‘Andy Mendez’ Articles at Heller Admissions Blog

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Celebrating Heller Admissions Graduates

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

In our most recent blog, Roniunique Clark shared her reflections on her Letter to My Future self, but Ronunique isn’t our only Heller Admissions blog writer who graduated this past Sunday. We’re also saying good-bye to Neh Meh (who graduated from the SID/COEX program) and Andy Mendez, who graduated from the MBA/SID program, and was chosen as the graduation speaker for the MBA program. Here’s what Andy had to say:

“I want to start by wishing a good afternoon to our fearless leader, Interim Dean Maria Madison, as well as to the members of the Heller administration, faculty, and staff. I also want to give a very warm welcome to all of our esteemed and honored guests who’ve traveled far and wide to be here with us today. Thank you for joining us as we celebrate this milestone moment in the lives of the 2023 graduating class.

It is my distinct honor and pleasure to be up here today representing my friends and colleagues in the Social Impact MBA program. My community back home in Florida knows me as Andrea Alicia Mendez or Andrea Alicia Mendez (said with an accent), depending on which side of my family you ask, but as a member of this community and among my peers at the Heller School, I’m simply Andy. As I stand here with you all at the tail end of this long, intellectual journey, I am conscious of the fact that this is the start of a new chapter for each and every one of us. That chapter may take us across the street, across town, across the country, or around the world. No matter where we each may end up, I am confident that the skills we’ve developed, the perspective we’ve gained, and the friendships we’ve made will stay with us for years to come.

Some of you began your graduate degree programs with a clear idea of what you wanted this journey to look like, and, at the end, you’ve landed exactly where you intended to be. For others, this program has inspired you to shift and pivot in ways you did not expect. Both experiences are valid and worth celebrating.

I stand here before you with a heart full of gratitude. I’m grateful to each of you for voicing your insights, for sharing your cultures, and for considering new perspectives. The Heller School isn’t just the name on our degrees, isn’t just the building where we took our classes — the Heller School is a living, breathing community. The Heller School exists and continues to thrive because each and every one of you has contributed something special and irreplaceable to our collective experience. As we depart to fulfill our separate callings and to chart our own paths forward, let us take the spirit of this unique community with us. Graduates — I am so happy to be sharing this day and this accomplishment and this moment with you. I couldn’t have done it without you, and you couldn’t have done this without each other. With that, let me say a final congratulations to the class of 2023 — it’s a wrap!”

Personally, I would like to thank both Andy and Ronunique for their service to the Heller Admissions blog. They’ve shared a lot of valuable advice and perspectives over the past years, and they will be missed dearly. I’m looking forward to having some new Graduate Assistants joining us in the fall, and I can’t wait for you to hear their stories.

AmeriCorps + Heller: A Perfect Combination

May 11, 2023 / amandamiller / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

As someone who did not jump straight into graduate school after undergrad, the work experience I gained during the four years in between degree programs informed my perspective and broadened my outlook in important ways. Once I began the MBA/SID program here at The Heller School, I routinely drew on these previous experiences during classroom discussions, course assignments, and group projects. A lot happened for me during the gap years in between my undergraduate and graduate school studies, but the most impactful experiences were the two years I spent as a Youth Development Volunteer in Peace Corps Morocco and the two years I spent supporting a network of legal aid organizations as an AmeriCorps VISTA in Chicago. My AmeriCorps experience, in particular, positioned me well for my studies at Heller.

Although there are many different AmeriCorps programs (including City Year, NCCC, AmeriCorps State and National), I chose AmeriCorps VISTA because it was the only AmeriCorps program that was focused on capacity building instead of providing direct service. The goal of direct service is, for example, to have volunteers teach and mentor students. In contrast, a volunteer focused on capacity building improves an organization’s ability to provide these teaching and mentorship services by developing a database of mentors, writing an education curriculum, forging new partnerships, and identifying sustainable sources of funding.

