Small- and medium-sized businesses drive up to 70% of global employment and gross domestic product, and many are started by determined, dedicated entrepreneurs. The economies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are powered by these businesses.
Accompanying the call for entrepreneurship in emerging markets, there’s a call for the knowledge, tools and networks to bolster those businesses. Would-be entrepreneurs working to develop successful companies are seeking the know-how to get there in a more efficient, effective way. After taking part in courses on leadership, communication, and team-building, participants in the Ford Community Impact Fellows Training program — a development program for which the William Davidson Institute (WDI) at the University of Michigan has been creating courses since 2020 — asked for precisely that.
“They really wanted to know the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship,” said Amy Gillett, Vice President of Education at WDI and co-leader of the Institute’s Entrepreneurship Development Center.
Gillett and David Estrada, Program Coordinator at WDI, created the “Starting a Business: Your Entrepreneurial Journey” course to teach participants the basic skills needed to effectively start their journeys. The 88 students in this summer’s program learned how to identify a need in the market, pitch a business plan, acquire funding, price a product and find a place for it in the market. While at work on the projects, the students were guided by 13 program mentors. These mentors had participated in previous online skills building programs offered by WDI and were eager to now share their knowledge and expertise in a guiding role.
The goal of the course was to set these committed students up for success in the business world by providing a foundation for a new company.
“We gave them an overview of the landscape and the fundamental skills they’d need to take an idea and get started,” Gillett said.
A successful entrepreneurship path is forged by experience — even if someone else lived it first.
Course guest speaker Jakub Zaludko, leader of strategy and projects at Impact Games, explained how he reshaped digital challenges toward commercial aspirations. As a trained political scientist and anthropologist, Zaludko observed how students in his home country of Slovakia were largely disengaged in the classroom, but they were noticeably focused while playing video games at home. Zaludko and his partners offered a solution: games with positive social impact goals. They built an innovative platform to develop games that encourage educational progress, promote freedom, and boost inclusion and equality.
Just as he did in the educational market, Zaludko explored how students can find a gap in their marketplace and build a solution to fill the void. Participants learned from his experience in identifying the community need, navigating the business world and launching a product.
The course content echoed similar lessons on focused solutions, mainly within low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). When developing the class, Gillett and Estrada wanted to be sure that examples and questions were sourced from spaces where students could see their own potential.
“Great ideas emerge everywhere. We don’t have any kind of monopoly in the U.S., which is why we included cases from all over the world when we created the course,” Gillett said.
Participants from nine countries, including China, Hungary, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa and the United States, shared their backgrounds, skills and experiences with one another — all in an effort to grow their business ideas and abilities. Business can’t be built in a vacuum, and engaging relationships are just as critical to the participants’ business development as the lessons themselves.
“To be a successful entrepreneur, you need these connections — and this is a great way to start building or expanding that network, for both participants and mentors,” Gillett said. “With these courses, we are building a global network of learners and entrepreneurs.”
Beyond simply initiating these critical connections, participants were introduced to the deep value of these relationships through their course conversations, projects and group work. “I learned about the value and importance of working as a team to solve problems as they emerge,” said a participant from Nigeria. “Each team member brings a unique set of abilities to the table.”
Ultimately, participants worked together to build a business plan and create a video pitch. Gillett, Estrada, and program mentors evaluated the projects with an eye on how well the teams integrated the course lessons.
The winning pitch was for a personalized, flexible online education company: Explore Online. It highlighted the need for customized tutors on a global level, reviewed a break-even analysis for the business and considered the organization’s value proposition.
The second-place team set out to tackle the problem of teenage pregnancy and motherhood in Kenya. Vijana Artifacts dug deeply into the issue itself in their pitch and shared their solution: viable vocational training for young mothers. They shared their business model, target customers and expected revenue streams.
The Truly Glam Apparel team came in third place. Their business pitch focused on sustainable fashion and explored the gap in the marketplace. Their solution involves turning to local artisans, relying on local production teams, and opening up opportunities for personalized customer experiences.
These pitches pushed students to hone their presentation skills. “I gained a better understanding of how I can present my new project to others,” said a participant from China.
To the participants, this course wasn’t just an academic venture. It was a professional stepping stone. Most participants either had a business plan in mind before starting the class or were excited by one they came up with during the process. For them, these tools are providing the groundwork for a lifetime of entrepreneurship. This is the mission of the Ford Fund.
“Ford Fund is proud to invest in expanding access to entrepreneurship in communities where Ford does business with a focus on providing more widespread access to investment capital and educational resources, partnering with local organizations who share our desire to grow entrepreneurial ecosystems in an impactful way,” said Mike Schmidt, Director of Ford Fund.
Excited by the prospects of a new business, one participant from Kenya said: “My partner and I are on a mission to implement the idea we built during the course. Our next move is to develop a solid business plan and budget, then we’ll approach the necessary funding platforms and apply for grants.”
Buoyed by these positive impacts, the WDI Education team is on its way to creating even more courses for Ford fellows. While it will continue to run the current lessons, a new subject — driven by student suggestions — is on its way for a 2024 launch.
Ford Fund is proud to invest in expanding access to entrepreneurship in communities where Ford does business with a focus on providing more widespread access to investment capital and educational resources, partnering with local organizations who share our desire to grow entrepreneurial ecosystems in an impactful way.
About Ford Motor Company Fund
As the global philanthropic arm of Ford Motor Company, Ford Fund focuses on providing access to essential services, education for the future of work and entrepreneurship opportunities for under-resourced and underrepresented communities. Ford Fund’s partnerships and programming are designed to be responsive to unique community needs, ensuring people have equitable opportunities to move forward. Harnessing Ford’s scale, resources and mobility expertise, Ford Fund drives meaningful impact through grantmaking, Ford Resource and Engagement Centers and employee volunteerism.
