Our Class of 2022 CASE Scholars introduce themselves!
Jenna Weinberg
I believe strongly in harnessing the power of market forces to achieve equity and empower communities. In his “Gospel of Wealth,” Andrew Carnegie asserts that inequality is an inevitable cost of progress. I unequivocally reject this view, believing that we can no longer consider philanthropy as separate from how financial success is achieved. Consequently, I dedicated my career to social impact, seeking to leverage cross-sectoral collaboration to address society’s systemic issues.
Starting at a very young age, I inherited messages about what it means to be successful from my mother. A social worker and “professional” volunteer, she taught me that success means being a positive contributor to one’s community. Taking these notions to heart, I spent eight years working in the nonprofit sector on issues, such as interfaith collaboration between Muslims and Jews, defense of democracy and civil and human rights in Israel and empowerment of next generation philanthropists. Additionally, I served on six nonprofit and foundation boards, often as the only millennial member.
Before coming to Fuqua, I was Vice President of Cambridge Heath Ventures (CHV), a boutique consulting firm focused on business and political strategy through a social change lens. In this role, I built unlikely partnerships between technology and labor, made a fiduciary case for considering diversity in asset management and promoted the voices of young elected officials with bold ideas sourced from the grassroots. I realized that every collaboration I fostered relied on making the business case for positive social impact and illuminating that market-based solutions are integral to solving our world’s greatest inequities. I also learned that those closest to the problem are often those closest to the solutions and how transformative it is to center those most affected within any decision-making process.
I am both a proud Baltimore native and graduate of the University of Michigan, where I received a B.A. in International Studies and Judaic Studies.
Why Fuqua?
I was immediately drawn to Fuqua’s focus on both business and society. Particularly in these polarizing times, Dean Boulding’s emphasis on our common purpose, servant leadership and teams based on belonging and support stood out to me. These are not common themes at most business schools.
On top of that, Fuqua is home to CASE, which supports not only social impact at Fuqua, but has broad influence in the social impact field worldwide as well. After I was admitted, I had a chance to get to know CASE’s Executive Director, Erin Worsham, whose cross-sectoral experience resonated with me. She made me feel like CASE was exactly the home I was looking for. Lastly, given my interest in impact investing, having Cathy Clark as a resource is a huge draw, as is CASE i3, where I will be able to consult for impact investing clients for credit.
What impact do you hope your Fuqua education will allow you to have on the world?
Marrying my commitment to social impact and belief that market-based tools are essential to this outcome, I plan to pursue a career in impact investing. Either by working directly for an impact fund or by becoming a certified financial advisor myself, I hope to help grow the movement of people who seek to invest in line with their values.
Additionally, I hope to help found or join a community-based investment fund that embraces democratic processes by ensuring that local residents decide what businesses should receive investment in their communities. Through this model, residents will be eligible for financial returns at a scale beyond what they invest financially themselves.
If successful, I hope to help advance a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable economy, where all people – regardless of their race, ethnicity or gender – thrive.
Share one of your 25 facts from your application essay.
My husband and I grew close while coaching basketball together with Israeli and Palestinian youth through an organization called PeacePlayers International. Over our wedding weekend, we organized a three-on-three basketball tournament for our family and friends that we called The Ball & Chain Classic. Not only did we raise $2500 for PeacePlayers by asking for donations in place of wedding gifts, but my team (made up of myself, my husband and my father) won! Good thing we did, since our father-daughter dance was to “We Are The Champions.”
Rony Cepeda
Every year the United States spends about $680 billion on education. However, we still get abysmal results, as our students of color and non-English speakers are significantly less likely to graduate from high school than their counterparts. As an immigrant who has personally navigated the U.S. education system, I am deeply committed to fight for more resource equity in the education and public sectors to ensure that those who need additional resources and help can obtain it and be successful.
My passion for fighting for resource equity is fueled by my own experiences. Growing up, I was always surrounded by loving, driven, and intelligent teachers and staff, but within a system that needed more resources. As a young adult, I wondered why neighboring schools always had the latest technology and facilities, while my school perpetually suffered from overcrowding and underfunding. I have seen firsthand that systems in the United States are inequitable – and have thus committed my career to social impact.
Over the past four years, I have worked as a consultant with an organization called Education Resource Strategies (ERS). Alongside an amazing team of passionate and smart individuals, I partnered with large school districts across the country to transform how they use resources. One of my projects involved helping a large southern school district develop a new school funding formula that would allocate $375 million to schools more equitably. The new funding formula gave more resources to schools with larger concentrations of high-need students, such as low-income students, transient students and English-language learners. I also worked with individual schools and principals to develop tailored strategic plans. As a result, principal satisfaction in one of the school districts significantly increased over the span of a couple of years.