As an AmeriCorps VISTA Leader at Legal Aid Chicago, I was part of the Program Administration Team that managed a collaboration among a network of nine different legal aid organizations throughout the state of Illinois. Each of our organizations focused on access to justice work – helping low income individuals and minorities navigate the legal system – but with a slightly different focus. Part of my role was to recruit and onboard the annual cohort of 45 AmeriCorps VISTA Members who would be assigned to various projects throughout our nine partner organizations. AmeriCorps VISTA Members played important capacity building roles during their one year of service that enabled these organizations to provide services more efficiently and to a larger number of beneficiaries. My experience in the AmeriCorps program gave me first-hand exposure to how nonprofit organizations can advance a social justice mission.

Once I began researching master’s degree programs, I quickly recognized that I didn’t know which city or state I wanted to end up in after graduation. To give myself some solid options, I felt it would be the most strategic for me to attend a school in the northeast that would allow me to build a network close to the major city centers of Boston, New York, and Washington D.C. Massachusetts has a strong reputation for its education quality and academic rigor, so I focused my search on Massachusetts schools that offered tuition assistance to Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and AmeriCorps alumni. This of course meant that I would be starting over again in a new city. The Heller School appealed to me, in particular, because it attracts such a large population of National Service program alumni, including folks who served in City Year, Teach for America, AmeriCorps, and Peace Corps. I knew that regardless of who ended up being a part of my cohort, I could easily make a community among the other National Service alumni.

In my classes at The Heller School, I learned about the management of mission-driven organizations and worked through case studies that helped me better understand the dynamics that I had witnessed as an AmeriCorps VISTA Member. My courses at The Heller School helped me understand what it takes for mission-driven organizations to become sustainable and they can avoid management pitfalls that endanger their ability to carry out their mission. As someone who is on a trajectory to enter the federal workforce, I am excited to take the strategies I’ve learned for advancing social justice and strengthening mission-driven organizations into this space to ensure that federal programs can better partner with and support the many local organizations doing the work on the ground to serve the American people.

Where Can Heller Take You? Andy Mendez’ Answer

May 2, 2023 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

As of today, I have two more weeks of classes left and just five weeks until graduation. It’s hard to believe that I’ll be closing the book on graduate school. It feels like I just got here! While I’m sad to be leaving this community, I am very excited for what is ahead. This week, I was named a 2023 David L. Boren Fellow. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this program, the Boren Fellowship is a study abroad program that aims to provide foreign language training and cultural exchange opportunities for students pursuing a career in the federal government.

Boren has been on my radar for years. When I was first looking into graduate degree programs, part of my criteria were programs that would position me well for post-graduate opportunities abroad. Boren is a well-known opportunity among Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs). It came up a couple of times when I was still serving in Morocco and was put back on my radar when I started to research schools that were part of the Coverdell scholarship program for RPCVs.

Boren is distinct from other study abroad programs in its focus on preparing Fellows for careers in national security. In fact, one of the conditions of the scholarship is a one-year service requirement with the federal government after completion of the Fellowship program. Unlike Fulbright and the Critical Language Scholarship (which I applied to and was named an Alternate for), Boren has a specific career pathway and is used as a talent pipeline for federal agencies looking to hire students with advanced degrees, language skills, and international experience.

Applying to the Boren Fellowship program was, for me, an 8-month long process. I consider June 2022 the start of the process for me because that was when I began researching language programs. For context, there are basically two “flavors” of Boren Fellowship programs. You can either apply for a self-designed program or you can apply to one of the Regional Flagship Language Initiatives, which are pre-designed programs for African, Indonesian, South Asian, and Turkish languages. After speaking with Gabriella Lanzi and Phillip Aitken, two Heller recipients of the Boren Fellowship and 2022 graduates of the COEX program, I was pretty convinced that I wanted to pursue a self-designed program. With my past experiences in Morocco and Egypt, I figured it made sense to apply for an Arabic language program that could take me from my current intermediate level to an advanced level.

I had a really hard time trying to decide if I should study an Arabic dialect or if I should study standard Arabic. If I chose to study the dialect I was most familiar with, the only country option I had was Morocco. If I chose to study standard Arabic, I had many more country options, but would essentially have to start from the beginner level. I also struggled with other aspects of the language study plan proposal. I needed to be able to provide details on the cost breakdown of the coursework, books, and my preferred housing situation.