About WDI
At the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, unlocking the power of business to provide lasting economic and social prosperity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is in our DNA. We gather the data, develop new models, test concepts and collaborate with partners to find real solutions that lead to new opportunities. This is what we mean by Solving for Business—our calling since the Institute was first founded as an independent nonprofit educational organization in 1992. We believe societies that empower individuals with the tools and skills to excel in business, in turn generate both economic growth and social freedom—or the agency necessary for people to thrive.
Just over the border with Yuma, Arizona is the town of San Luis Río Colorado in Sonora, Mexico. Like many border communities, agricultural jobs dominate the local economy. In this community of around 200,000, Grupo OSME is a privately run medical clinic business, founded by Dr. Raúl Payán, focused on serving the health needs of agricultural workers and their families. Despite the success of the business, Payán explains that securing the necessary financing to expand OSME into a hospital has been a major challenge. But in early 2023, the North American Development Bank (NADB) and Grupo OSME signed a US$14.2 million loan agreement to finance construction of the medical complex. The deal was completed after WDI conducted due diligence on OSME’s expansion and business plans, which gave NADB the expert advice it needed to proceed with financing. The project includes the design, construction and operation of a private hospital with space for 67 beds, an emergency room, operating rooms, intensive care unit, medical imaging and laboratory, along with a medical specialties center. As the following video feature explains, at the time of this project, WDI was also developing a Healthcare Delivery Management Training program, following a request from the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation. Following a positive experience of the due diligence process, OSME requested training for its management team from WDI. As a result, OSME and a Ghanaian hospital were the first two businesses to participate in the course.
Pressing global health concerns, from undetected cancer to untreated psoriasis, require innovation to find powerful, lasting solutions. Often, that kind of innovation comes from small teams, start-up companies, and underfunded research groups — but, for these teams to be successful, they need support.
The William Davidson Institute (WDI) and the Center for Global Health Equity (CGHE) at the University of Michigan (U-M) came together recently to assist with filling in that piece of the equation.
“There is a lot of research happening at the University of Michigan that could lead to impactful products or services in low- and middle-income countries,” said Paul Clyde, President of WDI and professor at the Ross School of Business. “Assisting and accelerating that work, through both funding and technical assistance, is very much in line with our mission.”
To support that growth, Fast Forward Medical Innovation, a department at the U-M Medical School, offered a professional development course with a focus on key business commercialization principles, which began in January 2023. For the first time this year, WDI and CGHE followed this course with the Global Health Commercialization Competition. The competition invited faculty innovators to share their work on technical solutions to healthcare problems in emerging markets. Responses to the request for proposals were due on April 1, 2023. Four finalists were selected from the group, and each one presented their pitches to judges on May 22.
Ultimately, one team took home a $30,000 prize and a chance to work with MBA students at the Ross School of Business to refine their plans.
Each proposal was centered on a clearly defined, unmet need in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and an innovative solution to enhance the lives of people in these regions. These solutions had to be commercially viable, and teams were required to outline market timelines.
In line with similar pitch competitions, presenters had the chance to highlight the significance of their work — and their own enthusiasm for the solutions. “These pitch competitions give the proposers the opportunity to sell their idea. Sometimes, when we’re reading proposals, we’re missing some of the passion. We’re missing the background about what makes these approaches exciting and relevant,” said Dr. Joseph C. Kolars, founding director of the Center for Global Health Equity and Senior Associate Dean and Professor at the University of Michigan Medical School.
“It’s an easier way for us to understand the ‘why’,” he explained.
The first of the four teams to present at the competition, Saratani, is working to improve outcomes for cancer patients in Africa and taking aim at the lack of effective diagnostics. “One of the most important tools in ensuring better cancer outcomes is ensuring early cancer detection,” said Geoffrey Siwo, Research Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at the U-M. His team also included Robert Karanja, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Villgro Africa, and Deogratias Mzurikwao, AI Lead at Villgro Africa.
Saratani, named after the Swahili word for cancer, aims to diversify the biological data used to create the reference genome for molecular diagnostics, which is currently designed on Caucasian genetic data. This leaves massive gaps in the data, making it ripe for problematic diagnoses in Africa. Biobanks in Africa hold the information to fill this gap, but the bridge between them and pharmaceutical companies is missing. That’s where Saratani plans to step in. It would function as a marketplace, avoiding the overhead of running a biobank and capitalizing on the potential widespread deals that could be built between small biobanks and large pharmaceutical organizations.
While Siwo acknowledged that these biomarkers are not yet widely used for detection in Africa, he encouraged support for their preemptive and proactive work. “If we wait until these biomarkers are widely used, it will be very difficult to change, and we know they are inaccurate,” he explained.
Penicillin allergies riddle medical records across the U.S., but it could be that up to 90% of people with this notation have been mistakenly diagnosed. This particular allergy marker keeps patients from treatments that protect against site infections during surgeries and superbug infections during hospital stays. In LMICs, false penicillin allergies could make certain treatments totally inaccessible.
EpiSLS aims to make allergy testing simpler, from correcting those false positives to providing clear answers about food allergies. Parker Martin, an MD and MBA student at the U-M, and Cory Cooney, a 2023 U-M MBA graduate, created a novel optical sensing technology that is compact, portable, and safe for any patient who might get an in-office allergy test. For clinics in emerging markets, the tool — which is currently patent pending — could mean bringing sustainable allergy testing to regions where there has not ever been an allergy specialist.
Through their easy-to-administer and even-easier-to-read technology, the team is set on “bringing allergy testing into the 21st century across the world.”
