A Long Distance Dedication

This post is dedicated to my friends at HBS who got me through that whole mess. You know who you are.

Anyone who has spent more than a few hours with me in the last two years knows that my experience at HBS was a complicated and difficult one, one that I did not always (or often) enjoy. I was so focused on getting through it, that I may have dulled my capacity to actually feel or experience much of anything (positive or negative). And I can now admit that I probably let a lot of the positive of that place pass me by.

So thank you to all my friends and family who were able to look past the numb version of me, for I could not have been very fun to be around. But fortunately, I have found the alive and excited version of myself (completely forgotten about until now) in Nairobi!

It has only been three days, but I love working with Acumen. The days pass quickly with a variety of work to be done and endless conversations buzzing around the office. And even when I get home at night, I continue to slowly turn over the ideas from my work in my mind.

The work has captured my full attention and my passion because it is without answers and because it matters.

Acumen seeks to fundamentally change the living conditions in the developing world by investing in innovative, entrepreneurial, financially sustainable solutions to clean water, energy, health, and housing. While they are certainly not the first or only fund to try to harness the power of markets and local entrepreneurs, this is a field that is still being proven and is still in transition. The model, so simple and beautiful in theory, is incredibly difficult to make work in practice.

So Acumen spends much of its time identifying and evaluating potential investments, vetting them for their ability to produce significant social impact, to fund themselves with minimal charitable contributions, and to reach a million people within five years. Throughout the evaluation process and after investment, Acumen provides management support, helping refine or shape strategies and tactics, and linking the ventures with a variety of different resources.

It is exciting to be in such a crucible of ideas. However, while there are many people and organizations trying even more strategies to solve these basic challenges, few are ready to meet Acumen’s tough criteria.

This is largely what I’ve been working on the last three days: due diligence. Potential investees submit ideas and plans which portfolio staff at Acumen read and analyze. The due diligence process is involved and includes multiple rounds of questions back and forth and working sessions to help the entrepreneurs shape and shore up their plans. Some entrepreneurs make it all the way to being funded, while others only benefit from the feedback and input from the portfolio staff. Currently I’m helping with the due diligence on two potential investments in the health sector.

Doing due diligence is a lot like doing a case analysis at HBS. It could almost always be a BBOP or CCS case, or potentially a strategy, marketing, LEAD or TOM case. I find myself relying heavily on skills I didn’t realize I had acquired in FIN or FRC and am incredibly grateful to BAV for getting me over my irrational fear of financial statements. It was thrilling to realize just how much I had actually managed to learn at HBS and how fluent I had become in what once (not so long ago) was a completely foreign language.

I do find I miss the opportunity to debate the case in a classroom of peers, and am confronted with a new challenge of communicating my analysis without being able to rely on the short-cuts and acronyms that the shared experience at HBS provided.

But the biggest difference between my work and the case method is how much more invested I am. It is as challenging as anything I’ve studied and yet it is combined with a fundamental belief on my part that the substance of the work matters. This combination is intoxicating. My mind is working hard and yet my heart is not wandering off … or vice versa.

I am also working on business development (read fundraising) within East Africa. This work has also been exciting in its own way as it draws on one of my most established professional skills (fundraising) but in a context that is completely new and different. As the ranking expert on fundraising (the other staff do not have professional nonprofit backgrounds), I was terrified at first that Acumen was overvaluing my experience. But I am finding that much of what I take for granted as common knowledge depends entirely on how you define common … something I should have learned in Coro.

I’ve been so engaged in my work that I haven’t even had time to think about where I want to travel to while I’m here! So suggestions are welcome as are your emails …