Aside from the language study plan, I also had to secure letters of recommendation and write two essays: one on the national security implications of my chosen language and country and the other on my plans for pursuing a career in federal service. For these essays, I was in ongoing conversation with the directors of the Academic Fellowships department and the staff at Heller’s Career Development Center, who helped me edit my essays and refine my arguments. Since I already had begun forming relationships with the director of the Sustainable International Development program and the director of the Social Impact MBA program, I let both of these professors know that I was pursuing this opportunity. In previous assignments I had submitted to these professors, I had focused on international issues, so they both were very familiar with my previous professional background and my aspirations to go abroad post-graduation. This meant that when it came time to ask for recommendations, I already had professors who knew me very well and who were invested in my professional growth.

As the end of fall semester was nearing last year, I began to notice more and more cracks in my Arabic language study plan proposal. I realized that the maximum time I could spend in the Boren program was still less than half of the time I spent learning and speaking Arabic with the Peace Corps in Morocco. I didn’t have a strong enough argument for how Boren would help me learn a language I already had a strong foundation in. For the national security essay, I also found it hard to articulate the importance of focusing on Morocco, given the current administration’s foreign policy stance away from the Middle East and towards China, Russia, and Iran.

For this reason, I completely scrapped my self-designed Arabic study plan and switched to the Turkish Flagship Language Initiative (TURFLI) in Azerbaijan. Due to Azerbaijan’s proximity to Russia in the north and Iran in the south, I was able to make a national security argument about the country’s relevance to US foreign policy, while also making a connection to the core coursework I had done on economic and business development and the elective coursework I had completed on conflict and coexistence. I was also able to argue that my prior experience studying Arabic (a harder language than Turkish by the federal government’s own standard) was proof that I could succeed in the Boren program.

While I will never know for sure what factors led the selection committee to choose me for this award, I have a feeling that it was partly because of my essay on career plans. Due to the service requirement, the Boren Fellowship really wants to attract people who are serious about a future career in the federal government. For this essay, I wrote about my plans to pursue the Presidential Management Fellows program which, two months before I submitted my Boren application, named me a Semi-Finalist. I believe having gone through and made it to the first round of the PMF process convinced the committee that I was not only serious, but also qualified. My success in the PMF program, as is the case with Boren, was a direct result of support I received from Heller’s Career Development Center, Brandeis’s Academic Fellowships department, and my professors.

As a recipient of the Boren Fellowships, I will be studying Turkish at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from June to August and then at the Azerbaijan University of Languages in Baku from August to December. It’s a relief to reach graduation knowing exactly what my next steps are and to know that I’m pursuing the exact international opportunity I learned about way back when I was a brand new Peace Corps Volunteer seven years ago.

The Importance of Pivoting

March 30, 2023 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

One of the many benefits of being a Heller student is the ability to take courses outside my academic area of focus. When building my course schedule for the first half of the current spring semester, I quickly decided that I wanted to take Women, Peacemaking & Peacebuilding taught by Boston Network for International Development (BNID)’s Executive Director, Nanako Tamaru. I already had a strong basis in gender studies since one of the focus areas of my work in the Peace Corps was gender development. Additionally, I had taken two courses focused on gender last fall. The Women, Peacemaking & Peacebuilding course caught my attention because it would allow me to build on my theoretical foundation in gender studies while also gaining a basis in conflict resolution and coexistence, a field in which I didn’t have much prior knowledge.

Our final assignment for the course was to write a 600-800 word OpEd on a contemporary issue relating to women, peace, and security. This assignment appealed to me because I wanted more practice writing for a generalist, public audience. The OpEd assignment challenged us to be persuasive rather than descriptive, with a clear call to action for the relevant stakeholders addressed in the opinion piece.

