Sowing elm seeds

I won’t go into detail telling you the obvious: Studying at Yale University is amazing. The teaching, people, environment and opportunities are all just top notch.

I will comment on them in my future posts for sure, even though, in general terms, it’s quite similar to Mark’s notes from last year.

But for now, I want to focus on the one of my leisure activities that I consider extremely useful: Consulting as part of the Elmseed Enterprise Fund, a microfinance student organization.

A little history for the beginning. Elmseed was founded in April 2001 with a capital endowment of $20,000 as the first student organization to provide microcredit – a concept tried and tested in the emerging world – to small enterprises in the New Haven area. (New Haven is also nicknamed the Elm City; the name Elmseed is based on that nickname.) Ten years later, we’re talking a company with an elaborate structure and strategy that has helped to shape and develop several successful business concepts, including the Reaves brothers’ Ready4Print print shop and Antoine Scott’s cargo firm. The goal of this semester is to provide ten good, safe and sustainable loans that will be a major help in the development of local businesses. So far it seems that we’ll succeed.

How do we do it? Part of the success is the clear distribution of responsibility between six departments, each led by two co-directors. Client Recruitment is in charge of finding clients; Client Services provides consulting services in tuition and consulting relations; Spanish Outreach is on the border and provides connection with the numerous Spanish-speaking community; Finance takes care of the day-to-day Elmseed operation and loan provision; Development seeks external financial support for extending the microcredit program; and Strategy provides “internal consulting” to Elmseed itself – defining the goals, the rules for loan provision etc. Supervising these departments are both CEO and COO, and also the Board of Directors that has to approve every loan proposal. Difficult? I haven’t even gone into much detail! But it works like clockwork.

R to L: Jared (CEO), Ginger (Client Service Co-Director), me, Noam (Strategy Co-Director) and Deb

And what cog in the wheel am I? After an unusually selective selection process – Elmseed rejects approximately half of all applicants, many of whom have made it through the screening by an elite group of picky universities every year – the Client Services recruited me. Step by step, I was assigned four clients in my portfolio, and I provide them with advice with my consultant partner. It’s no personal advice (i.e. no Partners for Life or OVB) – actually, unless this insults anyone, it’s more like a “micro-McKinsey” – i.e. corporate consulting.

I’ll explain what I mean using a specific example from my experience. This past Friday was the first time I met Fredina, a single mother whose cosmetic skills have been attracting clients right to her doorstep. Within an hour, we discussed her plan to open a new cosmetics salon and reached the conclusion that what she needs most at this moment is a loan to procure a portable kit with which she can visit weddings and other “cosmetically intensive” events as a contractor; this way, she will be able to eliminate the fixed cost of renting salon space for the moment and focus her energy on generating profit instead. Is this really the best solution? Maybe not; a proper consultant such as at McKinsey would probably achieve a much higher level of optimization. At any rate, we have taken Fredina’s business plan to a more realistic level where it will become profitable earlier. Next month, we will work on getting the documents needed for the microcredit application; I believe that it will help to start up a business that will help Fredina to give her three children a much better start in life.

My client personifies two things that make Elmseed unique. Since her situation does not allow her to take out a normal bank loan, Elmseed is the only potential institution that can support her in terms of capital. At the same time, this is a loan with a direct impact on the community.

I worked on two more things for Elmseed last week. The first was a conference concerning the networking of former and current clients. My Singapore schoolmate Deb and I reserved the local Economic Development Center, arranged for the participation of three professors of the Yale School of Management, and ensured that everything would run smoothly. Another feat we accomplished was winning $25,000 in the Chase Community Giving contest; more than 1,700 people voted for Elmseed and its mission following a gentle PR campaign.

And I shouldn’t forget that Elmseed is a social affair, of course. In mid-October, we drove through a furiously beautiful fall landscape to a loaned cabin near Guildford for a one-day retreat, which got us out of a rut for at least one Saturday. As part of further socializing, the lottery assigned Sinye, a Canadian, to me as my “lil’ sib”; by coincidence, she has just become the new COO at Elmseed. (Sinye and I went shopping to get the refreshments for the conference. It turns out I have a lot to learn about cheese and bakery products. Then again, cuisine is her second big passion, alongside consulting, so her edge is understandable.)

So to sum it up: My work for Elmseed is exceptionally varied, yet always practical. While it entails a lot of responsibility, I get the feeling that I do a job that really makes a difference. And also there’s a circle of friends to whom I can turn at any time.

When people say that studies abroad offer more than “just” top notch academic education, this is precisely what they mean. As they sing in our promotional video – which is a touch too sweet – “that’s why I chose Yale”.