In addition to my professional work, I also volunteer with education nonprofits in the Boston area. I served as a member of the Associate Board of Breakthrough Greater Boston, an organization that provides students with a six-year college access model and helps develop aspiring teachers. I also served as a mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts – supporting an incredible young adult who had recently emigrated from Latin America.
Why Fuqua?
In order to become a better organizational leader, I knew that I needed to find a place where I could learn new business skills while also applying them towards social impact. Fuqua and its Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) has the programming that would empower me to experience this growth. While at Fuqua, I plan on pursuing concentrations in social entrepreneurship, as well as financial analysis and accounting. In addition, I’m excited for the plethora of different programs Fuqua offers outside of the classroom that will allow me to gain firsthand experience and knowledge.
Yet, my decision to attend Fuqua goes beyond its wonderful programming. By speaking with various staff and students, I know that Fuqua is a values-driven school that I would be proud to call home. For example, I was impressed by how some Fuqua students served the local community by becoming non-voting board members of local nonprofits through Fuqua on Board. Fuqua and CASE, with all their great programming and values-driven community, is the right next step for me to grow as a leader.
What impact do you hope your Fuqua education will allow you to have on the world?
With everything that has happened in the world during the year 2020, it is now clearer than ever that we as a society cannot continue to do “business as usual.” Organizations can no longer solely focus on maximizing profit – if we are to truly be a responsible society, I believe that social impact and equity must be at the forefront of everything that an organization does. I hope that my Fuqua education will allow me to help build tomorrow’s novel organizations, structures, and policies that will genuinely focus on the triple bottom line. I envision myself being someone who stands up and speaks out in order to inspire organizations to build a better and more equitable system for all.
Share one of your 25 facts from your application essay.
I share a birthday with a famous fellow immigrant from the Caribbean: Alexander Hamilton. Though I don’t aim to be Secretary of the Treasury, I do share his interest in public-sector finance.
Bruce Junhaeng Lee
Even with years of intensive English education in Korea, I was very surprised to find myself unable to speak English fluently when I first traveled to the United States in 2010. I decided to come back and spent a year at the University of California, Davis as an exchange student in 2013. After I returned to Korea, I was shocked to run into a six-year old boy who spoke flawless English in one of the most coveted neighborhoods in Seoul. He had been learning English since he was two at a posh English-only daycare where all the teachers were Americans. I realized that social class was playing a definite role in widening the English proficiency gap between children. As odd as it may seem in a country where English is not an official language, English proficiency is directly correlated with the possibility of attending a better college and landing a better job. English education is where parents invest the majority of their capital for their children – even middle-class families often send their children to English kindergartens that cost $2,000 a month, as well as to summer camps in Canada or the United States. Children from low-income families are excluded from this nationwide craze, only to lose their confidence, not only in English, but also in their academic accomplishments and life path.
Upon realizing this, I became motivated to mitigate the problem I defined as the “English Divide,” the English proficiency gap between social classes. So, in addition to working as a Project Management Engineer at Hyundai Motors full-time, I founded Beyond the English Divide in 2017, a registered nonprofit organization. Beyond the English Divide aims to help underprivileged children find opportunities to learn English from foreign teachers, as well as narrow the dividing gap in social classes. Fast forward three years, it has delivered free, quality English education to over 200 underprivileged children.
Why Fuqua
At Fuqua, I plan to acquire knowledge on various disciplines of business from renowned faculty members and find answers for creating sustainable monetization strategies. Additionally, the Fuqua on Board program and Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum (FCCP) will allow me to grow into a stronger leader and will help me expand services and stable profits to be reinvested in my social enterprise. The Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), along with the Net Impact Club, has been a frontier of change in the field of social entrepreneurship and boasts a strong network of alumni committed to the field. I plan to connect with CASE alumni in social entrepreneurship and nonprofits to discuss how Beyond the English Divide could deliver impact for more people.
Furthermore, I desire to equip myself with strong leadership at Fuqua. Recruiting and motivating more than 300 foreign volunteers to my social enterprise to date was by no means an easy task. I had to address conflicts rising from the cultural differences between them and keep them committed to invest every Saturday without any compensation. At Fuqua, I aspire to attain the attributes of a leader who motivates and supports followers with a strong vision. I believe the experiences shared by Team Fuqua would provide more specific ideas on how to motivate others with purpose.