Psoriasis is a chronic disease that causes psychological and physical suffering when left untreated — and, in LMICs, this is often the case. While medications can treat many symptoms of the condition, they aren’t available in emerging economies. The costs are prohibitive, the production is not available, and the administration is a challenge. The Psoriasis RX team, led by Tom Kerppola, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Biophysics at the U-M, has set its sights on changing that dynamic.
“The problem is enormous,” Kerppola explained. There are about 100 million people suffering from psoriasis at the moment, and a substantial number are not finding any relief. “Regrettably, the only drugs used in low-income countries have very low efficacy, barely better than placebos,” he said, explaining that that’s not the case in high-income countries. “It’s clear we can do better.”
His research is centered on the Keap 1 protein, which could suppress inflammatory responses in skin fibroblasts without the risks of systemic infection that often come with immunosuppressant drugs. “This is not an untreatable condition,” Kerppola said, and he’s on his way to finding a treatment that works for patients regardless of geography.
Over 70% of women around the world have not been screened for cervical cancer, and part of the reason is access to and comfort with the current medical tools required for these screenings. At the moment, the exam for cervical cancer screening requires a vaginal speculum, an exam table with stirrups, and a person who is physically and emotionally able to handle the exam. For many around the globe, those requirements just cannot be met.
In search of a way to reach these women, Marilyn Filter, a Certified Nurse Midwife and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan – Flint, and Lyn Behnke, Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner, Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, and associate professor at the U-M – Flint, built a new tool. The Femscope Calm Collect system is a slim cell-collection device with a scope that would replace the speculum and swab typically used. Providers can learn to use it in under an hour, it connects to a smartphone or computer, and patients can receive the exam without an exam table.
“We have made it our mission in life to improve patient outcomes,” explained Filter. Their accessible tool is less expensive, easier to use, and more comfortable for many patients — all traits prioritized to improve screening rates for people around the globe.
The team is on its way to completing its pilot study to ensure biopsy results are of the same caliber as a traditional exam, then the product will move to a full clinical trial and eventually head to market around the globe, Filter said.
Judges Ioan Cleaton-Jones, Senior Director of Healthcare Delivery at WDI, Pascale Leroueil, VP of Healthcare at WDI, Amy Conger, Managing Director for the Center for Global Health Equity, Kolars, Brad Martin, Managing Director of Fast Forward Medical Information, and Dr. Lee Schroeder, Associate Professor of Chemical Pathology at the University of Michigan, faced the difficult task of choosing a winner. They considered the presentations, asked questions of the teams, and came to a decision: The Femscope team took home the prize.
Filter and Behnke plan to use the funds to purchase a 3D printer and fund its pilot test — the first essential steps to get the life-changing product into the market. Once there, “it will certainly save lives,” said Filter.
Photo: Participants at the NGO Leadership Workshop Warsaw during a session on Networking.
For decades, the William Davidson Institute (WDI) at the University of Michigan has held Ukraine close to its mission. When the Institute was founded more than 30 years ago, Eastern Europe was its very first geographical focus area — and for good reason. At the time, there was no guarantee that countries on the other side of the fallen Berlin Wall would embrace and deliver market-driven economies. Rather, there was concern that they would revert to government-planned economies. Those early WDI educational projects in Eastern Europe reflected the Institute’s core purpose: sharing the tools of commercial success with students, partners and other stakeholders to build both lasting economic and social prosperity.
While the conditions in Ukraine and Eastern Europe have certainly changed over the course of three decades, WDI’s commitment to the region has remained strong — even stronger after Russia invaded Ukraine nearly one year ago.
WDI’s NGO Leadership Workshops are one example of this dedication. Run in partnership with the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia (WCEE) at the University of Michigan, the workshops engage and guide nonprofit groups providing a variety of social services during times of struggle. The most recent workshop, which took place in October in Poland, showed just how crucial these sessions can be for participants.
With the destabilizing impact of war in the region, it is more important than ever to invest in civil society, explained Geneviève Zubrzycki, Director of the WCEE. And NGOs are key in that process.
“For NGOs working with Ukrainian refugees, there’s a level of urgency and human tragedy that we can’t ignore,” said Zubrzycki.
These biannual four-day workshops have been held in Slovakia and Poland since 2015. They bring together nonprofit leaders to network with one another, learn about topics close to their work, and connect with global experts. The sessions regularly cover planning and sustainability, NGO management, marketing strategies, advocacy and fundraising.
It’s powerful work that many of these managers would be unable to tackle on their own, but through the support of WCEE, they can come together without being saddled with the cost of tuition, room, or travel. Leaders can focus entirely on boosting their impact at home, and the coursework is built to do exactly that. “Each session raised important points that I will consider in my work with my team at our NGO,” said a Romanian participant, one of the 24 leaders who joined the workshop in Warsaw.
For NGOs working with Ukrainian refugees, there’s a level of urgency and human tragedy that we can’t ignore.
For NGOs working with Ukrainian refugees, there’s a level of urgency and human tragedy that we can’t ignore.
The 2022 workshop in Warsaw was scheduled prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. War had fallen on communities across the country, and Ukrainians fled the violence with whatever they could carry, clinging to family members and ditching cars when they ran out of gas. According to the UN Refugee Agency, 6.3 million people from Ukraine have been recorded crossing international borders into neighboring countries including Poland and Moldova since the invasion. The effects have sent a wave of challenges through the continent.
As WDI planned the workshop in 2022, it was impossible to ignore the growing pressure placed on regional nonprofits. WDI and WCEE worked to adapt the program to meet the realities on the ground.
“Dedicating the workshop to NGOs working with Ukrainian refugees made it possible for us to tailor sessions to their specific needs. It also created a safe space for them to discuss difficult topics,” said Zubrzycki.