I was surprised to find that I struggled to identify the right topic for this assignment. I started out wanting to look at women in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and how women who were not mothers were being left out of the peacemaking process. I had only ever written about Central Asia once, in a paper that looked at economic development for internally displaced people in Azerbaijan. Last fall, I applied to (and am still waiting to hear back about) a Boren Fellowship to study Turkish in Azerbaijan, and figured this assignment would be a great way for me to learn more about the region. However, I quickly discovered just how little context I had. I realized I wouldn’t have enough time in a half-semester course to build the knowledge base I needed to cover this topic accurately and effectively.

For that reason, I decided to change my topic. I instead pivoted to looking at state and non-state violence against religious minorities in Egypt, where I had been a volunteer educator during the last two summers of my undergraduate career. Whereas I knew very little about my original topic, I knew a lot about this one. So much, in fact, that I found it really difficult to fit a discussion of this topic into the 800 word limit. I found myself taking a lot of time to explain the context around certain trends, which left me with very little room to present my stance. It was also hard to be very focused with my recommendations because there are so many interlacing pieces to this issue that an integrated approach is the only way to effectively address what’s happening.

Finally, I settled on writing about violence against women human rights defenders (WHRD) in Libya. Since North Africa is my region of professional interest, this topic allowed me to learn more about a country in the region that I had not previously engaged with. This topic also more directly addressed the parts of the prompt that called for an analysis of gender and conflict dynamics. While it was frustrating to change topics so many times (especially since I consider myself to be a very decisive person!), I am very glad that I acknowledged the shortcomings of my earlier topics and kept pivoting until I found the right one for this assignment.

In the immediate aftermath, this experience reminded me of the importance of trusting my gut and making necessary pivots (something we hear a lot about when discussing social enterprises in the MBA program). In the long-term, I already see ways in which this exercise will support my future career. As someone who is on track to be a policymaker in the federal government, the ability to communicate with a wide variety of stakeholders — including the general public — is an essential skill. Additionally, I recently started a role as a Foreign Policy Writer with Al Fusaic, an online platform that seeks to disrupt stereotypes about countries in North Africa and Southwest Asia, while facilitating cross-cultural connections. As a content writer, I will be publishing public-facing articles that highlight and demystify ongoing social, political, and economic developments in the region. For one of my first assignments, I will be repurposing this Op-Ed for Al Fusaic, which I’m pretty excited about! Until that’s published, you can read the initial version of my Op-Ed on the website Dispatches on War and Peace.

A Day in the Life of a Second Year MBA/SID Student

March 2, 2023 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

Now that we are nearing the end of Module 1, graduation is just over three months away! I thought this would be a great time to share what life is like for a Heller student wrapping up their studies and preparing for a postgraduate career. Today, I’ll walk you through what a typical Tuesday looks like for me this semester.

8:00am-10:00am — This is the first and only semester where I have my mornings entirely free. I use those extra hours to catch up on 4 semester’s worth of lost sleep!

10:00am-11:00am — By this point in the morning, I’ve left my bed and started my morning face cleansing routine. Gotta be extra vigilant in the winter when the air is dry. After that, I generally spend some time answering emails and posting or responding to posts on LinkedIn. Now that I’ve been named a Class of 2023 Finalist in the Presidential Management Fellows program, a lot of my time goes into setting up virtual coffee chats with PMF program alumni and other professionals to learn more about the different federal agencies where I might like to be placed.

11:00am-12:00pm — I head to the kitchen, where I usually pass either my MPP or PhD roommate, and make an early lunch. Since I have both an afternoon and evening class on Tuesdays, I make sure to pack dinner and some snacks in tupperware to take to campus.

12:00pm-1:00pm — At this point, I pack up my backpack and get dressed for the day. I double check that I have the required items for that day’s weather forecast, be it an umbrella or a scarf and gloves. I’m only a 20 minute walk to campus so as I’m heading out the door, I choose a podcast or music album on Spotify to listen to during my commute.

1:00pm-2:00pm — I join the other elected board members of the Heller Student Association for our biweekly meeting. We use this meeting to plan Heller-wide events, discuss concerns brought to us by students, and share our progress on special projects.

