To kick off its Social Entrepreneurship Symposium speaker series, the Hopkins Social Innovations Partnership (HOP-SIP) hosted Pamela Hartigan, director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University, for a luncheon at Gertrude's.
Hartigan spoke to students yesterday evening in the Arellano Theater on how they can begin pursuing social entrepreneurial activities early in their careers.
The Social Entrepreneurship Symposium, which is co-sponsored by the Carey Business School and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, is HOP-SIP's first major initiative of the year, according to Luke Kelly-Cline, senior political science major and student board member.
HOP-SIP was started in March as a University-wide effort to foster social entrepreneurship, social innovations, and civic engagement among students.
It undertook a leadership role in addressing and solving long-standing social issues, rather than just remedying them.
"The primary goal for the symposium is to solidify social entrepreneurship as a concept in the minds of Hopkins' administration and faculty," Kelly-Cline said.
"It is also to take ownership of [social entrepreneurship] in a way that other undergraduate campuses have not."
According to Kelly-Cline, a fringe benefit of the symposium was the collaboration between the business school, the School of Public Health and the Homewood campus.Social Entrepreneurship has a variety of meanings, according to Kelly-Cline.
"It can mean taking a business model, which is potentially self-sustainable, and putting the funds toward a social end," Kelly-Cline said.
"It is something that benefits the population," he added. "It's more than just charity. It seeks to empower the people."
Kelly-Cline is involved in a social entrepreneurial endeavor of his own, called Save the Future.
The program is a financial literacy program aimed at teaching money management skills to high school students in Baltimore.
"It teaches them the framework to become a fiscally responsible adult," Kelly-Cline said.
"In light of the recent financial meltdown, we're trying to empower the population to make better financial decisions."
Kelly-Cline met Hartigan during the semester he spent abroad at Oxford last spring, and asked her to come speak on social entrepreneurship at Hopkins.
Hartigan first began her career as an economist.
"I realized that the economic models weren't focused on development, they were focused on growth," Hartigan said regarding the investments she was involved in during her time working for the World Bank.
Following her career as an economist, she became focused in public health, and started working for the World Health Organization and the United Nations Development Program.
"I've always been an entrepreneur," Hartigan said, "And for the past 15 years I've been involved in social entrepreneurship."
Hartigan commented on the new generation of business students who are geared to change the way social entrepreneurship is conceived.
"We're seeing this whole new generation of young MBAs who are very concerned with issues such as climate change," Hartigan said.
"And they aren't interested in padding their pockets anymore. It's about actually finding entrepreneurial solutions to these problems we are facing."
Kelly-Cline also commented on the new generation of business students, and the potential for the Carey Business School, which will officially open in the fall of 2010.
"The motto for the [Carey School] is 'where business is taught with humanity in mind,'" Kelly-Cline said.
"It has the potential to created leaders to see past finances to humanity, and this goal will be accomplished if social entrepreneurship becomes part of the school's character."
Kelly-Cline explained that with the impact of the School of Public Health at the University, it was a logical progression to make social entrepreneurship the niche of the Carey Business School.
"It will embody doing business the Hopkins way," Kelly-Cline said, referring to the focus on social entrepreneurship.
Future speakers for the Social Entrepreneurship Symposium include Rob Egger, founder of the D.C. Central Kitchen and the Campus Kitchen Project and Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, a global social entrepreneurship organization.
