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Fellows 2008
Below are bios of the current fellows in the ISI program.
SARAH MAYELA AMADOR (MSPPM, 2008)
Sarah Mayela Amador is a second-year graduate student of Heinz College’s MSPPM program. She’s from the international border of El Paso, Texas and Chihuahua, Mexico. By the age of 22 she completed an undergraduate program at New Mexico State University in Government, Spanish and Law & Society. Sarah went on to work as a Home Base Counselor in New Mexico where she received the opportunity to work with at risk youth and their families. While in New Mexico, she also had the privilege of working as a Campaign Field Director for Governor Bill Richardson. Sarah hopes to graduate from Heinz with a concentration in Social Entrepreneurship. Her interest in this concentration stems from a life of commitment to community and social change. As an undergraduate student, Sarah led her campus in a student movement for workers’ rights to gain affordable healthcare and livable wages. She continued her work in the community through other volunteer organizations like the National V-day College Campaign: Vagina Monologue Productions. Here she had the opportunity of organizing a campus-wide drive for Amigos de las Mujeres de Juarez, an organization focused on raising awareness around the murders of the women in Juarez. Sarah hopes that Heinz College’s Social Entrepreneurship concentration will provide her with the skills necessary to continue working towards social change.
JESSICA BRAZIER (MSPPM, 2008)
Jessica Brazier is a second-year graduate student at Heinz College where she is pursuing a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Management. Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Jessica went to the neighboring Southern state of Alabama to pursue her undergraduate studies in Communications and Journalism at Oakwood College (Huntsville, AL). While there, Jessica wore various hats within her field of interest, including that of college newspaper editor, radio host and news anchor, and Communication Club president. While Jessica’s focus in college was primarily communications, she found another passion when an internship with the Southern Education Foundation (Atlanta, GA) exposed her to the social and policy challenges concerning education and inequity in America. She now aims to use her communications background to innovatively impact work being done to make quality education accessible to all children. She was attracted to Heinz College’s social entrepreneurship concentration because of its emphasis on cross-sectoral approaches and the merging of ideas in combating some of the nation’s and world’s grandest social challenges.
SAMANTHA BUSHMAN (MSPPM, 2008)
“Until very recently, I have always struggled to come up with a succinct answer to the question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I have always been committed to the public interest, and I have always known I wanted to use my energy and talents to affect positive social change - but I found it difficult to convey everything that goes along with that aspiration in a way that was easily understood by others. Then I learned about the social entrepreneurship and innovation concentration and read all about the work that social entrepreneurs do. That was when it clicked. Now I say, I can't imagine being anything other than a social entrepreneur. It sometimes raises eyebrows, because its not a term that is nearly as entrenched as it should be, but nevertheless - I have something that I can communicate, which clearly defines everything I hope to do in my future work. I am most passionate about gender related issues, including sexual assault, domestic violence, and in particular, various issues related to reproductive rights.”
DAVID COOMBS (MAM, 2007)
“I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship, but found myself not wanting to pursue an MBA because I didn’t feel my sense of passion fulfilled in it. Having always been involved in the arts, I initially struck that balance between my heart and head by pursuing arts management at Heinz College. Ever since having taken a non-profit entrepreneurship course my first semester, I realized that my passion included not only the arts but also serving human need. From that point forward, I’ve been committed to researching the field of social entrepreneurship where I plan to merge my passions with organizational prowess. My personal goal has been to become conversant with organizational models from all three sectors, namely from private, public, and non-profit sectors. I became conversant with for-profit models in my undergraduate business minor, and I’m currently learning about non-profit models at Heinz College. Finally, I filled an important gap in learning how the government works through my summer internship at Deloitte Consulting as a management consultant for the federal government. My goal in all of this is to sharpen my toolkit of best practices from each sector and to learn their limitations. With this I hope to forge alliances between sectors, including creating hybrid-sector organizational models, which can most effectively meet the needs of people that independent markets have failed to meet.”
KATHRYN DICKENS (MS3, 2008)
Kathryn Dickens is a one-year MSPPM student focusing on IT in international development and non-profit management. Kayt earned her B.A. in International Relations from the University of California at Davis, also studying in South Africa and working in Europe. She recently returned from Peace Corps Cameroon, where she was one of the first computer science volunteers. She very much enjoyed a digital library project in Maroua, capital of the Extreme North Province, and hopes to return to management of similar projects as soon as she graduates from Heinz College.
SARAH GRUDEVICH (MSPPM, 2008)
Sarah Grudevich is from Canonsburg, PA, and graduated from Allegheny College in May 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Values, Ethics, and Social Action. She is now in her second year at Heinz pursuing a MSPPM degree. Sarah is extremely interested in international policy (Latin America and Western Europe in particular) and social enterprise, and she found the social entrepreneurship concentration to be right in line with her goals. While she is unsure about the exact profession she wants to pursue, she hopes that her career path involves the combination of both these areas. She is very excited to have received the opportunity to be involved as one of the student pioneers in Institute for Social Innovation’s vision. “I live to step outside the box,” Sarah states, “and that is what this concentration is all about.”