2:00pm-2:20pm — After gathering my belongings, I have a quick snack before going to claim my seat in the classroom for my afternoon course on Women, Peacemaking, & Peacebuilding. This is technically a COEX class, but I’m joined by a lot of my fellow SID classmates, who have a concentration in gender. The course is taught by Nanako Tamaru, the Executive Director of the Boston Network for International Development (BNID). BNID was one of the organizations I interviewed with when I was searching for a fall MBA internship last semester. While I ended up being placed with the Social Innovation Forum, I did have the opportunity to attend a few networking events sponsored by BNID. Another reason I was drawn to the course was Nanako’s work on the democratic process in Tunisia. As someone who worked next door in Morocco and is currently in the running for a Fulbright grant in Algeria, I was curious to learn more about her work on gender and peacebuilding in that region.

2:20pm-5:10pm — During the class session, Professor Nanako gives a brief lecture introducing that week’s topic and solicits the class’s response to that week’s readings. We spend time learning about the art and science of Op Ed writing and we end with a small group discussion. Before packing up, Professor Nanako reminds us of any upcoming assignments that are due before next class.

5:10pm-6:00pm — It’s dinner time! I usually head to the ground floor, where there are a set of round tables set up next to the microwave. As I’m eating dinner, I usually skim through that week’s readings again, to refresh my memory.

6:00pm-8:50pm — I head to the big auditorium room where I have Fundraising and Development with Professor David Whalen. This course draws a mix of MBA and SID students and attracts those either wanting more experience writing grants or those looking to grab the attention of funders. In the course, we not only look at the current landscape and trends in philanthropy, but spend time interrogating the impact philanthropy has had, for better or worse, on society.

8:50pm-9:30pm — After six hours of class, I can finally head home. Along the way, I sometimes stop at the Hannaford for groceries or the Walgreens for a few household items.

9:30pm-11:00pm — Once I’m home, I shower and have a small snack. On Wednesdays, I work as a Course Assistant for Financial Management, a required class for first-year MBA students. I spend the evenings making sure I’m ready for the next day’s class session. Since I have no evening classes on Wednesdays, I usually head to Brandeis’ Gosman gym for that evening’s group fitness class, so I pack my gym clothes and shoes on Tuesday evenings. Before Financial Management, I have my weekly check-in meeting with my supervisor at the Social Innovation Forum, where I’ve continued on as an intern. I make sure I have any necessary prep materials ready for this meeting.

11:00pm-12:00am — When I’m ready to call it a night, I double-check that my alarm is set, then head to bed.

Tips for Adjusting to the Winter Season

January 17, 2023 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

When I woke up early Monday morning to head to campus, I looked out my window and saw the coolest thing – fluffy white snow blanketing the cars, the streets, and the roofs of houses. I think it’s safe to say that winter has arrived in Waltham!

For students who are local to the northeast, the ritual of donning layers or shoveling snow probably feels pretty commonplace. For others, this might be their very first time ever experiencing a cold, snowy winter season. Growing up in Florida, I only ever saw snow on TV. I did not own an article of clothing thicker than a raincoat. But now, after having spent the last 5 years in cold places – including the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, Chicago, Illinois, and most recently Massachusetts – I’m ready to share my tips and tricks on how to survive (and thrive!) in winter time.

Step 1 – Find good quality gear

While there is a variety of winter clothing available, don’t feel like you need to buy every single thing. A few of the non-negotiables include a snow jacket. This jacket should have a hood, and pockets, and be waterproof. Many jackets will have a tag that lists the temperature range they can be worn in. Make sure you get something that will keep you warm on days that are below freezing. Snow boots and long socks are also a must to keep your feet warm. Your boots should also be waterproof, have insulation, and have good traction to keep you from slipping. Be mindful that snow boots tend to be heavier than regular boots, so make sure you don’t get something so heavy that it’s hard or awkward to walk in. Even with your hands in your pocket, your fingers will likely still be cold. Many gloves now have padded fingertips that allow you to use touchscreen devices, that way you don’t have to remove your gloves to reply to a text message. Other accessories you might consider are hats, scarves, and earmuffs to keep your head, neck, and ears warm.

