When I joined Madda Studio, it was at a critical moment for the business. It had been operating for three years, mostly as a boutique company providing custom projects for its customers. Over the preceding months, it achieved accelerating interest from its partners, and it was poised for a year of rapid growth. However, the business needed help setting up the important operational infrastructure to deliver on these growth opportunities.

I joined them to conduct strategic and financial analyses and to help set up operational processes and procedures. My main project was to build a financial model for the business that would help them better track their finances on a month-to-month basis and better manage their finances in the future. This involved reviewing past expenses, building a historical profit and loss statement, and developing forward-looking projections for the next 18 months. As a result, the team could both more easily manage their finances and make important investment decisions that they would need in order to realize their growth opportunities. This project was critical because it gave the team the ability to pause and think strategically about where the business was, where it was going, and what it needed to get there. In addition to working on the business’s financials, I conducted pricing analyses, identified operational improvements, and developed different tools for the business, such as tools to manage their inventory in real-time.

The skills I had learned in my MBA were critical to tackling the different projects that I worked on. The most important skills I applied were from my core finance and accounting courses. It was great to be able to draw on the knowledge I learned in those courses and to experience what it is like to apply those skills to an actual business. Understanding the difference between theory and practice is important, especially when learning to operate in an environment in which data may not exist, when you have to make many assumptions based on spotty information, and where you have to build the structure from scratch. In addition to my concrete skills, I benefited from the leadership and soft skills I gained during my MBA. In my experience at CBS, I worked on teams with people from all backgrounds, which helped me during the summer when I worked with many people who had vastly different backgrounds.

The main challenge that I faced is the fact that operating a small organization in an emerging market is dramatically different than making business decisions in a classroom. Data is spotty and the situation changes constantly, so I needed to learn to adapt to the situation, incorporate the information that was available, and make educated business decisions. Working in a small fast-moving environment like this helped me hone my skills and focus on the highest value areas for the business at all times.

Having worked in consulting and impact investing before business school, this experience sparked my interest for working in hands-on operational environments – especially in mission-driven environments where I could have an impact. Madda Studio was an exciting place to work for the summer because I could see the impact of my work on both the business and on the other stakeholders in real-time. It was motivating being able to make recommendations and follow through on them immediately, and I hope to continue to explore my interest of operating roles at mission-driven organizations going forward.