NaTakallam empowers displaced people to earn an income by connecting them with language tutoring, cultural exchange, and translation job opportunities through the power of technology. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, livelihood challenges for displaced people were exasperated while demand for digital learning surged, creating an opportunity for NaTakallam to scale its impact. 

My main projects focused on the following: 
- Business strategy: Identifying strategic priorities across the organization, developing pricing strategy for B2C products to capture demand, and delivering operational strategy 
- Technology strategy: Identifying the need for unified technology platform, carving out Tech Product Manager role, and supporting tech grant applications  
- Marketing and user experience: Driving visual identity formation and managing website development process 

My work contributed to the long-term sustainability of NaTakallam. While the organization has been growing and supporting refugees organically over the last five years, they were not yet breaking even and had major pain points around technology. My work helped the leadership team think through its business plan and prioritize technology investments to break even and scale in the coming years, ultimately serving more displaced communities. Furthermore, my marketing and website work will elevate NaTakallam’s brand identity and user experience to ultimately drive increased demand. 

My learnings from the Columbia SIPA curriculum, including focus on humanitarian aid, management, and social entrepreneurship, enabled me to hit the ground running with NaTakallam. For instance, I was able to support the co-founders in revisiting their mission and vision statements from the getgo, which isn’t something I would have been able to lead without a deep knowledge of the complexities of displacement and management. Furthermore, I applied learnings from Creating a Social Enterprise to offer new perspectives to the organization’s business plan. My understanding of the social enterprise landscape and business enabled me to talk through the organization’s long-term strategy, including business model, product, and pricing decisions with the co-founders. 

Some challenges I faced were shifts in project scope and project management with outside contractors:  
- Project scope: Within the first few weeks of my summer, I immediately discovered the project I was initially set to work on — the development of a Spanish curriculum — was not a top priority. Understanding NaTakallam’s resource constraints and my particular skillset, I quickly shifted my project scope to business and tech strategy, which ultimately was the best decision for all. 
- Project management: Another project I took on in the middle of the summer was the management of the visual identity and website development process with an outside contractor. I had to manage expectations for both NaTakallam and the development agency, and while there were delays throughout the summer, we were able to align on a final development timeline that worked for both parties. 

While the founders mentioned that they would be fairly hands-off at the beginning of the summer, we ended up on a call every to every other day by the end of summer because of the way our workstreams overlapped. Aside from an amazing experience working with a talented and dedicated team, I have learned an immense amount about building and scaling a social enterprise, leadership, and adaptability. Below are just a few of the takeaways:  
- Working at a social enterprise, even one that is five years in, was chaotic but rewarding since its mission, vision, and values aligned with mine. It was an honor to work with NaTakallam.
- NaTakallam has been innovative, resourceful, and impact-centric, which has been its core advantage.
- Invest in technology early on if it is at the heart of your social enterprise, but be open to outsourcing it if not.
- From speaking to some of NaTakallam’s conversation partners to identifying NaTakallam’s pain points from the management team, I deepened my knowledge of refugee issues and the intricacies of building a social enterprise.
- The co-founders’ flexible management style and open-mindedness enabled me to work on some critical projects, and I am grateful for the opportunity to work with them. They were patient, critical, yet willing to explore different directions, which has led to the adoption of some key game-changing decisions. 

This experience solidified my passion for social entrepreneurship. Working at a more experienced social enterprise provided me a roadmap for my own enterprise, Tâm Journey, and I am even more excited to continue down this road as an entrepreneur. Not only that, but I will continue to stay engaged with NaTakallam as a board member.