Amanda Pitre-Hayes (formerly Amanda Dowling)

Farber Intern at Juma Ventures, 2002 and 2003

For Amanda Pitre-Hayes, the Farber Internship experience was a hands-on practicum in social enterprise that helped her develop skills and knowledge critical to her work today at Vancity.

Amanda spent two summers as a Farber Intern with Juma Ventures, an organization dedicated to supporting youth in gaining work experience and preparing for post-secondary education. During her first summer, Amanda helped Juma refine its business model and explore ways of becoming more sustainable. The following summer, she analyzed the feasibility of expanding Juma’s stadium concessions enterprise. “I enjoyed getting both a broad and deep exposure to social enterprise. Not only did I learn about the business models of all of the enterprises in REDF’s portfolio, but at Juma, I also learned about the detailed inner workings of one social enterprise. Having an appreciation of both is really valuable, especially at Vancity where it’s important to understand both how to support the field in general, and how to target investment to support specific organizations.”

Not only did Amanda value her on-the-ground experience at Juma, she also appreciated learning from REDF how to apply principles from business school to social enterprise. “I learned how to take the skills and theory that I was learning in my MBA program and apply that to a social enterprise setting. In my MBA program we learned about ROI. At REDF I learned about SROI. In my MBA program we learned about how to write a business plan. At REDF I learned how to write an effective business plan for a social enterprise. REDF served as a very effective bridge from what I was learning in the classroom to what skills were actually needed on the ground.”

On completing her MBA at the Haas School of Business, Amanda returned to the consulting firm Accenture, where she was a manager in their financial services practice. From there, she moved on to Vancity, a credit union in Canada that aims to effect positive social, economic, and environmental change in its communities through access to financial services, climate change solutions, strong nonprofits and cooperatives, and successful social enterprises. “Vancity is well known in Canada for being very active in funding social enterprise and the jobs here are in great demand¹. The deep experience in social enterprise I developed through REDF was key to securing a role here.”

Now, almost three years later, Amanda manages Vancity’s environmental programs and grants. Her responsibilities include managing Vancity’s products that have an environmental bottom line (such as a Clean Air Auto Loan for those who buy low carbon dioxide emissions vehicles), managing programs related to protecting the environment (such as Vancity’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2010), and managing strategic grants to environmental nonprofits. What does Amanda like best about her job? “Being able to innovate. Instead of talking about ‘sustainability’ or ‘corporate social responsibility,’ at Vancity we talk about ‘community leadership.’ Like at REDF, the focus here is on supporting the community by leading the way and trying things that haven’t been done before.”

Thinking back on her Farber Internships, Amanda values the direct applicability of what she learned to her work today. “The Farber experience was really important in furthering my career. Through REDF I learned how to use market mechanisms to achieve not just financial, but also social and environmental benefit. In today’s market, to be effective, you really need to know how to optimize all three.”

Read profiles of four other Farber Alumni

• Monica Chi, MBA, Harvard Business School, Senior Consultant, The Trium Group
• Samantha Levine, MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Manager, The Bridgepsan Group
• Caroline Pappajohn, MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Enterprise Director, New Door Ventures (then known as Golden Gate Community, Inc.)
• Tony Shen, MBA, Haas School of Business, Chief Operating Officer, Edtec