Social Impact in the Windy City

In 2012, the Center for Careers, Life, and Service (CLS) and the Office of Development Alumni Relations took a group of students to Silicon Valley on its first industry tour. They met with several successful Grinnell alumni and friends of the College and examined startups at different stages of development. If there was a lesson to the trip or a concept that the CLS (formerly CDO) wanted to convey, it might have been that it is perfectly fine to be a Grinnellian and work in business. In the fall of 2013, the center put together another industry tour to Chicago, where the focus fell on nonprofit organizations. Far from being antithetical to the first industry tour, the social impact tour in Chicago demonstrated that business acumen, innovation, and entrepreneurship are crucial to nonprofit management, and that there are countless ways to make a positive social impact. 

Mark Peltz, dean for career development, explained that the overarching goals for these industry tours are to help students develop a richer understanding of industries, to provide them with content in the tour that juxtaposes their motivations in doing this work with reality, and to help students broaden their professional network with connections. The CLS chose Chicago because it is a popular post-graduate destination for Grinnellians, and it has a large number of alumni involved in social causes. 

There is a perception among alumni that the College stresses graduate school and service work over other postgraduate options. Alumni backgrounds are far more diverse than those two options, as the tour participants realized. Thomas Neil ’14, political science major and Student Government Association president, who went on the tour, was especially interested in the work of Jacques Sandberg ’86. Sandberg is a vice president at real estate developer Related Midwest and heads its affordable housing division. According to Neil, Sandberg is working on “the next era of project housing, Section 8 housing, and mixed development housing.” 

Both Sandberg and Joe Neri ’84, CEO of IFF, a nonprofit community development financial institution, which helps other nonprofits through real estate consulting and lending, are prime examples of alumni who operate one or two degrees away from direct service but still make a positive social impact through their work. The same applies to Alli Johnson Henry ’04, who works with A Better Chicago, helping people and companies invest in nonprofit organizations doing work in Chicago. Most Grinnellians realize that direct service and volunteer work aren’t the only ways to have an impact, but seeing Neri, Sandberg, and Henry in action helped that lesson hit home for political science major Carmen Nelsen ’14. “I do want to have a social impact, but I also want to make a living,” she says. Having a positive social impact and being able to support herself financially are not mutually exclusive. 

Christa Soule Desir ’96 is a founding member of The Voices and Faces Project, which helps rape victims tell their stories. The path that took her from being a theatre major at Grinnell to writing workshops to help rape victims and writing her own young adult novel was hardly linear. “In terms of career plans, it became clear that no path was straight for any of these alums,” says Lucy Marcus ’14, an English major who went on the tour. The same is true of Sandberg, who told the tour group that he dug ditches for a couple of years after graduating. 

One lesson that seemed to permeate the tour was the value of business knowledge. Even though nonprofit organizations aren’t bottom-line driven, an understanding of business practices is essential. Thomas Neil observed that a lot of Grinnell graduates pursue business in the first few years after graduating, then transfer the skills they learn to nonprofits. “Doing business after graduation isn’t selling your soul,” he says. Instead, it can be a means of gaining skills that can be applied in government services, policy, and other areas.

Marcus says the tour helped take her out of her critical mindset — or at least helped balance it with observations she was able to make of the world outside the Grinnell bubble. Nelsen agrees with the value of going to see the alumni where they work rather than just inviting them to campus. “These kind of trips are important … it is completely different seeing them in their work environment because you can kind of imagine yourself sitting at that desk,” she says. If there was a lesson from this tour, it was that what you do doesn’t matter as much as that you work to have a positive social impact. 

The CLS hopes to take students on more industry tours in the future. Peltz has discussed the possibilities of a biotechnology tour in the Midwest; a performing arts tour in Los Angeles; or even a large, multisubject tour in New York. Wherever the tour goes next, the students who participate will gain perspective and get their first look at the Grinnell community after graduation. To echo a sentiment Lucy Marcus expresses, the four years each Grinnellian spends on campus are, “just the tip of the iceberg of the Grinnell community.”