JESSICA KING (MPM, 2007)
Jessica King is the founding Executive Director of the Union Project, which has renovated a former church into an arts and enterprise incubator that aims for sustainability through earned income and innovative programs. She has raised close to $3 million for the startup operations and capital renovations of the Union Project. She oversees an annual budget of just under $1 million and the operations of two social enterprises and the planning and development of two more. She has enrolled in the MPM program at CMU and is compelled to study social innovation to continue to develop innovative practices and advance social change - especially in low-income and underserved communities.
MATTHEW LANCASTER (MSPPM, 2008)
Matthew is a Pittsburgh native and a student at Heinz College. Recently, he graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in History. Prior to graduate school, he worked at Manchester Bidwell Corporation under the direction of Bill Strickland and as a Field Organizer in the Kerry-Edwards Campaign. He has also researched documents for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and acted in the PBS documentary “Slavery and the Making of America.” He is interested in Social Entrepreneurship because it is a way to help people that is both efficient, humane, capitalistic and has the potential to be revolutionary.
AMY LAZARUS (MS3, 2007)
Amy Lazarus, from Shaker Heights, Ohio, recently completed her Master in Public Policy and Management. She first became interested in social innovation as an undergraduate at Duke University when she enrolled in a social entrepreneurship course. The assignment for the class was to (1) identify your passion, (2) identify a need in the community, and then (3) figure out to pursue your passion to fulfill that need. Amy’s passion is creating safe atmospheres for people who do not typically interact to engage in meaningful dialogue. The need on Duke’s campus was to have dialogue on race and human relations. Three classmates worked with Amy on this to create a vision, mission, and program to address these needs. The team envisioned Duke’s campus as of one of acceptance and affirmation that recognizes, allows for, and appreciates difference. Following guidelines of social innovation and business plan writing, Amy and the students co-founded Duke’s Center for Race Relations to create a niche for meaningful interaction among all students. The Center is now institutionalized at Duke and is sustainable two years after the founders graduated. Amy is captivated by the idea of taking this best-practice model to scale at other colleges and universities nationwide. She joined the Social Innovation Systems Project to learn more about social innovation and to add to the limited heuristic knowledge in this emerging and exciting field, a field she believes holds many answers for sustaining socially motivated ventures. [Link to http://www.duke.edu/web/racerelations]
JENNIFER SCHAEFER (MSPPM, 2008)
“I recently completed a position that allowed me to be a part of something innovative. I was an AmeriCorps VISTA Program Associate at AnewAmerica Community Corporation. This nonprofit organization strives to empower new Americans through business creation, asset development, and social responsibility. We work to include immigrants and refugees not only into the economic sector of American society but the cultural and political sectors as well. This nonprofit organization attracted me because of its comprehensiveness. Many organizations work to help people start their own small business or asset development but few integrate all of these aspects. I helped immigrants and refugees build personal assets for the sustainability of their families, and develop the community assets necessary to support the political, social, and cultural empowerment of their communities. This position demonstrated to me the power of innovation. This is why I joined the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Concentration at Heinz College, to pursue my dream of studying and solving large-scale problems.”
JENNIFER WILHELM (MS3, 2008)
Jennifer Wilhelm has a Bachelors degree in International Studies from Baldwin-Wallace College and is currently finishing a Master of Science degree in Public Policy and Management from Heinz College. Prior to graduate school, she worked with various nonprofit organizations across the United States, and served as a member of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps. Most recently, Jennifer spent time in Guatemala working with an international development organization on various social enterprises. Coming to Heinz has not only allowed her to expand her knowledge of social entrepreneurship but also increased her desire to create positive change in communities around the world.
CHANGMEI YANG (MSPPM, 2008)
Changmei Yang, a second-year MSPPM student, comes to Heinz College from China as a Ford Foundation Fellow. His work background and experience attracted him to the Institute for Social Innovation's Social Entrepreneurship concentration. He has been working as an administrator and has served his community in China in the county personnel bureau and town governments for a total of eight years. The scope of his work is vast, involving matters such as agriculture, economy, polity, culture, and social development. His work objectives have included directing peasants to farms, raising money to build schools in villages and towns, maintaining unity and stability among minorities and villages, increasing peasants' living standards, and improving people's living conditions. To study at Heinz College, Changmei has temporarily changed his title from town head to vice director general of his county personnel bureau. His goal in graduate study is to combine theory with his working practice in the areas of executive capability, policy analysis, management skills, social development and fairness. He believes the Social Entrepreneurship concentration can help him reach this goal. "I hope this program will help me to widen my horizons, expand my knowledge, refresh my mind, improve my executive capability and management standards," Changmei states. "Therefore," he continues, "after graduation, when I return to the personnel bureau or the government, I can put what I have learned into new practice. I'll try my best to improve the country's development, maintain the social unity and stability, and change the poor conditions of my country more efficiently."