharton has turned out to be a great source for blog ideas. “I find topics to write about from a lot of places, but being in school with 90 other people who are dealing with a range of issues like student loans and taxes has been great. Now that my classmates know that I write the blog, they’ll come to me with ideas and are really supportive,” she says.

Schultz has based several blogs on classroom discussions too. “We touched on IRAs in macroeconomics, which led to blog ideas,” says Schultz. “And my Negotiations class with Prof. Maurice Schweitzer has provided a wealth of ideas for posts including how we tested out what we learned in class about negotiating prices during our recent international seminar in China. Another topic that originated in class was whether it is legal to get clothes copied in Asia.”

As for balancing the deadlines with school, the San Francisco resident says that her East Coast hours have turned out to work very well with Wharton’s EMBA program. “I have to get my first post in by 7:30 a.m. Pacific Time so I can write before I leave for school. And on other days, it’s like a normal job, but on East Coast time which gives me a few extra hours to focus on school before the West Coast work day ends.”

If you have a personal finance question you’re wondering about, email it to Schultz at: Jennifer.saranowschultz@nytimes.com

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
 

Meet and interact with Wharton MBA for Executives professors, alumni, students and admissions staff during our first-ever webcast event, streaming live from both Philadelphia & San Francisco.

Thursday, January 20, 2011
7:00-8:00pm EST / 4:00-5:00pm PST
REGISTER FOR THE WEBCAST

Get a Taste of the Classroom Experience
Live from Philadelphia: Vice Dean Anjani Jain asks faculty about their experience teaching in the program, including current topics from recent classes. 

David Bell, Professor of Marketing
Peggy Bishop Lane, Professor of Accounting
Witold Henisz, Professor of Management 

Meet Admissions Staff
Live from San Francisco:  Vice Dean Anjani Jain introduces members of the Admissions Committee, including Bernadette Birt, COO of Wharton | San Francisco and Cathy Molony, Director of Admissions, Wharton MBA Program for Executives.

Interact with Students and Alumni
Live from both Philadelphia & San Francisco:  Alumni and students share their stories about the benefits, both personal and professional, of the Wharton MBA degree.

The webcast will include forums for posting questions as you watch.  We hope you'll join us!

When Emir Kiamilev entered Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives at Wharton | San Francisco in 2005, he was running a successful tea company in Uzbekistan with yearly revenue of $7 million.  His goal was to learn how to successfully expand the company into other regions not only to grow the business, but also to mitigate the risks of political instability in Uzbekistan.

At first, everything was going according to plan. He based his family in San Diego where his parents lived and commuted to Uzbekistan once a quarter to apply the knowledge he learned in school.  He even used the tea business as the subject of a consulting project in one of his classes.

But in his second year, the worst case scenario happened – he lost the company due to political instability.  “In those countries, it’s hard to finance anything so it was a cash-based business in which we reinvested all profits.  I was married with three kids, but had no income and we were really down to nothing.  I got loans for school, but our whole lifestyle changed overnight.”

The “up side” at the time, he says, was the fact that he was in school and could access Wharton’s extensive network and dedicated career management resources.    After meeting representatives from Mattel, Inc., he was offered a position as a finance manager.  “I was excited because I wanted to come into a consumer products company and learn how Fortune 500 companies do business in corporate America,” says Kiamilev.

Kiamilev and his wife shared an entrepreneurial spirit and also wanted to start up a business.  Attending several gourmet food shows, they decided their market niche would be in confectionaries so they took online classes on topics such as how to make chocolate and even flew to Paris for lessons from a high-end chocolatier.

Ultimately, they decided to focus on caramels and in 2009, with $50,000 from friends and family, they launched Amella.  Their artisan cocoa butter caramels are now in more than 200 stores and high-end hotels and the couple hopes to break even by the end of 2010.