WDI similarly shifted its curriculum to meet the needs of the many NGOs in the area serving Ukrainian refugees. Experts joined to share advice on maintaining digital security, planning strategically during crises, avoiding staff burnout, and working with people with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The entire workshop was driven by on-the-ground needs,” explains Amy Gillett, Vice President of Education at WDI. “It was developed with a design-thinking approach. We considered what the organizations’ immediate needs were and what they were grappling with, and then we created the curriculum around that, focusing on the most pressing needs.”
Working for an NGO operating in a warzone carries “all of the stresses and drama of a normal workplace raised to 11, then add in the fact that everyone you’re working with has left everything they own, is stressed through the roof, and perhaps has lived through various war-related traumas,” explained Eric Fretz, a professional educator and coach focused on personal development, emotional intelligence, and resilience who teaches at the University of Michigan. Fretz led conversations at the workshop about post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, emotional intelligence and mental strength.
He dug into the basics of trauma with participants and shared advice on managing their own stress, which he hopes will create a ripple effect. “Leaders can share this with their team, and then everyone on their team is much more able to take care of those that they encounter. It’s an upward lift.”
Relationships are everything — in serving people, in building businesses, and in running nonprofits. “These groups need to know each other to be more effective,” Gillett said. “The connections that take place outside of the formal instruction are just as important as the skills that they’re learning in the classroom sessions. It’s during these informal conversations where resources and ideas are shared that are critical to their success.”
Participants at the NGO Leadership Workshop spent time together talking about their struggles, joys and plans. They shared tips over morning coffee for better reaching refugees and advice on soliciting global support for long-term aid while walking through Warsaw’s Old Town on a guided tour offered as part of the workshop. “We were left with so many brilliant acquaintances and friendships, and we have gathered priceless information,” said one participant from Georgia.
WDI has seen the bonds built during past workshops flourish after participants returned home — and the Institute is just as dedicated to continuing to support long-standing connections in Ukraine. Though it was forced to suspend a project that would have sent four University of Michigan MBA students to the Lviv Business School of Ukrainian Catholic University (LvBS), WDI President Paul Clyde recently spoke to the university’s Vice Rector Sophia Opatska about the role universities and students will play in country’s resistance and rebuilding.
Workshop participants, particularly ones from Ukraine, were grateful to learn alongside leaders from other countries who were working on the ground with them. David Estrada, Program Coordinator at WDI, said “They were thankful that we were able to provide a space for them and be around other people doing this same type of work.”
Two NGO Leadership Workshops are planned for 2023, in Bratislava, Slovakia and Warsaw, Poland.
Click the image to watch the recording of the Ralph J. Gerson Distinguished Lecturer Magatte Wade.
The William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan (WDI) celebrated its 30th anniversary with the in-person return of the Ralph J. Gerson Distinguished Lecture. The Nov. 10 evening brought together members of the WDI community for a celebratory dinner and moving speech from Magatte Wade, entrepreneur and advocate for African dignity and prosperity.
The lecture is named in honor of the Institute’s longest serving board member, Ralph J. Gerson. Gerson led Guardian Industries Corporation in multiple roles for years, and he currently serves on philanthropic and policy boards across Michigan and the U.S. He is now the Director of the William Davidson Foundation.
Wade kicked off her talk by highlighting the connection she felt with WDI. “When I discovered WDI, I thought, ‘Where have you been my whole life? Maybe I should have started with you,’” she said. Wade is a strong advocate for easing and boosting private business, particularly small- and medium-sized businesses, through economic freedom in Africa. Her work aligns closely with the mission at WDI: equipping economic decision-makers in emerging countries with the tools of commercial success.
Wade, who was born in Senegal and later moved to Europe and the United States, spent years of her life wondering why communities in Africa were suffering from poverty and those in other parts of the world were thriving economically. Eventually, she concluded that the complex and detrimental business policies in many African nations were stunting their economic growth — and she began to advocate for smoother, easier, more functional business opportunities across the continent.
I can’t think of a better ambassador for the mission and the vision of the Institute, which is the power of business to deliver on economic growth and social freedom.
“I can’t think of a better ambassador for the mission and the vision of the Institute, which is the power of business to deliver on economic growth and social freedom,” said WDI President Paul Clyde, as he welcomed her to give her “The Heart of the Cheetah: Entrepreneurship & Prosperity in Africa” talk. Describing her impact and connection to WDI, Clyde explained that Wade is a “tireless supporter of individuals and their ability to create economic value when given the opportunity to do so.”
After detailing the many-layered difficulties that arise when doing business in an African nation from strict government policies, challenging taxes and complex business systems, Wade asked the crowd whether they would choose to do business in a place that created roadblocks or one that allowed for a smooth path. That question, she said, provided the answer she’d been searching for all along. “At the end of the day, you are poor because you have no money. There’s not enough money to take care of your primary needs. You have no money because you have no income. What is the source of income for most of us? Jobs. Where do jobs come from? The private sector. And so don’t you then think that we should make it easy for businesses to be born and thrive.”
This conclusion set her on her path to boost economic freedom and business opportunities across the continent, through her own enterprises, speaking engagements, policy advocacy and powerful global fellowships. Her TED Talk, “Why it is too hard to start a business in Africa — and how to change it” has been viewed by over 600,000 people. She’s a Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum at Davos, a TED Global Africa Fellow, and one of Forbes’ “10 Youngest Power Women in Africa.”
Wade has built multiple businesses in Africa inspired by diverse African traditions, including her most recent endeavor, SkinIsSkin.com. She urges the global community to shift its perspective from aiding African communities. Instead of creating a system that relies on aid, she tells global consumers to “buy African products made in Africa by Africans.” Her point: let business thrive, and Africa will thrive.
