Goizueta MBAs Help Fix the Bolivian Recycling Business

Thursday, July 25, 2013

On Aug. 3, seven MBA students from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School will travel to Bolivia as part of a project designed to put their skills to work solving a waste problem in the nation’s capital in Santa Cruz. The students will help determine the feasibility of building a more efficient recycling plant and creating jobs in the process.

Five part-time MBAs and two full-time students will spend about three weeks in the country to prepare a feasibility study for Goizueta’s partner, Kimberly-Clark (KMB), and present it to company executives in mid-October.

The Bolivia trip is the third overseas journey in the four years that the Social Enterprise @ Goizueta program has existed. Previous trips have taken students to Ethiopia to help reinvent the country’s wine industry and to Honduras to determine if an eye surgeon’s pro bono practice can be expanded to serve more people suffering from cataracts.

In anticipation of the trip, students have spent the summer researching similar projects around the world and studying best practices in recycling. Peter Roberts, a Goizueta professor who leads the global feasibility studies, says the program gives students an opportunity to apply what they’re learning in the MBA program. “I like them to see that the business skills they have are very much portable,” Roberts says.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek (link opens in a new window)

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Education
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research, social enterprise