Kiamilev says, “It would have been much harder to start over without my Wharton education.  I’ve seen other friends go through similar situations and they could not recover.  But because of Wharton, I have the tools, knowledge and network to one day be bigger than I was in Uzbekistan.  The executive MBA program opened a lot of doors and is helping me be a better businessman.”

Igor Taber never thought too much about what his commute would be like to Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program in San Francisco. After all, his assignment for Intel Corp. in Moscow was scheduled to end soon after school began and he’d be living back in the Bay Area. But two months into the program, that all changed when he took a new job as investment director at Intel Capital and moved back to Moscow.

Having graduated this past May, we asked Igor to share his thoughts on what it was like commuting from Russia every other weekend. Here’s what he had to say:

“One of the main reasons I wanted to pursue an MBA was to move from a business development role into VC and private equity so when I was offered the job of investment director -- working with VC and private equity type of investments in Russia -- I didn’t want to turn it down.

Taking the job meant transferring to Wharton’s Philadelphia campus in order to shorten the commute and even then I was facing a 16-hour commute -- on a good day without any snow or volcano delays. I actually did consider deferring school since my wife and I thought it would be a little crazy to do that commute for two years. On the other hand, I didn’t want to give up something I had already started and I really wanted to earn my MBA from Wharton.

So I took the job and stayed in school. My typical schedule involved catching a flight from Moscow on Thursday morning with a connection somewhere in Europe or Washington, DC. I’d arrive in Philadelphia around 5:00 p.m. that same Thursday because of the time difference. Going back, I’d leave Saturday night after classes and get home by Sunday evening.

I joked with my classmates that having so much down time to study on an airplane might give me an unfair advantage, but I learned that you can’t spend an entire flight studying. Instead, I balanced out studying with sleeping and unwinding by watching movies.

As for my study group, it wasn’t that big of a deal for me to be in Russia because we did so much work online and through conference calls. Most people work in global organizations and have colleagues in various parts of the world and in different time zones so it wasn’t that novel of a situation to anyone.

A bigger challenge, aside from being gone from the office so much, was being away from my wife. The closer I got to graduation, the harder it was to get on that plane because the finish line was so near and the commute was so long. 

Another challenge was jetlag. Getting together with classmates on Friday evenings is just as big a part of the program as projects and classes, but unfortunately Friday night was when jet lag would usually hit.  Sometimes, I forced my way through it, but other times I simply went to bed.

However, looking back, it was all worthwhile.  I wouldn’t have done that commute for your average MBA program, but given all the benefits of Wharton and its international reputation, it was worth it. I’ve gained an ability to ask critical questions and look at things from a different perspective, which are important for a VC. Add to that the Wharton network not only around the world, but here in Moscow as well, and the benefits are huge.

And I gained quite a few frequent flier miles. A running joke with my classmates was that by the time I graduated, I had flown so many miles that I could have gone to the moon and back!”

Thanks to Igor for sharing his experience. We hope he uses some of those frequent flier miles to come back and visit us soon!

As director of Leadership and Management Programs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a senior lecturer at Columbia University, Lt. Colonel Todd Henshaw has taught leadership for more than a decade. During that time, he started learning more about Wharton’s leadership programs by teaching Executive Education courses and participating in Leadership Center programs. He even spoke at Wharton’s annual Leadership Conference.

Fortunately, he was so impressed by what he saw at Wharton that he decided to come on board after he retired from the military. Now, as director of Wharton’s Executive Leadership Program, he’s assessing and enhancing many of the leadership offerings for our MBA Exec students. To learn more about what he has in store for us, we asked him to share his thoughts on Wharton’s Leadership Program and his plans for the coming year. Here’s what he said:

“I’ve always been interested in working with leadership programs that I consider to be cutting edge. The program at Wharton is probably the best leadership program associated with an MBA in the U.S. and I say that based on the way it engages students and teaches and embraces leadership in different ways. It’s a comprehensive approach that is more than just a single course or coaching.

