NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Getting Involved in the Base of the Pyramid Movement - Part 1, My Story - Comments

Thanks Francisco

Moses Lee — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:02:00 -0400

Thanks for sharing your story. I just got back from SE Asia and have been hearing many people share their stories on how they got involved with BoP enterprises. Hopefully more people on NextBillion will be sharing!

Thanks

Moses Lee — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:00:10 -0400

Thanks Kaushal for this. Please shoot me an email with more info: moseslee AT bus.umich.edu

Awesome

Pradeep — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:10:19 -0400

Moses - It's great to hear such stories. Reach out to people as much as you can. You'll be surprised how much impact you can make...

Thanks for sharing your experience

Rahul — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:45:59 -0400

you made a point by sharing this with the group. Quite an insightful experience. Keep writing.

Moses - We are planning an

Kaushal — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:53:36 -0400

Moses - We are planning an Africa-centered unconference for 10/11 and I would be honored if you take part in the discussion. We are calling it BarCampAfrica and the idea is to bring together Bay Area Afri-centric talent for a day of conversation on tech, mobility, art, social justice, sustainability, microfinance ... lots of themes and interests. More as we take shape. In the meanwhile you can follow our twitter conversations at http://twitter.com/BarCampAfrica http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=20922314070&ref=share

How I got here...

Francisco Noguera — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:38:04 -0400

Thanks for sharing this Moses! I really enjoy reading personal stories like yours. Growing up in Colombia, I had the opportunity to see poverty first-hand in my native Bogota thanks to my father's involvement in public service, as well as in my mother's native Cartagena de Indias, certainly one of the world's prettiest but most unequal places, where tourists and locals walk alongside misery with saddening indifference. Long story short, I decided to pursue a career in the private sector and went off to work in investment banking and management consulting after graduating from college.

At work it constantly bothered me to find out that there seemed to be a wall standing between work or business as usual (rigid, cold and very analytical) and socially-minded causes, often charitable, which I seldom got involved with through my friends or my family. I shared this concern with some of my colleagues at work and three of us started playing with different ideas to take use our business skills and consulting expertise to help others that did not have the opportunities we did. Until one day the opportunity arised to help a lady we knew establish a business of her own: a brand new hot dog cart. It was fascinating. Next thing we knew we were running our own microfinance program in one of the poorest areas of Bogota, helping a pretty large number of entrepreneurs start/ improve their businesses.

That's how I found out that there was a way to connect my interests in business and development! My further readings lead me to find out that microfinance was only the tip of the iceberg of the larger BoP business models, and NextBillion.net was key in shaping that idea. Three years later, one of my colleagues is an MBA student and popular microfinance speaker at Madrid's Instituto de Empresa, and the other will soon begin a masters in poverty reduction strategies in the UK. And here I am in Washington DC, diving deeper into the BoP field hoping to gather lessons/experiences that can be applied back home at some not too distant point! Indeed not a usual path for former management consultants... we'll see what turns out!

Getting Involved in the Base of the Pyramid Movement - Part 1, My Story

Moses Lee — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:38:35 -0400

I visited the slums of Nairobi in the summer of 2002. I remember being completely overwhelmed by the poor living conditions: large families cramped into little rooms, putrid refuse scattered throughout the neighborhood, young children left seemingly hopeless. I remember thinking to myself, what can possibly be done?

That summer, upon graduating from the BBA program at the University of Michigan's Business School, I was in Kenya on a service project with a small group from my local church. For six weeks, a dozen of us taught English, science, and math in schools throughout Kenya. But it was while visiting the slums that something in my heart and mind shifted. It was an epiphany of sorts – similar to another epiphany I'd had the summer before, which led me to Nairobi in the first place.

Just twelve months beforehand, I was in a posh tower in Manhattan, working as an investment banker for the largest financial services company in the world. A brief snapshot of what my life looked like:

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