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Joshua Wallack, MBA 1999, is director of business development at the Fifth Avenue Committee, which promotes social and economic justice in South Brooklyn, principally by developing and managing affordable housing, creating employment opportunities, organizing residents and workers, and combating displacement caused by gentrification. Prior to HBS, Wallack attended Yale University, then worked at Project Renewal, which helps care for and rehabilitate homeless men and women in New York City. While at HBS, he was copresident of the Social Enterprise Club, which he helped make into one of the most active and visible clubs on campus.
I decided to go to Harvard Business School after five years working on job training and education programs for homeless men and women in New York City. I thought that a business education would make me a better manager, and help me better identify opportunities for the public and private sectors to work together to address social problems. As a result, I looked only at business schools that had made a significant commitment to social enterprise.
While exploring business schools, one of the factors I looked at most closely was loan-forgiveness programs. I wanted to be certain that upon graduation, I would be able to pursue the best opportunity for applying my skills, even if it meant working at an organization that lacked the resources to pay a higher salary. I felt that if a school was deeply committed to bringing the skills and talents of MBAs to nonprofit and governmental organizations, that commitment would be reflected in a program to help MBAs afford to work in those kinds of places.
I saw right away that HBS makes a serious institutional commitment to advancing social enterprise, and the school's loan-forgiveness program reflects that commitment. It does make it possible for MBAs with large loan commitments to direct their energies into nonprofits, NGOs, and government agencies—even relatively small ones that could not ordinarily afford to hire MBAs.
In my own case, it has enabled me to work for the Fifth Avenue Committee, a small, neighborhood-based organization that is pursuing cutting-edge strategies in community development and neighborhood organizing. We are developing innovative, affordable housing in our neighborhood, developing small businesses to employ people who have serious barriers to employment, training people for high-wage jobs, and organizing neighborhood residents for social change. We accomplish this with a values-driven, market-oriented approach that includes social-purpose business development and investment (directly creating jobs), targeted workforce development (skills training in sectors of the economy where good career ladders exist), job development and placement services, and social-support services so that people can achieve their career goals.
One of our initiatives, Brooklyn Workforce Innovations, plans to develop two new social-purpose businesses this year. I am currently working on developing a quick-oil-change center that will hire long-term unemployed people and ex-offenders. A local community college will train the workers at night to become auto mechanics, a career with a clear ladder and strong prospects for earnings growth. Tasks in developing this business include: developing a business plan, finding lenders and investors, finding a suitable location for the business and negotiating purchase of the site, managing construction of the site, hiring a staff including a manager, forming the linkages with the training program, and overseeing the business as an owner would.
I use the skills I learned in business school every day. In fact, we are working with a foundation committed to venture philanthropy, and I am helping my unit director develop a "growth plan" that is very much like a business plan for our nonprofit. Without the loan-forgiveness program, I could not be here doing the work that I love and believe in.