Step 2 – Make time for cold weather activities

A lot of people will say there is nothing to do in winter but that couldn’t be farther from the truth! There are so many activities that you can ONLY do when it’s snowing outside. Just last year, Brandeis University converted the Levin Ballroom into an ice skating rink. I’ve had classmates who have gone sledding and some who travel to nearby states to ski and hike. With the holidays so close, many outdoor street markets will be opening. These are places where you can find handcrafted goods from local artists, winter desserts like gingerbread cookies, and warm beverages including hot chocolate and peppermint coffee.

Step 3 – Get cozy

Since classes are ending and the days are getting shorter, you can expect to spend more time indoors. There are so many ways to make your space more cozy and comfortable during the cold season. I definitely suggest finding good quality blankets that can keep you warm whether you are in bed, at your desk, or on the coach. Cardigans, sweaters, and robes that have pockets and a hood are great for lounging around the house. With the decrease in sunlight over the winter months, lamps and candles can help brighten your space.

Winter doesn’t have to be scary or intimidating . The coming of winter is a wonderful opportunity to slow down, spend time with loved ones, reflect on the past year, and start goal setting for the new year. I hope these tips help you make the most of the season!

Holidays at Heller

December 15, 2022 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

Holidays in graduate school are a bittersweet time. On the one hand, it’s a welcome reprieve from the intensity of the schoolwork grind and a chance to reconnect with loved ones back home. On the other hand, for many international and out-of-state students, going home for the holidays is not always feasible financially or due to the distance. Personally, my hometown is a 16 hour drive from the university or a $400+ roundtrip airplane ticket so, both this year and last year, I have had to choose between going home for the November break or going home for New Year’s instead.

With this in mind, the Heller Student Association started a Friendsgiving tradition to bring students together for a time of community, gratitude, and fun. The Heller Student Association is a student working group dedicated to amplifying the diverse voices of the student body and meaningfully contributing to decisions that affect students’ time at the Heller School.

This year, about 30 students gathered on the afternoon of Friday, November 25th in the Zinner Forum for our 2022 Friendsgiving Celebration. We spent the first half hour of the event playing board games, teaching each other new card games, filling out coloring sheets, and writing positive messages on a big poster board to the tune of a Charlie Brown holiday playlist on Spotify. Connect4 and Exploding Kittens stood out as the crowd favorites. At 12:30pm sharp, we gathered around three long tables for a feast from Boston Market resplendent with macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, rotisserie chicken, cornbread, and apple pie. Before digging in, we went around the table sharing things that we were grateful for. Unsurprisingly, student after student cited the friendships they’d made at Heller and the welcoming campus community as top of their gratitude list. Since the event was open to students from all of Heller’s programs, many new friendships were formed as people from different programs interacted for the first or maybe second time.

After lunch, we had a very spontaneous and impromptu karaoke session, which was dominated by 90s boy band singles, Taylor Swift classics, and a few Latin tunes. Students were able to take home tons of food to feed themselves and their roommates over the holiday weekend. While the organizers were perfectly happy to handle the take-down and clean-up process themselves, every single attendee pitched in to fold tables, remove chairs, and take out trash. It was such a perfect picture of the spirit that is so indicative of the Heller community. I left the event feeling refreshed and grateful for all the people who contribute to making the Heller School the place that it is.

Career Center Resources

November 15, 2022 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

On the first floor of the Heller School building, you’ll find a couple of things. This includes the Heller Admissions Office, the Dean’s Office, and the Career Development Center. The Career Center can be an excellent resource in your graduate journey – if you know what resources exist and how to use them. Here is my advice for how to make the most of resources at the Career Center.

Schedule Mock Interviews

At this point in the semester, my cohort members and I are fully in the job and fellowship search process. Many of my classmates are seeking consulting roles and these kinds of jobs have a very particular interview format, which usually involves completing and presenting a mock case. If you’ve never had this kind of interview before, it can be very intimidating and confusing. Scheduling a mock interview with the Career Center is a great way to practice and get comfortable with this format before you do the real thing. I’m currently in the running for the Presidential Management Fellows program and the interview for this focuses heavily on behavioral and situational interviewing. Having a mock interview with career staff helped me practice the STAR method response format. I generally struggle with deciding which experience is most compelling for which question. Career Center staff gave me solid feedback that helped me determine which of my anecdotes were best suited to answer the questions I’d likely be asked.

