NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

This past week we had a strong focus on students, at both the undergrad and graduate level. Managing Editor Moses Lee also shared NextBillion’s goals for the coming year – The Future of NextBillion.

– Guest writer Andrea Rudert covered remarks at the ANDE Latin America conference in Granada, Nicaragua by Paul Davidson from Agora Partnerships, Robert Parkinson from Artemisia and Andres Satizabal, an MBA student at NYU Stern. Her post offers some concrete suggestions for organizations that hope to integrate MBAs into their work.

– Andrea notes the organization Net Impact as a great source of potential MBA interns. Rishabh Kaul wrote about the lack of such a network in India, but covered a new organization, the National Social Entrepeneurship Forum in India, which hopes to fill at least part of this role at universities.

– Earlier in the week, I covered the annual conference of the National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Alliance with two posts – first highlighting several of the student teams working on BOP-oriented products, and second exploring the role of college students – American college students in particular – in innovation in the developing world, at a time when there are tens of thousands of trained engineers in those same countries.

– And if you missed it, one of our newest staff writers Heather Fleming wrote a post provocatively titled: “R.I.P. Socia Ventures?” that drew a huge amount of comment and interest. It was not a prescription – but a question about how far to take an idea that’s good for the world, or could be, but isn’t getting this recognition, or when the mix of ingredients for a start-up fail to come together. Heather uses an example from Stanford’s Design for Extreme Affordability class to make her point.

– Rounding out our coverage last week, Bonnie Chan wrote of her experience with cocoa farming in Cote D’Ivoire with NextBillion Associate Partner Technoserve, and Manuel Bueno covered the evolution of online microfinance intermediaries – beyond Kiva.

We posted some great jobs this past week as well:

• Investment Analyst, Gray Ghost Ventures in Atlanta, GA
• Positions in Senegal and Latin America with Global Citizen Year: Program Manager – Senegal and Program Manager – Latin America.
• Business Development and Communications Associate with the Acumen Fund in Karachi.
• Two positions with the Microfinance Information Exchange in Washington, DC: Strategic Marketing Leader and Trainer / E-Learning Expert.

And the April conference season is almost upon us. From our Take Action page, the conferences below are coming up in the next couple weeks throughout the U.S:

• 12th Latin American Conference, Harvard Business School. Cambridge, MA. April 11.
• Skoll World Forum. Oxford, UK. April 14-16.
• Global Engagement Summit. Evanston IL. April 14-18.
• Investors Circle Spring Conference & Venture Fair. San Francisco, CA.April 18-20.
• Unite for Sight – Global Health & Innovation Conference. New Haven, CT. April 17-18.
• Global Philanthropy Forum.Redwood City, CA. April 18-21.
• Global Social Venture Competition. Berkeley, CA. April 22-23.

Hope to see you at these!