I worked with Girl MOVE Academy, an organization working with women and children to develop a new generation of leaders in Mozambique. The focus of my work was on the development of a national expansion strategy. With the goal of reaching roughly 18 million people over the next decade, Girl MOVE (GM) aims to expand using its current methodology across the national education system. I supported GM by reviewing the theory of change and strategy for its legacy programs, focused on developing female leaders in Mozambique.

My work was closely associated with the organization’s mission, as it covered GM’s two strategic pillars: developing a new generation of women leaders in Mozambique, and increasing school engagement in Mozambique by working with students to develop their educational and vocational skills. In particular, working on the development of the expansion strategy involved gathering insights on the program contents and identifying potential improvements. I also aided in designing the integration of the program at the school level, and planning the timeline of implementation at a national level, by identifying governance and incentive structures, and M&E strategy and potential funding sources.

This project was the first evidence of the impact of my Columbia Business School (CBS) education. It was rewarding to see the value I can bring to new situations and how that was enhanced by my MBA. The MBA program elevated my ability to implement analytical skills practically. From Managerial Statistics, I used descriptive statistics to assess the impact of our program in a robust manner through the results of a skill acquisition survey. Fully understanding skewness helped me develop a better case for the development of Mozambique’s youth, given the significant proportion of children in the population. Through Business Analytics, I acquired a strong basis to address impact testing, specifically supporting an external analyst in the set up of a randomized control trial. Analytics in Action equipped me for the need to develop the bridge between sophisticated intellectual frameworks of data analysis and the limitations of field data (unpractical data structures, unavailable data, complex data capture processes, etc.) From the Reentry Acceleration Program and LEAD, I learned the importance of tailoring my communication and strategy that I then used to put in place to reach our target beneficiaries. Doing Business in Africa allowed me to leverage concrete insights on public sector leaderships in Africa, as a lens to estimate government involvement in the expansion strategy. Having a notion on the impact of demographics in African countries helped me advocate for the importance of developing Mozambican youth. These academic learnings were fundamental to my internship. I found that the most significant value I brought was vision and ambition. This would not have been possible without the personal experience that the MBA was for me, and the impact these courses have had in translating to exciting new leadership skills.

During the entirety of my fellowship, I was inspired by the impact that I was able to have at Girl MOVE, not only because of the mission of the organization, but also because of the level of professional standards, ambitions, and skills of the people I worked with. As with any meaningful project, there were challenges that I had to overcome. Over the course of the first few weeks, I found I had to make an additional effort to “translate” many of the ideas I had into something practical that could be implemented into the field immediately. It was an invaluable opportunity, especially given that most of my experience was as a strategy consultant, to strengthen the skills of pragmatism and action-oriented thought. Planning an expansion strategy required constant reassessment of the premises we could rely on. It was never a clean-cut, one-shot exercise that could easily be transported from paper to reality. I learned to work in a more iterative approach, constantly engaging people who work every day on the field.

To apply my learnings from my MBA program on a practical level and do so with an organization whose mission I truly believe in was an amazing experience. It was rewarding to grow as a person and a professional through work I enjoyed. I developed key learnings from my time with GM, including growing pragmatism and action-oriented thought, as well as working in a consistent approach.

On a personal level, I learned how much I can enjoy working in social impact and how exciting it can be. While there are challenges transitioning from a business-focused career into social entrepreneurship, as I learned from my peers, it can also be rewarding and a significant growth opportunity. My main takeaway was how much of an option this transition is for me in the future. I am grateful to the Tamer Institute for the opportunity to have this fellowship right after my MBA, as it was a unique experience that I will carry throughout my life.