Attend Informational Sessions

The Career Center offers several information sessions a month, all with different focuses. The three types of sessions I’ve found most helpful are: talks with Heller alumni, overviews of fellowship programs, and webinars with employers or professionals in the sector I’m interested in. By attending sessions with Heller alumni, I’ve learned a lot about what resources exist on campus for students and how best to maximize my time as a student. Heller alumni also talk about how they positioned themselves for their next opportunity post-graduation. As a graduate student, there are a ton of fellowships that you may qualify for and that provide funding for language study, research, and professional development both in the US and abroad. Attending these situations is a great way to get a sense of which opportunities you may qualify for and to learn how to draft a competitive application. Lastly, employer sessions are a great way to network with professionals in your field of interest and learn about potential internship or full-time roles they might be recruiting for.

Read the Newsletter

The Career Development Center sends out a weekly email newsletter. This newsletter shares upcoming networking events as well as active job postings. Even if you are not actively job or internship searching, it’s a good idea to briefly glance at the opportunities listed. I like to scan the qualifications sector for postings that look relevant. This gives me a sense of what employers are looking for and has helped me tailor my jobs and extracurriculars to better develop these competencies. The newsletter includes both events happening at Heller and in Greater Boston. The Heller events are normally doing the lunch hour and over Zoom, which is very accessible. The events in Boston are usually in the evenings when most people don’t have classes. Attending these events is a great way to practice your networking skills and interact with your cohort outside of a classroom setting.

Evaluate Job Offers

Salary negotiation can feel scary even for students with a lot of full-time job experience. This can be even tougher if you are evaluating multiple job offers at once. Sitting down with a Career Advisor can help you think through the best ways to position yourself in the negotiation process and can also help you identify other types of benefits you may be able to negotiate either instead of, or in addition to, salary.

Overall, the Career Center is not a resource you want to put on the shelf until a few panicked weeks before graduation. The resources at the Career Development Center are designed to support students throughout all stages of their graduate school career.

Social Entrepreneurship at Heller

November 3, 2022 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

Even if you are not in the Social Impact MBA program, Heller students can benefit from participation in social entrepreneurship initiatives both at the Heller School and the wider Brandeis community. Social entrepreneurship events are a great form of experiential learning. They offer the chance to network outside of your cohort and provide a real-world forum for applying course concepts. I’d like to highlight the social entrepreneurship opportunities I’ve enjoyed the most.

The Heller Social Impact Startup Challenge

This is an annual event in the fall semester planned almost entirely by current students. This three-day event brings together Heller students from all programs to form teams, develop their ideas with the help of mentors, and present their business concepts before a panel of judges – many of whom are Boston-area entrepreneurs. I joined this competition in my first semester, which allowed me to apply the concepts I was learning from Financial Accounting, as well as Leadership & Organizational Development. I was still very new to the Heller community, so this event also gave me the chance to meet new people and form connections. I originally came to Heller just for the MA in Sustainable International Development program but was encouraged by alumni to add the MBA. After completing the Startup Challenge, I knew I had made the right decision.

SPARK

The SPARK program is run by Brandeis Innovation. In the fall, SPARK accepts applications for its pitch competition, known as SPARKTank. First prize and People’s Choice Award winners in the Heller Startup Challenge receive streamlined entrance into the competition. The SPARK competition differs from the Heller Startup Challenge in that it is open to Brandeis faculty, staff, and students. Judges have innovation as a top criteria. The pitch time is much shorter than the Heller Startup Challenge, so my team really had to challenge ourselves to be focused, specific, and deliberate about how we communicated our idea. Winning teams from SPARK automatically join the SPARK startup incubator. The incubator happens over spring semester. Teams meet weekly for workshops that help them hone in on topics like competitive advantage, customer discovery, and revenue generation. My favorite thing about SPARK was the cohort aspect. Our cohort included teams from the International Business School, a professor in the Asian Studies Department, as well as first and second year Heller MBA students. I learned so much from being able to hear what other teams were working on and what challenges they were working through.

