Essay 2--Mission Statement

Thunderbird Mission: "We educate global leaders who create sustainable prosperity worldwide."

In order to create sustainable prosperity in the future, I will adopt a network that utilizes connecting people to resources which will maintain and grow by themselves.  They must be able to continue on their own accord and benefit the community.  While having short-term benchmarks, the goals must be long-term focused.  All the while, the system must keep in mind that we are all part of one global community.  At the core, sustainable prosperity must endure while benefiting society.

As a future Thunderbird alumna, I look forward to combining an MBA-GM from Thunderbird with my past experience to contribute to sustainable prosperity throughout my career.  My past work included programs which taught entrepreneurship to people in a developing country to help them within their own society. These programs are easily done at the ground-level by setting up business incubators taught by locally trained professionals.  Business education is also about creating trusting relationships which bridge partnerships within countries and internationally.  Also, I will continue to maintain the highest-level of integrity, ethics, and responsibility.  Leadership by example, when words and language fail, still communicates the message of benefiting society.  Maintaining my own level of well-being in staying healthy and continuing to learn will add to the prosperity and longevity of my success and ability to carry on the aims of Thunderbird School of Global Management.  

There are many companies who serve as an example of sustainable prosperity with long-term goals structured in helping the global community.  Starting with Thunderbird’s “Thunderbird for Good” program, the goal is to educate entrepreneurs from developing countries with practical knowledge to use in their communities.  Next, USAID, with whom I have worked in Macedonia, is another organization committed to prosperity as seen in their “Business without Borders” program which helps facilitate new and supports existing enterprises. The UN’s “Millennium Development Goals” has already met three important targets on poverty, slums, and water well ahead of their 2015 target date. An organization which values optimism, collaboration, rigor, and innovation is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, “working to help all people lead healthy, productive lives”.  In today’s BBC World Report, I read about an enterprising young woman, Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, who started the Ethiopian eco-sustainable SoleRebles shoe company which started with an investment of less than $10,000 to use local materials by local people.  It is the long-term goals of these organizations that contribute to the betterment of the global community.

With innovation and technology, the world has seemed smaller with more immediate connections to people across the globe.  As the economies of developing countries grow, only time will tell if they will enact fair-trade agreements, invest in education and local infrastructure, and move out of poverty.  In 2011, Estonia graduated from a developing country to an advanced economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.  Estonia has among the highest percent of educated adults with high school diplomas, spends almost 1.5 percent of its GDP on Research and Development, and boasts that their developers created Skype.  Many countries can use Estonia’s example of free trade regime, a balanced budget, and innovative e-services to lift them out of poverty.  Even in today’s economy, it is possible to create sustainable prosperity by keeping short-term benchmarks which create long-term impacts for the good of society.

In order to achieve my goal of creating maintainable prosperity in developing communities, it is important for them to adapt the tools and lessons I teach them.  Therefore, it is the sentiment of Lao Tzu about building sustainable development that I remember when I travel to a new community: learn from them, and live with them.  As I influence them, and they adapt the lessons I teach, my community partners will say that they have done the work themselves.  The true goal of any community development guide is to create a level of sustainability where your absence is not noticed in their work, but in their hearts. 

Essay 1--Experience

Whether for work or leisure, during my past travels to 23 countries, I gained extensive experience in international travel and cross-cultural situations.  After my first flight on an airplane was to Beijing, China to participate on a high school traveling sports team, I found my passion for traveling and learning about cultures.  While in college, I studied and learned British culture during one semester abroad in Nottingham, England.  When I volunteered in Les Cayes, Haiti, I saw a level of poverty and despair in which people spend their whole lives.  Currently, I am serving as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Macedonia teaching business development.  I enjoy it so much, that I applied and was approved for a third year of service. From all of these experiences, I learned the value of three things: building relationships before doing business, embracing unexpected diversity in seemingly similar people, and that team is important when execution is critical.

I will add value to the Thunderbird experience with my classmates from around the world because I know that the characteristics which favor cross-cultural aptitude include openness to others and to new information, tolerance for ambiguity, a flexible nature, and curiosity.  During training to be a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV), I lived with a Macedonian host-family where I learned to be assertive for my own needs, while I adapted to a new and challenging environment.  After being sworn in as a PCV, I worked with the Local Economic Sector in the Municipality of Kavadarci.  Every day, I was flexible to many different criteria: sharing a computer, working late to finish a project, staying busy during periods of slow work, or creating my own business workshops.  In the PCV community, I immediately emerged as a leader and was elected by the volunteers to the Volunteer Advisory Council where I served as President.  They grew to know me as someone who is concerned about my peers, and advocates for change. Above all, having an inquisitive nature and an insatiable curiosity, I find meeting new people fascinating because they add to the intricacies of life.  I have enough life-experience and formal training to get along with people from all backgrounds.

Immediately following graduation, I will secure a career in an organization such as The Foreign Service, USAID, United Nations, UNICEF, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, or Operation for Securities and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).  Within five years, I will gain enough experience in one of these organizations to become a head of the sector, or Chief-of-Mission to a developing country.  The idea of business development and entrepreneur education continues to be at the forefront of my overall plans.  The most effective means to help developing countries are the programs centered on educating people to empower themselves to make a difference in their own communities.  Furthermore,  I will build on the lessons learned with an MBA-GM from Thunderbird and in the courses I took from the International Institute for Peace in “Introduction to Conflict Analysis” and “Introduction to Negotiation and Conflict Management” to become a better negotiator and orator.   Continuing to challenge myself by accepting roles which develop new skills will ultimately strengthen my leadership abilities.  

Over the next ten years, I will take these lessons-learned from working in the international arena and use them to urge the governments of developed countries to set up programs that exchange with less developed countries.  One program that the United States already has in place is the House Democracy Partnership (HDP) that works directly with countries around the world to support the development of effective, independent, and responsive legislative institutions by providing a forum to exchange ideas and provide training for developing governments.   I will be part of the global community who works together to create change.

My past experience, combined with an MBA-GM from Thunderbird, will bring my skills to the next level and prepare me with a global mind-set in business by strengthening my ability to focus on real-world solutions.  I already have direct international experience in promoting formation of micro-enterprises through an informal small business training program I developed.   Along with my direct personal experience as an entrepreneur in running a developing micro-business, the classes in “Accelerated Global Finance” and “Accelerated Global Accounting” from Thunderbird will improve my quantitative skills to be able to work on multi-million dollar programs.  While the training I received from Peace Corps taught me real-world experience working with businesses, Thunderbird’s Winterims/Summerims will prepare me to work with house-hold-name-branded companies.  Moreover, Thunderbird’s TEM Labs, to which I will apply, remind me of my entire three-year Peace Corps service.  In the TEM Labs, I will put my PCV experience to use with a team of qualified students to meet the needs of one organization in a foreign country.  The lessons-learned from this experience will stay with me as I work further in the global arena.

Finally, I am excited to connect with an exclusive network from the number-one ranked school in international business. Traveling extensively taught me about the importance of connecting with people.  Tapping into the network of more than 40,000 Thunderbird alumni will keep me connected throughout the globe.  In my international experience, I have been inspired by the alumni from Thunderbird whom I have met.  As a future T-Bird, I hope to inspire other potential global leaders.