Last but not least, I desire to immerse myself and deepen my understanding of diversity at Fuqua – a mindset that drives different people towards a common goal. In Beyond the English Divide, I work with 70+ teachers from more than 20 countries, from South Africa to Kyrgyzstan. For someone born and raised in homogenous Korean society, it has been challenging to mediate between different perspectives and cultural backgrounds. At Fuqua, where the Team Fuqua spirits prevails, I want to learn how to embrace diverse voices and transform them into a powerful drive for a better future.
What impact do you hope your Fuqua education will allow you to have on the world?
My immediate post MBA career goal is in technology and the auto industry because I have a strong passion for creating autonomous cars that are cheaper and safer so that they deliver greater value to more people. However, my long-term goal is in social impact. I envision myself becoming a social entrepreneur, who integrates divided society by upholding the equality of opportunity and narrowing the gap between classes in English education. Through managing Beyond the English Divide as a nonprofit, I learned about the clear advantages of social enterprises in creating far-reaching impact. I firmly believe that, by creating it into a social enterprise with a sustainable business model, Beyond the English Divide can boost its size and hire talented individuals who share my passion for equal opportunity of education. In the long run, I desire to reach other countries, such as Myanmar and Laos, which lack other industrial foundation. In such countries, English capacity could make tangible and sustainable impact for many people.
Beyond the English Divide has evolved into a proof of hope in Korea – our students and their families believe that the hurdles of English proficiency can be leapt over. I firmly believe that Fuqua School of Business would be my springboard to lead Beyond the English Divide to facilitate meaningful changes for people around the world.
One of my 25 facts from my application essay.
I highly respect Fedor Emelianenko, the famous Russian Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter. Even in brutal MMA games, he always shows humility and genuine consideration for others. If kindness can shine through MMA games, why can’t it in businesses?
Michael Pukala
Having grown up in a suburb of Chicago my entire life, I would have never imagined I would have spent most of my career thus far in the Middle East, living in three different countries. I have spent the last eight years of my life living with and serving marginalized populations in the Middle East. I worked in a nonprofit that promoted the upward mobility of university students through our education training and mentorship program.
In my role, I led the American operations and served as an academic, emotional and spiritual mentor for young people. I have helped young adults become exemplary employees, and more importantly, catalysts for change within their own communities. In many developing economies, students need to be near the top one percent of academic performance to secure a quality job out of college. This is a significant challenge on its own. However, achieving this goal can feel impossible for students who come from limited resources and homes impacted by trauma. We built a program that taught students emotional resolve on top of excellent academic and organizational skills. We were able to see students pass through our program to become leaders in local businesses, workers at refugee camps and change agents in their communities.
My experience has taught me that achieving a major social impact is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor. Among these disciplines, business skills are unique because they have the power to help magnify social impact by scaling an organization. I am excited to learn skills that will ultimately help me scale human flourishing. Developing these skills during my MBA at Fuqua will allow me to continue my life’s mission on a bigger scale with an even greater impact. I am confident Fuqua is the best school to prepare me for a career in social impact.
Why Fuqua?
When I applied to business school, I knew I needed a school with both an excellent interdisciplinary business education and a commitment to social justice. Fuqua stood apart in both of these areas. The main reason I chose Fuqua was because of the Center for Advancement in Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) and its social impact curriculum. Of the many programs that CASE provides, the experiential learning piqued my interest most. Fuqua on Board (FOB) and Fuqua Client Consulting Practicum (FCCP) will provide experience relating to my short-term and long-term goals after I graduate. Opportunities like these will also allow me to engage directly with experts in social entrepreneurship. In the future, I will be able to rely on this network for advice and guidance as I try to scale my own organization. I have already been amazed by Fuqua alumni and the CASE network being willing to talk with me. I know Fuqua will help me become a social entrepreneur who both understands the complexities of working directly in marginalized communities while also possessing the analytical rigor to create, test and scale big picture solutions.
What impact do you hope your Fuqua education will allow you to have on the world?
Fuqua will prepare me for both my long-term and short-term goals. I hope to start an organization that focuses on economic development in marginalized communities by providing education and employment. Through my education and experiences at Fuqua, I expect to build the skills I need to successfully scale a social enterprise in the developing world. I hope to make a major positive impact for communities around the world that desperately need help.
Share one of your 25 facts from your application essay.
My wife and I love hosting people and building friendships over homemade pasta and a good glass of wine. Hospitality is a value I have learned from my Middle Eastern friends. One of my fondest memories is traveling two hours into the Omani desert to visit a Bedouin friend’s home. He and his family slaughtered the fattened calf and prepared an enormous feast to welcome us.