Courses in Social Entrepreneurship

In addition to events, Heller students can also engage in social entrepreneurship through coursework. Students have the option of two courses – Global Social Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation – both taught by the MBA Program Director, Carole Carlson. Professor Carlson has recently authored an entire textbook with case studies on mission-driven ventures. In the spring semester, she teaches the half-semester course on Global Social Entrepreneurship, which highlights examples of social impact businesses around the globe. I really appreciated how the class encouraged us to be skeptical and question if everything that is labeled a social venture is in fact truly mission-driven. The course also emphasizes that just because a social impact is taking place, mission-driven ventures still must have robust revenue models and solid business plans to be viable. In this class, I was introduced to essential business tools for lean startups, including the Business Model Canvas and the theory of change. In this course, students actually form teams, develop a business idea, and present on their business idea as their final project. My team presented on the idea of an eco-grocery store in Bhutan that would reduce waste and create jobs for urban youth. The fall semester course, Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation, dives even deeper into these concepts and presents students with more domestic case studies. Other topics covered include competitive advantage, scaling, and financing social ventures.

If you are even the slightest bit curious or interested in entrepreneurship, I encourage you to dip your toes in and take advantage of these opportunities!

MBA Extracurriculars: The Board Fellows Program

October 25, 2022 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

As of right now, less than two months remain in my tenure as a Heller MBA Board Fellow and the 2023 cohort is actively being recruited from among the ranks of first-year MBAs. In the Board Fellow program, MBA students are matched with nonprofit organizations and sit on their Board of Directors as a non-voting member for 12 months. I had the great fortune of getting matched with Bikes Not Bombs, a youth development organization that uses the bicycle as a vehicle for social change. I entered this program to get a better understanding of nonprofit governance, to connect with a local organization that does programming in my professional area of interest, to expand my professional network, and to increase my leadership skills. Here are my tips for maximizing this opportunity!

Join a Committee

Both corporate and nonprofit boards organize themselves into relevant subcommittees. Common ones include Finance, Executive, Governance, and Fundraising. At Bikes Not Bombs, I knew early on that I wanted to join the Governance committee. This committee has been focused on board member recruitment, engagement, and succession planning. Prior to coming to Brandeis, I had been involved in the recruitment, onboarding, support, and offboarding of AmeriCorps volunteers and was curious what recruitment looked like for a nonprofit board. Joining a subcommittee helped me get a firsthand insight into this process, while also allowing me to connect with a smaller subgroup of board members who I met with on a monthly basis (as opposed to the other board members, which I saw at our bi-monthly full board meetings).

Volunteer or Help Plan Events

Many nonprofits have annual flagship events that they are known for. These events are usually focused on fundraising and sharing the progress the organization has made that year. Bikes Not Bombs hosts two big fundraisers – the Building Momentum Breakfast and the Bike-A-Thon. For this year’s Bike-A-Thon, I volunteered to help run registration for teams biking in the event. Volunteering was a great way for me to meet key staff in the organization and hear from veteran participants their reflections on what this event means for them and the surrounding Jamaica Plain community.

Have One-on-Ones with Board Members

Each person on the board (unless they are retired) is an active professional. At least 4 people on Bikes Not Bombs board were alumni of Heller’s MBA program! Meeting one-on-one for a virtual coffee chat was a great way to get to know them better, learn more about their career trajectory, and hear about what motivated them to get involved on the board. One of my favorite one-on-ones was when I had the opportunity to talk to Bikes Not Bomb’s capacity building consultant. From this conversation, I learned a lot about what it takes to improve board governance.

As you can see, there are many ways to get involved beyond just attending board meetings. Many of my peers in the Board Fellows program have also taken on special projects related to committee work and many of them have found internships through their connections on the board. Nonprofit boards really appreciate the perspective of younger professionals and many boards are looking to fill certain skill gaps which Heller MBA students come equipped with. I’ve really enjoyed my Board Fellow experience thus far and I look forward to finishing strong!

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