That said, there is still room to grow and I find that exciting. The first thing I will do is a needs assessment and that means talking to faculty, administrators, students, and alumni about what leadership looks like at the executive level. Executive MBA students need to be prepared for their current roles as well as their future roles as senior-level leaders. And within the EMBA classes, students are quite diverse, ranging from CEOs and entrepreneurs to vice presidents and senior managers. I need to design a program that works for everyone, but also allows tailoring to meet individual needs.

Students in an executive MBA program are typically expected to lead, but leadership isn’t something they’ve necessarily had a lot of instruction in. So when they are at Wharton, we want to prepare them for higher levels of responsibility with a grounding in leadership education and theoretical knowledge that they can apply to their own experiences.

In conjunction with classes, a way to achieve that is through experiential learning opportunities that we call the Wharton Leadership Ventures. The power of the ventures is taking people out of their normal routine and dropping them into a different context where the focus is on learning without distractions. Most people say these are life changing types of experiences. If they have a good learning experience, people tend to leave thinking differently about themselves, their organizations, and their roles as leaders.

I want to find out what types of Leadership Ventures might be best suited for an executive audience. I just took a group of Wharton executive MBA alumni on the Normandy Leadership Experience where we visited battlefields like Omaha Beach and talked about what happened there -- actually seeing how it looked at low tide. I want to design more experiential learning programs for EMBA students and alumni that meet their specific goals and objectives.

There are many great things going on at Wharton and the School definitely has the most progressive leadership program that I’ve seen at a business school in the U.S. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but rather make positive changes to ensure that our executive MBA students have the best experience possible.”

We welcome Todd to Wharton’s MBA Program for Executives and look forward to new Leadership Ventures and Experiences!

Related blogs:

Wharton MBA Exec Alumni Learn about Leadership and WWII History during Trip to Normandy
"Remote" Learning: Wharton EMBA Students Talk about Leadership Venture in Antarctica

For alumni of Wharton’s MBA for Executives program who also happen to be students of history, the recent Leadership Experience in Normandy organized by Wharton’s Leadership Ventures and Academy Leadership was the perfect way to combine experiential learning about leadership and World War II. The Leadership Experience - led by retired U.S Army Lt. Colonel Todd Henshaw, director of Wharton’s Executive Leadership Program, Dennis Haley, founder and CEO of Academy Leadership, and author Ed Ruggero – took alumni on a very unique tour of Normandy, focusing on critical leadership lessons for today’s executives.

We asked three of our alumni who went on the trip, Roger Crandall, a 2002 graduate of our East Coast program who is now president and CEO of MassMutual (he will become chairman of the board in December) in Springfield, Mass., Dr. Leslie Shaff, a 2006 graduate of our East Coast Program who is now chief surgical services officer at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass., and Celine Wei, a 2009 graduate of Wharton | San Francisco who is vice president of business development at Florens Container Services Ltd., to share some of the highlights of what they saw and learned.

Here’s what Roger had to say: “I had just joined the School’s Leadership Advisory Board when I heard about this trip. Not only am I a history buff, but I’m a World War II history buff and had never been to Normandy so this trip was a good fit.

“Starting at Pegasus Bridge, we worked our way from one end of the region to the other, talking about war strategy and tactics and looking at each piece of a battle in bite-size chunks.  And then we turned it around and looked at the German side and compared their leadership to the American command.

“I’m a huge fan of experiential learning so I got a lot out of this trip. It not only reinforced my belief that leadership is an integral part of the business school curriculum, but that the same leadership issues have been around for thousands of years. Leaders have always had to think about whether there is good communication, whether their troops understand their intent, and whether their troops are empowered to make decisions. Those things transcend time.

“While the history lessons were amazing, what really made this a great trip were the people. Other than my mother and sisters who joined me on the trip – we left spouses and kids at home - and a director of Wharton’s EMBA program, I didn’t previously know any of the other members of our group. It turned out that there were about 15 alumni and guests from very diverse age groups and backgrounds.  Todd, Dennis and Ed did a great job of actively involving everyone in robust discussions and there were takeaways for everyone. One of my sisters even found leadership lessons for parenting her teenage girls.