Wade has seen the impact her businesses and entrepreneurial mindset have had on herself and others. Her manufacturing-focused businesses have helped boost rural communities’ manufacturing facilities. Meanwhile, Wade continues to advocate for policy changes at the national and local levels through groups like the Atlas Network’s Center for African Prosperity. Still, she knows there’s more room for growth.
“Whatever we’ve been able to accomplish, it would be multiplied by the right business environment,” Wade said. “At the end of the day, I believe that business is the greatest force of good.”
Thank you to all who attended the event on Nov 16th. A recording of the event is now available (above) and on the WDI Youtube Channel.
Culinary-focused travel has become a hot trend within the tourism sector in recent years. Tourists increasingly prefer to let their taste buds decide how and where they travel. For cities and countries looking to market themselves, culinary tourism has become an essential and powerful branding element.
But can this kind of travel be about much more than food? Yigal Schleifer, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Culinary Backstreets, will tackle that question and more during a talk hosted by the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. The discussion, “Crossing Borders and Cuisines: A New Flavor of Sustainable Tourism,” is slated for 5:00–6:00 PM, Nov. 16 in R1230 of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The session is free and open to the public. It also will be broadcast via Zoom; click here to register.
Schleifer will explore how Culinary Backstreets, which provides tours in a dozen cities around the world, uses food-oriented travel to promote cross-cultural communication and sustainable tourism for more impactful experiences. Created in 2012, Culinary Backstreets covers the local and traditional food scene and offers immersive small group culinary walks in cities including Istanbul, Lisbon, Mexico City, Tbilisi, Tokyo, Barcelona and a half dozen more. The talk will also look at how the COVID crisis has impacted culinary travel and how this sector can be rebuilt with an eye towards sustainability.
Between 2002 and 2010, Schleifer was based in Istanbul, where he worked as a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and the German Press Agency (dpa). While in Istanbul he also co-founded Istanbul Eats, an award-winning blog about the city’s local food scene, and co-wrote a guidebook of the same name. He also launched “Istanbul Calling,” a blog about Turkish foreign and domestic affairs. Schleifer’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Ha’aretz, The Times (London) and several other publications.
Schleifer was an advisory board member for the Livelihoods Innovation through Food Entrepreneurship (LIFE) Project, which supported and encouraged people to engage across cultures through entrepreneurship and job creation in the food sector. Since 2017, WDI’s Entrepreneurship Development Center has worked on the U.S. government-funded LIFE Project, in collaboration with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), IDEMA, Union Kitchen and the Stimson Center.
Magatte Wade, entrepreneur, author and advocate for African dignity and prosperity through business growth, will deliver the Ralph J. Gerson Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Nov. 10. The discussion will be broadcast via Zoom. (Register here to join the event).
Wade’s talk, “The Heart of the Cheetah: Entrepreneurship and Prosperity in Africa,” will focus on the power of business growth and importance of business-friendly infrastructure, which she sees as critical to innovation and economic flourishing on the continent. As an entrepreneur from Senegal, Wade has decried a lack of business infrastructure and subsequent unemployment as key reasons why many Africans risk their lives to migrate to other countries.
The Ralph J. Gerson Distinguished Lecture gathers the community around the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan to celebrate and promote ways businesses can positively impact social challenges. Its transformative speakers bring unique perspectives on economic development, new considerations around innovative business models and informed evaluations of emerging markets.
Wade joins the series’ two past lecturers — Nobel Prize-winning Economist Sir Angus Deaton and Kevin Lobo, Chairman and CEO of Stryker Corp. — in her work highlighting economic acceleration through business tools.
“Magatte Wade is an outspoken advocate for the benefits that profitable businesses bring to an economy,” said WDI President Paul Clyde. “She is a successful entrepreneur who understands the value and importance of business in the development of an economy. Considering WDI’s mission of equipping economic decision makers in emerging countries with the tools of commercial success, it’s hard to think of a stronger advocate with a more relevant background than Wade.”
Wade was named one of Forbes’ “20 Youngest Power Women in Africa,” a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum at Davos, and a “Leading Woman in Wellness” award-winner with the Global Wellness Summit. She’s the Director of the Atlas Network’s Center for Africa Prosperity, a member of the Board of Directors of Conscious Capitalism Inc., and a member of the Advisory Board of the Whole Planet Foundation with Whole Foods Market.
As a TED Global Africa Fellow, her TED Talk, titled “Why it’s so hard to start a business in Africa — and how to change it,” has nearly 650,000 views. In her talk, Wade draws a clear and definitive thread between poverty reduction and business creation — asserting that the solution to poverty is making it easier for small businesses to start, run and thrive. In it, she describes how she came to this conclusion: “I have this attitude in life. Something is wrong, find a way to fix it. That’s why I start the businesses that I start, usually consumer brands, that have embedded in them the very best of my African culture.”
Wade describes what it’s like for her to run these businesses in Senegal, navigating the complicated and problematic laws and processes. “It’s like swimming through molasses,” she said. Knowing the impact these stifling rules have on business growth, Wade advocates for easing these restrictions and creating systems that promote private economic development. Not only does changing these laws make a major difference in business success, she explained, but shining a light on them can shift the outlook Africans have about their own capabilities and potential.
Her new book, “The Heart of the Cheetah,” will be released soon.
Register to watch Wade’s speech live on Zoom at 7 p.m. Nov. 10.
Register Now
Photo courtesy of the Shell Foundation
Gender lens investing isn’t just about gender equality. It’s also about business. In fact, if you ask many investors propelling these models forward, it’s firstly about business. The problem is, until now, it’s been hard to prove. Historically, investors have relied on anecdotes to demonstrate the power of this approach to investing.
