I worked with Open Startup Tunisia to create and enable a sustainable strategy for domestic growth. OST’s mission is to provide Tunisian graduate students and recent graduates with the skills to launch their own socially-focused business that seeks to address the UN SDGs. OST currently hosts startup competitions for aspiring student entrepreneurs and identified a gap between the skills that ‘Openers’ have when they complete the program and the pre-requisite qualifications for entry into an incubator or accelerator. During my summer internship, I completed an international benchmarking effort of pre-incubator programs, interviewed Tunisian entrepreneurs and international entrepreneurial experts to create a proposal for the curriculum and structure of a new pre-incubation program in Tunisia. In the future, OST will transform into two distinct modules:

• Ideation and Exploration Program: rolled out at regional Tunisian Universities
• Enhanced Pre-Incubation Program: to provide top candidates with the necessary tools and training to fully enter the Tunisian or international ecosystem

The 4-month pre-incubator curriculum that I designed with the OST team will build a stronger pipeline of social entrepreneurs entering the Tunisian ecosystem. These new ventures will not only aid in job creation within the Tunisian economy, but will also directly address social problems in more nimble and innovative ways than relying on public sector support alone.

Additionally, my projects included conducting a survey of Tunisian entrepreneurs to identify critical Intellectual Property challenges they face, facilitating a discussion of IP and research translation challenges across a group of entrepreneurs, government representatives, and ecosystem stakeholders, preparing a ‘how to’ guide for prospective international OST partners across North Africa, and facilitating a future partnership between OST and Columbia University CORE undergraduate students for future ideation bootcamps. Each of these activities and sub-projects contributed to OST’s mission by expanding their presence in Tunisia and internationally, while maintaining a relevant and effective curriculum to train future social entrepreneurs.

I utilized my MBA skillset every day during my internship. From hard skills using data analysis and strategy development to soft skills ranging from public speaking to cultural awareness. The entrepreneurship curriculum at CBS prepared me for this experience specifically by providing a foundational understanding of the Business Model Canvas and value proposition formation, as well as experiential opportunities to intern during the semester with an early-stage startup. Additionally, the Global Immersion courses to both Tunis and Dubai provided me with a greater understanding of the importance of entrepreneurship in the Middle East, which allowed me to ramp up quickly in a new role.

Beyond these foundational skills, I found that time management skills and the ability to pivot, both of which I was able to hone during the MBA program, enabled me to keep up with OST’s fast-paced entrepreneurial environment. The OST leadership team is currently small in size but highly productive, and each team member must constantly balance competing priorities while delivering excellent results. My contributions benefitted from experiences I had at Columbia because I was able to focus on immediate priorities, while maintaining an open and flexible mindset about long term outcomes.

My limited previous experience working in entrepreneurship and in the Middle East prompted a few questions from OST stakeholders and members of the Tunisian ecosystem throughout my internship. I learned quickly that while developing countries like Tunisia have the potential to tremendously benefit from social entrepreneurship, they may be skeptical of international ‘best practices’ being blindly applied without any consideration for local ecosystem dynamics. I was able to tailor my messaging to account for these considerations, while continuing to be flexible with my assumptions about the pre-incubator curriculum to account for any local context I may have missed. For example, a Tunisian entrepreneur provided feedback on the proposed customer discovery content within our draft curriculum, stating that in similar sessions hosted by other organizations that the content did not adequately prepare entrepreneurs for the cultural differences of interviewing customers in Tunisia. This entrepreneur explained that culturally, Tunisians may be less forthcoming with critical information about an idea for a new venture, and most recommended questions did not account for the nuances within typical Tunisian conversations. To account for this feedback, I recommended that the OST team collaborate with Tunisian entrepreneurs to create a more realistic list of interview questions that can be effective in the local context.

I embarked on my summer internship with the goal of experiencing working full time in social enterprise in the Middle East, as well as to gain a better understanding of the potential for entrepreneurship to solve social problems in developing countries. My impact on the project far exceeded my expectations and my main takeaways from this experience include a greater appreciation for international social entrepreneurship and for working on a small entrepreneurship team firsthand. The small nature of the OST leadership team meant that feedback needed to be immediately processed and implemented. I learned as much from my direct feedback conversations as I did from observing team dynamics and their evolution over time. While team members may have faced differences of opinions on short-term priorities, their shared passion for OST’s mission continues to bind them together and has allowed them to bootstrap together a group of highly effective interns and volunteers that facilitate their operations on a tight budget.

While social entrepreneurship was not a career path that I initially would have seen myself pursuing, my internship provided a wider view of the many forms of entrepreneurship that exist in an international context. After seeing the impact created by small and nimble organizations operating in developing countries, I am much more likely to pursue opportunities in social entrepreneurship in the future. I was able to witness the potential of startups, especially in developing countries, to create change in an environment that might have been previously stifled from lack of private investment or public interest.