As the trip to South Africa fast approaches
By Krisha
It will be very educational and inspiring to see companies that are actively trying to combat the institutional divides of the past to make way for a brighter future.
As the Social Impact Field Seminar trip to South Africa fast approaches, I am excited to expand my education on the culture and inner business workings of Johannesburg. I was originally interested in taking this course as I was able to attend the operations trip to Vietnam last Spring and was so grateful for the experience to immerse myself in the culture of Hanoi. It was very beneficial to combine my current learnings from Questrom, as well as my personal business experience, and apply these to the business problem posed by our assigned organization. While that trip was more focused on operations and manufacturing, I found many of the lessons to be applicable to my current role. In addition to my previous positive experience, I am very excited to go on the immersion course to South Africa as I work in a hospital located in a low income area and have found that upon the course description many of the challenges that South Africa is facing in its health care climate parallels the challenges that I see at work.
In my current organization we are trying to find a way to offer state-of-the-art care with limited resources. I feel that from our first pre-trip session I learned that this is common in many of the industries in Johannesburg; trying to provide a high quality service or deliverable while also trying to make up for the time lost during the systematic apartheid era that still plagues areas of the South African society. This history limited the resources and access to minds that could have helped pave the way for South Africa to be world leader. During our trip, it will be very educational and inspiring to see companies that are actively trying to combat the institutional divides of the past to make way for a brighter future.
For our business tours, I am most excited to visit the Mandate Molefi organization. This organization is one that I have become most familiar with as it is the topic for my teams executive summary. As a woman of color, I rarely see a woman like myself in a leadership role. I’m very excited to visit this company and learn more about the impact that they are having by directly attacking racial bias and injustice in the workplace.
I hope to come from this experience with a better understanding of how social change goals can be implemented and brought to fruition. I also hope to expand my knowledge of the history and culture of South Africa.