In June 2019, with funding support from The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and USAID, six investors with more than $700 million in assets under management — the AlphaMundi Foundation, Acumen, AHL Venture Partners, Root Capital, SEAF, and Shell Foundation — launched the Gender-Smart Enterprise Assistance Research Coalition (G-SEARCh). The goal of the consortium was to conduct new research in the gender lens investing community, focused on post-investment support provided to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The research project aligns with the William Davidson Institute (WDI) at the University of Michigan’s mission to provide decision makers with the tools of commercial success, which leads to both economic and social progress. WDI participated in the consortium and studied the effects of a relatively new type of gender lens investing strategy: gender smart technical assistance (TA) activities. “There’s a gap in evidence and know-how that holds back other investors and funders from wanting to implement the different types of gender-smart TA engagements,” said Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi, Program Manager for the Performance Measurement and Improvement team at WDI.
The G-SEARCh consortium recently published Business and Social Outcomes of Gender-Smart Technical Assistance Activities in Small and Medium Enterprises: Building the Evidence Base for Gender Lens Investing lays out the findings and lessons learned. It shares data compiled and case studies on companies that received TA support, conclusions and calls to action, and specific steps investors can take to build greater equality and bolster business results.
There’s more to gender lens investing than simply investing in women-owned or women-led businesses or gender-forward companies. New strategies include promoting gender diversity within the investment firm and implementing a gender lens to the investment cycle. An additional strategy is the design and implementation of gender-smart TA within portfolio companies. WDI’s work focused on the outcomes of embedding equality and inclusiveness across operations. WDI also considered the costs of implementing such TA activities. (The data limitations preclude strong conclusions — most companies in the study could not provide in-depth cost information due to the burden of data collection and long-term outcomes could not be measured due to research time constraints). However, the data that were gathered suggest that there were benefits. Additionally, 86% of the companies continue to use the TAs even after the close of investor funding suggests the benefits outweigh the costs for the vast majority of companies.
The challenge and advantage of a TA strategy is that it needs to be customized for it to work effectively. An experience must closely match the profile, needs and goals of the organization. WDI studied the impacts of internal strategies, like HR policies and management mentoring programs, external strategies, such as marketing to more women, and a mix of both, such as stakeholder training and sex-dissaggregated data collection and analysis. Each activity led to a different result.
For example, in one WDI case study, a financial services company in Latin America found low utilization of its non-financial products by women. The firm responded by creating a targeted promotional program to share the benefits of a medical and dental assistance product with women clients. It developed social media messaging, completed credit officer training and sent out customized information. As a result, it saw an 8% increase in women using this product.
TA activities also can enhance brand loyalty, improve workplace culture, push for formalized commitments to gender equality, increase sales numbers, and attract new funding. It largely depends on objectives, impact pathways and implementation strategies, Fatehi said. In the 21 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) studied by WDI, 86% of the organizations reported improved brand loyalty from customers and external partners and 38% reported higher sales numbers after utilizing these tools.
Businesses are excited about the investment opportunities that come from participation. “We talk about this program with potential funders and investors,” reported one SME management team. “They are keen to hear that we are promoting gender-transformative learning and development programs, which is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of their confidence in investing in us.”
While business boosts rank high in the reasoning for pursuing gender lens investing and TA activities, there are compelling social effects that follow these economic benefits. Of the 21 companies in the sample, 71% of SMEs reported increased pride for the company among its stakeholders (customers, producers, distributors and/or employees); 67% of SMEs reported increased skills and knowledge among their stakeholders.
Through TA programming, Nova Coffee, a company in Rwanda that sources its coffee from small-scale local farmers, decided to make significant efforts to train women coffee farmers on mitigating and adapting to climate change effects. With those offerings, over 90% of the 120 women farmers surveyed in the case study gained access to critical agricultural training. There also was a major shift in how they interacted with climate change.
Before the sessions, 49% believed climate change rarely impacted their farming and 77% were taking no steps to change their practices. After the program, 96% of the farmers changed their farming practices around climate change. With another similar coffee company in the region, as it became clearer that women could participate in the local coffee production industry with their improved abilities, child marriage in the area began to drop. The impacts of these efforts rippled through the lives of these women and their children.
“To help women farmers is to help the nation because women are detail-oriented in their business; they take care of their children and community, and more so than the men. When you give the money to women, they will use it on their families and help their families to be resilient,” a Nova Coffee representative shared.
This study not only explored the potential power of gender-smart TA practices, it also compiled a list of best practices for TA implementers that would increase the probability of success, including:
[Find more of these tips and insights in the full report, along with case studies, a toolkit and other resources.}
Despite the burgeoning evidence, there’s a lot more room for study into this area. The research pool will benefit from a better understanding of the monetary and human resource costs, as well as the long-term impacts of the practice, said Fatehi. Such research would help to analyze the net benefits of TA and the correlations between business and social outcomes further highlighting possible benefits to the businesses’ profitability. This could then increase the likelihood and scale of adoption of gender-smart TA by other investors, funders and businesses.
“We haven’t answered every single question,” said Fatehi. “We’re just scratching the surface and giving people confidence that there can be social and business outcomes from well-designed gender- smart technical assistance when companies and investors implement and assess this strategy.”
A mentorship session in March 2022 between mentor Ammar Awachi, CEO of Taha International (left), and mentee Nezar Salhieh, founder of Quality Systemtechnik, a manufacturing enterprise in Bahrain. (Image courtesy of CIPE)
Similar to the other natural resource-based economies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, the Bahraini economy relies primarily on the oil industry and the public sector. However, with the strategic vision of the Bahraini government to reduce reliance on oil revenues through private sector growth and investment, that’s set to change. Bahrain is working to diversify its economy in sectors such as services, manufacturing and technology by enabling entrepreneurs and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in those fields to scale up their businesses.
