Tony Shen

Farber Intern at Bay Area Video Coalition, 2001

MBA, Haas School of Business, 2002
Edtec, Chief Operating Officer

By the time Tony Shen started his first year at the Haas School of Business, he knew he wanted to work for a social venture. He had already worked in both private and public sector roles — as a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers, an intern at Mother Jones magazine, a research assistant at The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and an intern for Planet Drum, an environmental nonprofit organization. Through these experiences, Tony grew interested in the idea of a social venture that combined attributes of both sectors, believing “that the private sector could give a lot of benefits to the nonprofit sector, and by bringing the two sectors together — the best aspects of each — there would be something better than the sum of the parts.” With this in mind, he headed to business school to learn more about social ventures.

While getting his MBA at Haas, Tony “was looking for programs just like REDF’s Farber Program” and became a Farber Intern during the summer between his first and second years. Tony worked with Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), a nonprofit media arts center that offers training in video, web, and audio production for low-income youth. Tony’s project was to evaluate new services, such as captioning services for the hearing impaired, that would both support BAVC’s mission and make business sense. As Tony recalls, he learned a lot about “what it took to survive and to try to balance the mission side with the business side” in a social enterprise. In addition to enjoying his project work with BAVC, Tony also appreciated the educational and networking events that REDF organized for Farber Interns: “There were fun events, and there was a chance to network with other interns, fellows and REDF staff, which I found very encouraging for my own career aspirations.”

After business school, Tony managed an economic development fund in Humboldt County, CA, supporting businesses that create jobs and giving grants to organizations that further economic development. Four years later, he moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the social venture Edtec, a company whose mission is to further public education and the charter school movement. Edtec is an organization that believes in trying to improve public education by supporting charter schools to set up, operate and grow. As Edtec’s Chief Operating Officer, Tony focuses on managing and improving the company’s internal processes and operations. The organization has “discussions about social impact, and what do we do on the mission side versus the profit side. It’s a very, very real set of issues at work.”

Looking back on his Farber Internship, Tony feels “it was a great accelerated exposure to the field. It helped me to realize that this is something that I could do, not just a fantasy that I had. It was one of my favorite experiences of business school. The Farber Program adds a lot — to the interns, to the organizations they’re placed at, and to the business schools — showing people that there are ways that they can use their skills and their interests in a way that’s positive and looks out for community interests.”

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.)
• Amanda Pitre-Hayes, MBA, Haas School of Business, Manager (Environmental Programs & Grants), Vancity & Citizens Bank

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