Stephanie Solove Chou
MBA 19
Senior Partnerships Lead
Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation
Berkeley Haas is far and away the best business school for preparing people to work in organizations and careers geared toward social impact. It offers everything from coursework to extracurriculars to the best network in the field.
Working with a women’s empowerment organization in South Africa while I was in college ignited my desire to do work with a social impact. While at Deloitte, I enjoyed projects that involved helping government agencies run more efficiently or providing nonprofits with tools to better achieve their missions. I came to business school to further develop my skillset so I could focus my career consistently on social impact, not just a project here or there.
The relationships and the resources I gained at Berkeley Haas are the best possible return on investment. And you can’t put a price on being able to connect with and learn from Professor Kellie McElhaney.
Creating a more equitable place for women in the workplace
Closing the gender gap in business is a long-term interest. That led me to be active in Women in Leadership and to co-lead the Haas Manbassador program. I firmly believe that in order to make progress, we must have men as allies.
The Manbassador program creates a safe space to discuss all kinds of sticky topics like sexual harassment and mentorship in the wake of the #Metoo movement. These meaningful conversations really give me hope that we can create a more equitable world for women in business.
At Lean In, one of the programs I manage is 50 Ways to Fight Bias, an interactive, card-based activity that helps employees identify gender bias when it happens in their workplace and provides research-backed recommendations for what to do. Many companies, SurveyMonkey for example, are already using the program. Currently, I’m working to scale the program to reach as many companies and employees as possible.
Curriculum provides a sandbox to experiment
The Berkeley Impact Venture Partners was a wonderful playground to try all of the equipment: from sourcing and due diligence to learning how to balance impact with profit.
Sustainable Business Solutions gave me a taste of corporate social responsibility from the inside. We worked with Cisco on a project to evaluate how technology could be leveraged to fight animal poaching in Africa.
I loved being GSI for the undergrad course, The Social, Political, and Ethical Environment of Business. By talking about corporate social responsibility, I helped students find their own voices and perspectives.
INTERNSHIP
Pledge 1%
San Francisco, California
JOB PRIOR TO HAAS
Senior Consultant
Deloitte
San Francisco, California
PREVIOUS DEGREE
BA, Political Science, Sociology & Economics
North Carolina State University