Goldman Sachs & Institute for International Ed Teach Business Skills to College Students
by Katarzyna Kozanecka
“Unfortunately, most of the world never thinks from a business perspective,” said Steve Mariotti, president and founder of the National Foundation for Teaching Enterprises (NFTE). In other words, he said, people working in the human services sector would be able to solve problems more effectively if they understood the basic business principal of maximizing output with minimum resources. Mariotti was conducting a workshop at the Goldman Sachs Global Leadership Institute to teach this and other business skills, as well as to introduce entrepreneurship as a potential career to fifty of the world’s brightest and most socially active students who met in New York from July 12 to 17.
The Global Leaders proved themselves worthy of their titles. They grasped connections quickly: Lucas Mendes, of the University of Sao Paolo, Brazil, foresaw that if the price of gasoline in Brazil increased, demand for sugar would also increase. “In Brazil we have two types of fuel: gasoline and ethanol. The ethanol is made from sugar cane,” he said. “If gasoline is expensive, most of the cane crop will be used to produce ethanol, not sugar.”
The responsibilities of running the Global Leadership Institute are divided between the creators of this unique all-expense paid educational program, which is taught by experts from the private, public and civic sectors. The Goldman Sachs Foundation funds the program and Goldman Sachs professionals serve as mentors for the students, while the International Institute of Education (IIE) oversees the rigorous application process.
Each year, seventy-five universities in seventeen countries are asked to nominate between five and ten “outstanding students with top grades, who have demonstrated leadership and drive,” said Peggy Blumenthal, Vice President of Educational Services at IIE. The IIE is a leading not-for-profit international educational and professional exchange organization. After several rounds of qualifying interviews, one hundred students are named Goldman Sachs Global Leaders. Each is awarded a $3000 scholarship. On the basis of additional interviews and essays, fifty are chosen to attend the weeklong Institute in the world’s financial capital.
This year’s participants are citizens of twenty countries. They have all completed their second year of studies. Most are not majoring in business but all recognize the importance of learning to think like business people do. “Otherwise,” said Anna Czarnecka, a biology major at the University of Warsaw, “you won’t get financial support for your research.” Isaac Baley Gaytanl, an economics and applied mathematics major at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, said the leadership skills they were learning are applicable in every field.#
For additional information, please visit www.iie.org/pgms/global_leaders