“After you graduate from Wharton, you sometimes lose sight of how powerful it can be to get a group of people together to learn and discuss a common topic of interest. To be able to recapture that on this type of trip was great.”

Leslie Shaff says, “I was interested in this trip because my husband loves history and has always wanted to visit the Normandy beaches so this was a great opportunity for both of us. And based on my experience coming to Philadelphia every other weekend during school, I knew that every detail would be well organized and our time and effort would be spent learning and experiencing rather than worrying about how to get to the next place.

“The five-day trip was wonderful! Starting with dinner at our superb hotel on the first night in Paris to our talks on the beaches, the trip was everything I hoped it would be. In Normandy, one could really imagine what it was like to have landed during D-Day, what people were feeling, and what the generals were thinking. We talked about what they did right, what didn’t work, and why D-Day turned out to be such a crucial event in the war. The experience was educational as well as fun.

“In addition, we spent our evenings at a beautiful chateau in Normandy and had lovely dinners where we talked with everyone in our group. It was a great way to experience the countryside and what happened there with a diverse group of people who have a similar interest in history.

“I would absolutely recommend this type of trip to other alumni. I want to know when and where Wharton will organize the next trip for MBA Exec alumni!”

Celine adds, “When I heard about this trip, I knew I wanted to go. Not only is Wharton known for its Leadership Program, but it was an opportunity to go to France and reconnect with other alumni. And coming from China, I wanted to learn about WWII history from the U.S. and European perspectives so this trip was particularly interesting to me.

“One of the highlights of the trip was the chateau. It was in the countryside in a quiet setting so our group had dinners together more like a family and could really talk about the day’s events. Each evening, we’d have a discussion about what we learned and how that linked to our own organizational experiences.

“Once you graduate, there aren’t that many chances to get back together with a group like this to discuss common topics. Being on this trip reminded you that you belong to the Wharton community, which is a special group. Plus, not too many people have the chance to visit Normandy with experts like Todd, Dennis, and Ed telling you about the history, leading discussions, and teaching leadership lessons – you’d never get all that on another tour.”

We’ll be sure to keep everyone posted on upcoming trips! Thanks to Roger, Leslie, and Celine for sharing their experiences.

China is pretty hot these days, especially among Wharton’s MBA exec students. Beating out other locations like Korea, Turkey, Brazil, and India, the second-year classes at both the Philadelphia campus and Wharton | San Francisco voted to take their international seminar trips to China.  The week-long trips, which follow the core courses Competitive Strategy and Global Strategic Management, include corporate visits and a variety of social activities, and are often cited by students as a highlight of their Wharton experience.

Wharton | San Francisco, second-year student Mark He is helping to organize his class’ upcoming trip to Beijing and Shanghai. “What could be better than having our entire class – and many of our partners -- travelling thousands of miles away and hanging out for a week getting to know each other better? This is the peak of our networking experience,” he says.

His class plans to kick off their company visits with meetings at Microsoft, COFCO, Baidu, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) China. The next day, students will visit Innovation Works and Walmart. Visits to companies such as Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Nike, Bayer, General Motors, Nokia, and real estate development group Shui On will round out the rest of the week.

“Many of the visits were set up through students’ professional contacts, and Wharton alumni were very effective too. In fact, the former president of the Wharton Seattle Alumni Club is now in China and he referred us to a lot of contacts,” says He.

On the social side, the group is planning a variety of dinners in both cities so students can pick and choose where they want to go each night. “It seems like the majority of spouses and partners are coming on the trip too so it will be great hanging out with everyone,” he says.

And like many of his classmates who are taking additional trips together to places like Korea and India before or after the seminar, He is planning a trip with his wife and several fellow students to his hometown of Hangzhou, China.

“For those of us who came from China originally, it’s great that we can contribute our personal network there. And for those who have never been before, to experience China this way and make these high-level connections during the company visits is great. This is a perspective you would never get as a regular tourist,” says He.

