Restore NYC exists to end sex trafficking in New York and restore the well-being and independence of foreign-national survivors. Since 2009, Restore has offered holistic services such as innovative housing and economic empowerment solutions that give survivors access to a safe home and a safe job. One such economic empowerment solution is a worker cooperative and staffing agency owned and controlled by diverse foreign-national women with a history of trafficking. Many of the women in the coop had been previously staffed at restaurants, but lost their work due to restaurant closures in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I spent my summer working in strategic business development exploring safe and sustainable work opportunities that would be feasible to pivot to, primarily focusing on the cleaning industry given the existing skillsets of the workers.

As part of the approach to business development, I spent a lot of time thinking through and having conversations around the strategy and positioning of the worker’s cooperative — what were the target business segments and industries, how do we position this new arm of the social enterprise — which were definitely bolstered through my business school courses. I also pulled a lot of thinking from my High Performing Nonprofits class — what would make this new venture for the cooperative successful? Is it aligned with the mission and strategy? What may be some common pitfalls? What blindspots might I have?

Having never done anything related to the cleaning industry prior, it was a little daunting at first to be conducting industry research on a brand new field, not even knowing where to start. Still, a skill I had worked to refine in my first year at CBS was how to approach whatever problem was at hand through multiple lenses and in a structured manner, and that helped tremendously in moving the project forward. Additionally, I quickly learned through my orientation sessions with Restore that I had to unlearn and reframe some of my own thinking, particularly when it came to trauma and trauma-informed care, and how critical that is in any kind of intervention.

I cannot stress enough how energizing Restore’s culture and team are and how meaningful this work was to me. I had attended the Tamer Center’s "Design Thinking Your Social Impact Career" workshop last year, and had come out of that with this nebulous, imagined ideal role in the social enterprise space, but it was not until I was in something similar that I really saw what a difference that made. One of my takeaways from that workshop was that personally I find it more meaningful to be close to the work (vserus in something a little more removed from the personal impact like CSR) and my summer experience at Restore not only affirmed that in me but also opened up new possibilities and avenues to explore within social enterprise.

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Endeavor was founded on the belief that job creation, innovation, and overall prosperity flourish where there is robust support for high-impact entrepreneurs, and as such, is leading the global high-impact entrepreneurship movement to drive long-term economic growth and build strong entrepreneurship ecosystems in growth markets by selecting, mentoring, and accelerating the best high-impact entrepreneurs. In order to do so, Endeavor must first identify, hire, reward, and retain the right talent to move the organization towards its mission in a way that aligns with its values. I spent my summer redesigning Endeavor’s performance management process, which includes the goal-setting process, the mid-year and year-end performance reviews, continuous feedback, performance improvement plan, and other related elements, in a way that aligns with their organizational values and overall business strategy.

As my pre-MBA work was in human capital consulting, this was a great opportunity to leverage existing knowledge and skills I already possessed. However, throughout the process I also found myself pulling from my CBS classroom experiences in LEAD (leading and listening well, motivating others), High Performing Nonprofits (what makes a nonprofit successful, nonprofit mission and values, organizational structure and strategy), Economics of Organizational Strategy (motivating employees through rewards and recognition), and Organizational Change (stakeholder buy-in, change management) just to name a few. Endeavor had chosen to depart from their previous performance management software due to a lack of global adoption, so it was critical that we get an understanding of why this was the case, any pain points in the current process, any standardization opportunities, etc. to increase the level of buy-in from global offices. Before any design work was done, I facilitated a series of stakeholder interviews at both the local and global level and conducted external benchmarking research on leading practices for performance management processes to help determine the strategic direction of the design process. The different courses I had taken at CBS undoubtedly provided me with the ability to view the problem from multiple lenses and angles and through different frameworks and mindsets.

First and foremost, the most obvious one — COVID-19. Due to the global pandemic, we quickly shifted to a completely remote summer internship, so all the stakeholder interviews, even the local ones had to be done virtually. It was a little bit of a challenge battling Zoom fatigue while also trying to build trust and rapport over a video call. I found myself wishing that I had taken Leader’s Voice a little sooner in my CBS career! The general sense from the stakeholder interviews was that while there were several pain points in the existing process, there was also a very evident need and desire for a structured performance management process, and as a result, quite a bit of excitement. My manager and I revisited the project scope several times, because the scope kept getting larger and multiple teams wanted everything designed and implemented at once (e.g., job levels and compensation budgets and frameworks at the same time as performance management).

In general, and one of the main reasons I had been excited about this internship in the first place (to leverage my existing skillset in a nonprofit environment), everyone needs good HR. Whether you’re a nonprofit or a startup or a large corporation, talent management is critical for your business. Additionally, employees are motivated by good and fair talent management processes. In the absence of them, employees did not understand how they were being evaluated or what the criteria for promotions were, and managers did not feel empowered to manage their employees because they themselves did not have a clear understanding of the performance and compensation processes. Moreover, performance management processes are there to empower, not to restrict, and need to be tailored not only to the organization, but also to the specific departments or teams that are using them. We incorporated Endeavor’s organizational values into the performance management process in a way that aligned with the business strategy and reinforced the behaviors that Endeavor wants to see more of. Additionally, for smaller offices with small teams of three to four, there wasn’t the need for strict performance reviews because the teams were in constant communication giving feedback. However, larger offices with more employees definitely needed the structure. In every case, the processes and tools we designed and implemented were there to serve as a guide to empower both employees and managers.