The William Davidson Institute (WDI) at the University of Michigan is supporting a new project funded by the United States Department of State and implemented by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) in collaboration with a consortium of partners. The project seeks to unleash the growth potential of Bahraini MSMEs — an objective that has frequently brought WDI and CIPE together through projects in the past.
The consortium members include Tenmou – a leading Bahraini angel investment network and ecosystem builder, the U.S.-Bahrain Business Council (USBBC) of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Bahrain, and the Bahraini SME Society, in addition to WDI and CIPE. The consortium is part of a larger advisory body named the Steering Committee that involves leaders from the public and private sector in Bahrain who provide guidance and support to the implementers throughout the project’s lifecycle. The consortium is building a mentorship program, bolstering commercial dialogue between the U.S. and Bahrain centered around the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), delivering an investment education program with a gender lens, as well as facilitating public-private dialogue around access to finance. Each aspect of the program is essential to its success, with each partner bringing unique capabilities and perspectives. WDI has contributed its deepest expertise to the mentorship program and gender lens component of the investment education program.
Mentorship is at the core of the program in Bahrain — and WDI has long been a trusted leader in developing global mentorship projects. “We believe in the power of mentorship and have seen its impact time and again in the entrepreneurial community,” said Amy Gillett, Vice President of Education at WDI. The team has run mentorship programs across the world, including on a previous project in Bahrain and a recent one in Turkey. WDI is also home to the Entrepreneurship Development Center, a group of educators dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship through dynamic programming.
To unlock their growth potential, they need to enhance their technical skills, increase access to funding, as well as explore the possibility of attracting investors or partners, and these are among the mentor-mentee discussion topics.
For the current project in Bahrain, WDI first developed a mentor toolkit with guidance on how to be a successful mentor, including how to provide effective feedback, and build productive relationships with mentees. “Sometimes mentees don’t realize what their needs are until they start answering questions from mentors,” explained Kristin Babbie Kelterborn, Senior Project Manager of the Entrepreneurship Development Center at WDI. “What obstacles have you overcome? What challenges are you facing? What growth opportunities do you want to explore?” she explained. By exploring these questions together, mentees and mentors can build a fruitful path forward in their mentorship relationship.
The first mentorship cohort is running through July 2022, with five experienced business owners and entrepreneurs serving as mentors to 25 motivated mentees. The mentees all run established businesses, which are in the growth phase. “They want to expand and increase their market share, develop new services and products,” said Mohammed Al Saeedi, Program Officer for the Middle East and North Africa at CIPE. “To unlock their growth potential, they need to enhance their technical skills, increase access to funding, as well as explore the possibility of attracting investors or partners, and these are among the mentor-mentee discussion topics.”
The second cohort is planned to start at the end of summer 2022.
The program’s mentors are all local volunteers and deeply committed to improving the business landscape of the country. Al Saeedi shares one of reasons for their dedication: “They believe success is not individual.” These mentors and mentees understand the key to driving the Bahraini economy forward is cooperation and collaboration. The networks built within the program are meant to be deep, and the hope is that they’ll also be lasting. “The good thing about mentorship is that it’s a one-on-one relationship. It’s not generic,” he said.
The mentorship relationship requires tremendous effort from both parties. The first cohort includes five mentors and 25 mentees, and every mentor meets with each of their mentees once a month over a three-month period, providing technical guidance, serving as a sounding board and connecting mentees with individuals in their network. WDI is supporting the mentors as they guide their mentees by providing them with training and resources on how to be effective mentors.
While the mentors provide a lot of specialized business advice, they’re also there to motivate their mentees. Mahmood Abdulsamad, a fitness studio owner and one of the program’s mentors, shared the advice he most wanted to impart to his mentees: “Failure is not the end. Believe in yourself, be different, fail until you succeed and do not measure success by money.”
The mentors and mentees also will be given the opportunity to participate in a powerful gender lens investing virtual training session. In an often male-dominated investor circle, providing awareness of and training on how to apply a gender lens to decisions and processes at any stage in the investment cycle can help advance the business and financial performance of the company, return on investment for the investor and gender equality in the workplace and broader community. It’s a goal that CIPE, Tenmou and WDI have taken seriously as the consortium moves this project forward — and one that WDI has been committed to for years.
“We’ve been dedicated to women’s entrepreneurship development for the past 15 years, so anything we can do to promote women’s entrepreneurship, advance women-owned businesses and help equip women entrepreneurs with new skills is a great fit for our mission,” said Gillett.
In addition to offering the gender lens investing session for entrepreneurs, WDI will also offer a session tailored for Bahraini investors through the project’s Investor Education initiative, which aims to broaden the pool of both investors and invested companies.
The mentorship program – rounded out by gender lens investment and access to finance, along with the U.S.-Bahrain commercial dialogue focused on harnessing the power of the FTA in the bilateral trade relationship – is contributing to the Bahraini startup ecosystem. The sector is critical to the economic growth of Bahrain.
Gillett can already see how the mentorship project in Bahrain will impact entrepreneurial programs across the globe. “It’s continuous learning for us. We’ll apply what we learn from this program and further develop and refine our tools.”
About WDI
At the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, unlocking the power of business to provide lasting economic and social prosperity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is in our DNA. We gather the data, develop new models, test concepts and collaborate with partners to find real solutions that lead to new opportunities. This is what we mean by Solving for Business—our calling since the Institute was first founded as an independent nonprofit educational organization in 1992. We believe societies that empower individuals with the tools and skills to excel in business, in turn generate both economic growth and social freedom—or the agency necessary for people to thrive.
WDI’s Education team works with world-class instructors from leading universities — including our home at the University of Michigan —to develop and deliver programs. Through our rich faculty network, cultivated over the past 25+ years, we deploy experts with both deep subject matter expertise and relevant regional experience.