While the West Coast class will divide its time between Beijing and Shanghai, the East Coast class will spend the entire week in Shanghai, says second-year Philadelphia student Tim Power, who is helping to organize his class’ seminar. “We voted on Shanghai because you can’t avoid thinking and talking about China in our classes and in our jobs. It just keeps coming up so it wasn’t really a surprise that our class picked China as the location for our seminar,” he says.

Power, who is director of portfolio and asset strategy for Bristol-Myers Squibb, says that his class plans to meet with a diverse group of organizations ranging from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Google and Pfizer to Geely Automotive, Dell and Huashan Hospital. “We’re starting the week out with a briefing from someone at the U.S. Consulate on what it’s like to do business in China and then we have a mix of professional service companies, healthcare, finance, automotive, and tech.”

On the social side, students can sign up to attend dinners throughout Shanghai each night. During their day off, they also can sign up for tours as well as attend the World Expo. And like the Wharton|San Francisco students, many are bringing their spouses or partners on the trip. “On our next Wharton weekend, we’re actually having a dinner for the partners to get to know each other better before we leave for China,” says Power, noting that many students are also planning side trips throughout Asia.

“We just finished the Global Strategy course and had a speaker from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies give a presentation on China so we’re all getting really excited about the trip. It will be a great way to learn more about business in China as well as to bond with our classmates,” says Power.

Stay tuned for updates on the international trips which run Sept. 27-Oct. 1 for Wharton | San Francisco students and Sept. 20-24 for Philadelphia students.

In early January, Wharton offered its first ever course in India: “Innovation and the Indian Health Care Industry.”  This three-day mini-course, held at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, covered the full range of health care issues in India - hospital management, medical tourism, pharmaceuticals, and more.  Nine executive MBA students attended, joining 21 full-time MBA students, and three undergraduates.  The course was directed by Wharton health care professor Lawton Burns, but lectures were given by eleven executives and leaders in Indian healthcare, many of whom have ongoing ties to Wharton.

Dr. Prasad Kilaru was one of three medical doctors in the EMBA program to take the course.  “From a physician’s standpoint, there was really great information on hospitals, non-profits, pharmaceuticals, and more,” he said. “I also really enjoyed the lectures on medical tourism, including the presentation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”  

Rajani Veeramachaneni, a first-year MBA Exec student who runs her own strategy consulting firm claims it was “one of the best academic courses she has ever taken, as it approached the issue from so many angles.”  Veeramachaneni enjoyed not only the lectures on hospital management and medical tourism but the presentations on cutting-edge technologies, including e-Help, mobile health, and wireless medical technology.   “I was impressed by the low-cost structure of India’s healthcare system,” she said, “from which the U.S. can learn a lot.”

Robert Zwolinski, a second-year EMBA student in San Francisco, took the course with the aim of applying his findings to his current job.  As the Director of Operations of a small pharmaceutical company in the Bay Area, Zwolinski wanted to explore the possibility of outsourcing development work – including formulation development, clinical development, and clinical trials.  “The course provided me an excellent opportunity to find out what I need to send work over there,” he said.  “India is not just a low cost option.  India offers many advantages – the education, talent, and intellectual capacity for specific activities - all of these advantages combine to make India a high quality option that can facilitate speed to market for products in development.”

In her first year in Wharton’s EMBA Program, Sarah Sullivan, a program analyst at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC, heard about the social impact projects in Wharton’s Global Consulting Practicum (GCP). They sounded like a good fit with her growing interest in social enterprises in developing countries, but she wanted to finish her core courses before signing up.

