Caroline Pappajohn

Farber Fellow at New Door Ventures (then known as Golden Gate Community, Inc.), 2002 - 2003

MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1993
New Door Ventures, Enterprise Director

For Caroline Pappajohn, the Farber Fellowship provided a direct path to her dream job. After starting her career in the public sector as an aide to a U.S. Senator, Caroline worked in high-tech for a decade leading marketing and product management teams in entrepreneurial enterprises and co-founding a women’s internet sports company. Throughout much of this time Caroline thought about how she could bring together the different parts of her life into her job. “I’d had jobs where I had passion before and I had a lot of intellectual stimulation in jobs, but I never really had worked in a place where I felt like my values were consistent with the people and the mission of the organization, and where...I was doing something to make the world a little bit better.”

After learning about REDF and the Farber Fellowship, Caroline was introduced to New Door Ventures — an organization whose mission is to rebuild the lives of at-risk youth through jobs, training and supportive communities. “For me it was really helpful that I heard about the fellowship through REDF because I had not heard of Golden Gate Community before and I certainly knew about REDF so it validated Golden Gate Community for me. The fact that there were past Farber Fellows was also very helpful to me in deciding to take this opportunity, as I was able to tap into their perspectives and experience.”

Caroline started her year-long fellowship in November of 2002. At the time, New Door Ventures ran three social enterprises, including Ashbury Images, a custom screen-printing business. Caroline assumed responsibility for expanding two of New Door Ventures’ newer social enterprises. “Golden Gate Community had acquired these two businesses in the spring of 2001 so they were still relatively new to the organization. Thinking about the social mission and how that played into the growth of the businesses became an important part of what I worked on.” Looking back on the year, Caroline found the experience to be extremely valuable: “I got to cut my teeth on really difficult businesses, and I learned pretty quickly that there’s a lot of things that we need to think about in opening a business, running a business, growing a business. It really opened my eyes to all those factors... I look back on it and think I had such a rich year.”

Caroline’s Farber Fellowship experience has proven valuable in her subsequent role as Enterprise Director for New Door Ventures, a position she still occupies today. “I had made a career decision that I wanted to be in nonprofit social enterprise, not knowing what it was going to be like at all, so the Farber experience allowed me to get into that field and confirm that I loved it. And I was fortunate enough that the organization allowed me to stay. I don’t know that I would have had that opportunity had it not been for the Farber Fellowship.”

As New Door Ventures’ Enterprise Director, Caroline manages, develops, and nurtures the division that uses business to further New Door Ventures’ social mission, while guiding the enterprise staff. And what does Caroline think of her job? “I love my job! I guess if I had to summarize what I love best, it’s that this was my dream: to come to a place where I could bring together all the facets of my life — the intellectual side, the emotional side, the faith side. I work with people who are intelligent, who value critical thinking and analysis, who are emotionally mature, who have values that are very similar to mine, and with an organization that embodies those values. And I work with people who I personally just like. The fact that all those things could come together in work that is very meaningful to me — it is a gift.”

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
• Amanda Pitre-Hayes, MBA, Haas School of Business, Manager (Environmental Programs & Grants), Vancity & Citizens Bank
• Tony Shen, MBA, Haas School of Business, Chief Operating Officer, Edtec