About CIPE
The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE; www.cipe.org) works at the intersection of democratic and economic development, partnering with business associations, chambers of commerce, think tanks and other organizations to implement homegrown, business-led solutions to local development challenges. CIPE’s mission is to strengthen democracy through private enterprise and market-oriented reform, fulfilling a vision of a world where democracy delivers the freedom and opportunity for all to prosper. Founded in 1983 and based in Washington, DC, CIPE currently implements programs in more than 80 countries around the world.
You should make every effort to ensure that other members of the team do their part. If you’re a team leader, foster an environment in which others can express their unique perspectives.
Effective business training can’t be solely theoretical. For it to make an impact, the lessons need to encompass the practical matters and decisions facing tomorrow’s leaders throughout their careers — such as engaging team members, harnessing diversity, and navigating conflict.
This critical focus is at the root of a new course from the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan: a seven-week online team-building program, “Team Building for Results.” WDI’s Education team recently completed a pilot program for 91 college-aged social entrepreneurs from six countries participating in the Ford Motor Company Fund’s global College Community Challenge (Ford C3) initiative. The purpose of the WDI online team building program is to build participants’ leadership skills to make their social enterprise work more effective and impactful. The hope is that this successful pilot paves the way for future leadership training courses.
WDI’s program is a participant-centered experience that solves team-focused problems with a model that prioritizes practicality. Students from around the world come together with experienced professors and mentors to discuss topics that impact team success, including diversity, innovation, decision-making and communication. They then test and apply their knowledge through quizzes, conversations, and group projects; and ultimately leave the course with an elevated framework through which they can view and manage their own business relationships.
A Course Like No Other
“Our educational system is so theoretical, so you come out of school and have difficulty applying [these lessons],” said Timothy Azumah Azirigo, a pilot program participant from Ghana, highlighting the distinctions of the course.
When Amy Gillett, vice president of WDI’s education sector, set out to build the course, she had students like Azumah Arizrigo in mind. Gillett knew a program had to be grounded in real-world tools. If she wanted the curriculum to make a difference, the course had to provide practical skills. This priority was a divergence from much of the schooling these global students had already received, which made it all the more necessary.
Gillett also knew that collaboration would be at the crux of many of these modern business opportunities. “Teamwork is a critical skill in today’s globalized business world,” she said — and embracing diversity, setting the right goals, improving listening and communication skills, and learning how to lead a global team have become the superpowers of successful business leaders.
The program’s unique benefits weren’t lost on the participants. “This is a rare opportunity on a platter of gold… It’s worth all the time it requires,” said Peter Ikenna, of Ghana who joined the program’s first cohort. Lukman Selim, another participant, shares Ikenna’s enthusiasm and urges other students to apply. “Seize the opportunity,” he said, “to learn the secret to being a star team player.”
Global Leaders for Global Students
The program is also a lesson in practicing what you preach. Coursework is taught across borders through a diverse team of professors and mentors. Students don’t just talk about the value of collaboration, they experience it. They work with students who have vastly different cultural backgrounds than their own and are guided by leaders whose experiences are just as diverse as those of the students.
For Amira Nour Soudky Dawoud, a graduate of another WDI education program and recent mentor for this program, the situation calls for elevated empathy and kindness. “It’s the only thing that identifies our humanity,” she says, “not our names or cultures.” Dawoud, who hails from Egypt, explains that kindness makes for successful leaders and peaceful teams, which then bring the right environment for team members to shine.
The value of humility and support resonated throughout the lessons. Okulor Chimuanya Lilian, a media personality and program mentor, echoed Dawoud’s call for the students to unite. She said, “I wanted them to work together, and instead of allowing diversity to divide the team, to use it as a strength to become great.” She guided students toward connection with that goal in mind.
A Final Lesson in Collaborative Diversity
At the conclusion of the program, student groups created videos about the impacts of diversity on a team. They shared the varying attributes of their own team members and how these backgrounds shaped their collaborative efforts. They explored how cultural differences can be harnessed for deeper success, a theme that both resonated in the content of the videos and was felt through the experience of creation.
The process of this project brought just as many lessons as the final product, ripe with opportunities to either encourage or exclude team members. Dzokoto Seyram Kelvin, a mentor from Ghana, saw shining examples of inclusion. He highlighted the lesson: “You should make every effort to ensure that other members of the team do their part. If you’re a team leader, foster an environment in which others can express their unique perspectives.”
Providing space for these unique perspectives drives the course forward, and WDI sees the broad value in the program for entrepreneurs, businesses and students across the globe. The Institute is looking forward to continuing to share the program with future Ford fellows — and any other team working toward improving its communication and collaboration.
About WDI
At the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, unlocking the power of business to provide lasting economic and social prosperity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is in our DNA. We gather the data, develop new models, test concepts and collaborate with partners to find real solutions that lead to new opportunities. This is what we mean by Solving for Business – our calling since the Institute was first founded as an independent nonprofit educational organization in 1992. We believe societies that empower individuals with the tools and skills to excel in business, in turn generate both economic growth and social freedom – or the agency necessary for people to thrive.
About Ford Motor Company Fund
As the automaker’s philanthropic arm, Ford Motor Company Fund has been supporting underserved and underrepresented communities for more than 70 years. Working with nonprofit organizations, community partners, and across the Ford network in the U.S. and around the world, Ford Fund provides resources and opportunities that advance equity and help people reach their highest potential. Since 1949, Ford Fund has invested more than $2.1billion in initiatives that ensure basic needs are met, provide access to essential services, offer tools to build new skillsets and open pathways to high quality jobs. For more information, visit www.fordfund.org or join us at @FordFund on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
