“At the end of seven weeks, we were able to make several recommendations on cost-saving initiatives and even implement some of the ideas.” food available at Nairobi stores. Plans are to add a flavored coconut snack food and possibly bottled coconut water. Running her own startup business, Griffin often harkens back to her experience at Kumi Hospital. As part of the Kumi project, Griffin and three other MBA students also worked with the staff at Kumi to cut costs so the facility wouldn’t run out of money at the end of each month. The student team, part of Ross’ Multidisciplinary Action Projects (MAP) program, divided expenses into four categories: transport, food, medicine and medical supplies. “We did a deep dive to see how the money was really being spent,” Griffin said. “At the end of seven weeks, we were able to make several recommendations on cost-saving initiatives and even implement some of the ideas.” In one example, the team noticed that the hospital had two pharmacies serving outpatients and inpatients, but only one set of staff who had to walk about 50 yards between them. The hospital was ready to hire a second staff, but the MAP team showed them how to create one pharmacy with two service windows. The solution saved the hospital time and money and made better use of the existing staff’s time. When Griffin revisited the hospital in 2013, the two-window pharmacy was still in operation. “We’d spent our last weekend in Uganda executing that cost-saving recommendation, so seeing it still intact and functioning was affirming,” she said. One of the lessons Griffin learned at Kumi was to ask questions and never assume anything. So she asked the hospital administrators why they had two pharmacies. “Apparently, during the Ugandan civil war, guerrilla groups would raid the hospital at gunpoint for medicines to treat wounded fighters in the field,” Griffin explained. “When all the medicine was stocked in one room, the entire inventory would be stolen. Cleverly, the staff separated the pharmacy into two rooms, so they’d only lose half their stock.” That story stayed with her. She also reflects on the advice she received from the late C.K. Prahalad, one of her professors at the time, about working at the base of the pyramid. Prahalad encouraged her to sense an opportunity and then take the leap of faith with both feet. “When the going gets tough and I feel like giving up or throwing in the towel, I think back to the number of sacrifices I’ve made to successfully switch careers,” she said. “I also re-read the encouraging note that Prahalad wrote to me on the bottom of my final essay for his class. It reminds me again why I wanted this career in the first place.” And she thinks back to the lessons from the MAP experience that WDI funded. “Questioning my assumptions and taking nothing for granted has become a basic mode of operation for how I conduct my career and life,” Griffin said. 25th Anniversary 59