So after completing her first year courses as well as an independent study over the summer for a small beeswax producing company in Cameroon, she and five EMBA classmates signed up for the GCP. The course typically pairs teams of Wharton full-time and executive MBA students and faculty with teams from partner universities in countries such as China, India, Peru, and Israel to consult with a client company interested in entering or expanding its position in the U.S. market. However, their social impact project was a bit unique in that it involved working with a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania, government of Botswana, and the University of Botswana to build capacity in Botswana in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Having recently returned from a visit to Botswana for the GCP project, we asked Sullivan and her teammate William “Willy” McColgan to share some of the highlights of their trip with us. Here’s what Sullivan had to say:

“Since we left at the end of December, everything was still closed for the holidays in Botswana so we spent the first four days in South Africa and went on safari. It was a great opportunity to get to know my classmates even better and build a stronger foundation for our group.

When we went to Gaborone, Botswana, we first met the University of Botswana business students who were working with us on the project to hammer out our goals and what we would be doing for our client. We then met with a lot of people in Gaborone – doctors, people from the Center for Disease Control, the Ministry of Health, and a few business leaders and citizens. We even got a tour of the capital and a neighboring village, which was a chance to see more of the country and get a better feel for the culture.

We were blown away by how developed Botswana is compared to many other African countries. Yet despite their development and healthcare infrastructure, it has the highest prevalence of HIV with 25% of the population infected. There is not enough capacity in terms of beds, space, medicine, and number of hours with doctors and staff. Seeing that was really hard. And it made coordinating the work really challenging because you could spend hours on this fascinating project.

While there, we did identify a lot of issues that the partnership is facing. We’ll now conduct more research on the partnership and what needs to be done to sustain its funding with a long-term strategy. Our goal is to have specific recommendations in place by May.

This experience has confirmed my interest in doing business development and strategic planning for social enterprises in developing countries in the future. It also made me realize what an incredible opportunity I’ve had at Wharton that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve travelled to new places, met a lot of great people, seen other organizations in different environments, and gotten a world view of society. This was a capstone experience for me!”

McColgan agrees that the GCP trip was a wonderful experience. Here’s what he said about the project:
“When I first heard about the GCP’s social impact projects, I thought that no matter what else I do in the EMBA program, this is something I would look back on years from now and say it was really worthwhile and made an impact.

Once we arrived in Botswana, we headed straight over the border into South Africa for a safari to get adjusted to the time difference and prepare for the week ahead. What I remember the most from those days was getting stuck in the mud as it started to get dark and imagining all the things moving around you as well as a toga party on the game reserve on New Year’s Eve.

When we got to Botswana, we spent a lot of time planning and discussing our project and meeting with hospital staff, government representatives, and our University of Botswana counterparts. Later in the week, we went on the medical wards and met with residents from Penn’s Medical School as well as a Penn School of Nursing faculty member doing research on sabbatical. The University of Pennsylvania has certainly made an impact in Botswana. Hopefully our Wharton EMBA GCP team can help this continue.

This will definitely be a highlight of my time at Wharton. And I certainly strengthened my relationships with my classmates during that time, which is lasting. We’ll always have Africa!”

Many thanks to Sarah and Willy for sharing their GCP experiences. Learn more about the GCP.

Related blog: Wharton's Global Consulting Practicum EMBA Students Build International Teams While Working and Having Fun

Chris Dickey had a Doctorate in Public Health, but his job as general manager of a health services company in Manhattan wasn’t fulfilling his goal of making a real impact on a large number of people’s lives. To change that, he enrolled in Wharton’s MBA for Executives Program in 2006 where he seized the opportunity to brainstorm with classmates whenever he could about possible business plans. Soon after he graduated, he and a partner had a plan in place to create Healthpoint Services, a market-based approach to meeting the health needs of consumers at the base of the economic pyramid. In addition to providing clean water, the business also provides medical clinics in remote villages that connect patients to doctors via videoconferencing technology and remote diagnostics.

It’s been about 18 months since he graduated so we asked Chris to share some of the highlights of his unique entrepreneurial experiences with us. In addition to sending us a video video from a recent trip to India, here’s what he had to say:

“Poor people in the developing world typically don’t have access to clean water and affordable, high-quality health care. We set out to change that through a village-based unit called a Healthpoint that combines a Reverse Osmosis plant attached to a raw water source with the latest in telemedicine technology, approved drugs, and 65 diagnostic tests (and counting) that cover a range of common illnesses.

