It was my pleasure to work with Unchained Stories as a Social Enterprise Fellow during the summer of 2020 and to contribute to their marketing and financial management efforts. Unchained Stories is a social impact production company that uses media and creative storytelling to advocate for criminal justice reform. The COVID-19 pandemic postponed the startup’s launch to summer 2020 so I joined the team just in time to help re-branding efforts via social media and to create customized tools for project workflow and financial management.

The initial portion of my fellowship was dedicated to creating marketing content to establish brand presence on Instagram and Facebook. In devising a marketing approach, it was insightful to familiarize myself with Unchained Stories’ existing documentaries, notable productions, and services and perform an analysis of the competition. There are several major influential organizations advocating for criminal justice reform, but each one approached social media marketing from a different perspective. It was important to identify Unchained Stories’ competitive advantage and the best usage of social media to spread awareness of critical issues in criminal justice reform, elevate the brand and grow the startup’s fanbase, and leverage the available features to engage the audience. Halfway through the summer we decided to revise the marketing direction because while the primary objective is to bring awareness and advocacy action for criminal justice reform, Unchained Stories also needed to market its products and services to its audience. We wanted to highlight Unchained Stories’ newly developed consulting services & curriculums and demonstrate the value Unchained Stories could bring to a partnering client. In a sense, social media is a marketing tool and sales agent to attract future clients and productions that will drive the Unchained Stories’ business.

The priority deliverable of my fellowship was creating a series of tools that worked together to plan out production budgets, measure actualized spending against plan, and project a 6month and 12month profit and loss statement. These financial models and templates are instrumental for any entrepreneur to understand the financial health of their business and project future operations and opportunities to pursue to achieve their financial goals. Unchained Stories has multiple intricate business models that needed to be reflected in this customized financial model. My professional background in financial planning for major retailers paired with the finance and accounting courses I’ve taken at Columbia Business School prepared me for this undertaking. Working closely with the founder of Unchained Stories exposed me to the variety of hats entrepreneurs must wear within their companies and emphasized the importance of streamlined tools to make business operations simpler and more efficient thereby allowing more time for the entrepreneur to dedicate to growing their company & craft.

While I can list what I worked on as part of my fellowship and describe how I contributed to helping Unchained Stories advance its mission, the most valuable aspect of my fellowship was the exposure and learnings Unchained Stories provided to me. I experienced the intricacies and challenges of an entrepreneur’s role and responsibility, especially in the social impact space. I learned a tremendous amount about the United States’ criminal justice system and the fight for a more just world. This fellowship experience inspired me to take the CBS course entitled “REAP: Reforming Mass Incarceration and the Role of Business” for the Fall 2020 semester which will be the precursor to the immersion course that will allow students to teach financial literacy and entrepreneurship to incarcerated individuals. While social impact may not have been my focus area upon entering business school, I am emerging from this experience as a more well-rounded and socially conscious leader. This unique fellowship opportunity broadened my knowledge base on criminal justice reform, helped me develop and refine a set of relevant marketing and financial modelling skills, and encouraged me to leverage my business school and professional learnings to advance a critical cause.