Belated New Year greetings

Happy New Year!

Wishing you a healthy and prosperous 2009 with all your dreams and wishes fulfilled.

I had a great year in 2008 with tremendous learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom at the Kellogg School of Management. Below activities were some of highlights:

• In January-March, I took part in the leadership team to organize a course curriculum and take a field trip to Tanzania. 31 business school students conducted market research for the development of innovative HIV/AIDS test devices sponsored by the Gates Foundation.


• I entered with four Kellogg friends the JP Morgan Business Leadership Case Competition and we won the first place in the final round in April.


• In May, I joined the board of the Center for What Works, which focuses on the development of benchmarking and impact measurement framework for nonprofits.


• In April-June, I organized two student project teams and led researches that resulted in the needs analysis of social investors and charitable donors and the experiment of applying prediction market mechanism for nonprofit organizations’ performance assessment.


• As a summer intern, I worked at the Bridgespan Group’s San Francisco office, where I met great friends and mentors.


• In September-December, I joined my friend whose son is autistic to formulate a venture plan. The idea is to create a social business that employs people with high-functioning autism and leverage their superior ability of focus in repetitive work to provide software testing service. Our plan was well received by experts and prospective partners/clients, and we’re now in the process of preparing for a small-scale pilot project.

In the remaining six months at business school before going back to management consulting in Tokyo, I plan to focus more on the activities related to more efficient social finance mechanisms, which is the issue of my passion and long-term pursuit. Already this week, my friend and I are launching two projects:

• Social Stock Exhange: We will work with Mr. Celso Grecco, Ashoka Fellow, and the Global Exchange for Social Investment (GEXSI) to help São Paulo Stock Exchange (BOVESPA) formulate a strategic plan to create a stock market for social businesses.


• Social Investment Bank: In partnership with a group of outstanding experts in the field, we formulate a business plan for a social “investment bank” that they plan to launch later this year.

As always, your kind support and advice would be greatly appreciated..