My partner, Allen Hammond, and I are convinced that we are among the pioneers of this new market-based approach to meeting the health needs of this vast group of consumers making and spending less than about $3 per day. We believe that a commercial venture focused on delivering high-quality care at an affordable price will create efficiencies, economies of scale, and a profitable, scalable company that will transform health outcomes for millions of people.

We officially launched the first three Healthpoints in India last October to some fanfare – both the Punjab Governor and Finance Minister were there as well as the national media. The politicians were so impressed with the operation that they asked us to build 600 more units in the next three years!

I recently returned from a visit to the Healthpoints, which are in Mallan, Doda, and Kotbhai, and also to our new call center based in Bathinda. I’m delighted to say that the units are all thriving, even after such a short time. The waiting rooms are full, people are lining up with 20 liter jugs to purchase clean water, and the staff is thrilled to be part of a revolutionary effort to provide access to health care for rural villagers.

During that trip, I watched a follow-up visit to the Healthpoint in Mallan by a woman who had been treated by us for joint pain a week before. She came to review her progress on the prescribed medicines and to get further instructions. She appeared to be very content with her treatment, which cost her 30 rupees (about $0.65) plus the cost of the medicines. Her doctor, too, was happy with the outcome. The fact that the doctor and patient were looking at one another through video screens seemed not to register to either of them.

The next morning, we drove to Doda, a village of about 1,500 families, nearly all of whom make a living from the vast farmland that surrounds it. When we arrived at the Healthpoint, several men were packing their 20 liter jugs full of water (which cost them 2 rupees) on the backs of their bicycles. One of the amazing aspects of this company is that getting the water has become a man’s job in these towns, replacing a traditional woman’s chore. We think it’s because the Healthpoints are also high tech gathering places and getting the water is now a cool thing to do for the men!

Inside the Healthpoint, I joined a consultation in progress. A farm worker was suffering from pains in his shoulder and side. He had been to the local government clinic where he was given vitamins and a pain killer without any real discussion. Our clinical assistant took the man’s blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and weight, carefully entering it into his electronic medical record. During the examination, our doctor was present via a large screen monitor and was asking lots of questions. It turns out that the patient had experienced several episodes during his life that appeared to be epileptic seizures. The doctor ruled out an immediate threat to the man’s health and then asked whether the patient could afford 500 rupees to get an EEG in Bathinda to check for epilepsy. The patient said yes, he had saved enough over the past year to cover the expense.

Absent a referral by our doctor, who is known in Bathinda, that EEG might have cost the worker several thousand rupees, a sum that he would have to borrow from a local loan shark, thereby ensuring that neither he nor his young family would ever escape the economic and health consequences of his illness.

I saw several other patient visits that day, not only in Doda, but also in Mallan and Kotbhai, and I was impressed by the warmth and care provided by our staff and also by patients’ ease in being seen by a doctor on TV. It’s incredible that most of these individuals have never seen a real doctor before and now they interact with one as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. The video and sound quality is so high, the lighting is so good, and the care with which the employees treat these poor patients is so genuine that the exchange of information is excellent. I’d gladly trade some of my experiences with the medical system in New York for ones like this.

When I think back on all those hours spent at Wharton discussing business ideas that would  make a difference, we owe a significant debt of gratitude to my Wharton EMBA colleagues, including Sarabjit Singh, Vikas Khurana, Mike Parker, and Rittik Chakrabarti.  I really believe that there is a tremendous demand for services like ours, not just in Punjab but in many other Indian states and other developing countries.”

Thanks to Chris for sharing those highlights and good luck to Healthpoint Services in its future growth!

To learn more about Healthpoint Services, contact Chris Dickey at: chris.dickey@e-healthpoint.net