HBS Extends Efforts in Social Enterprise

Harvard Business School has selected its first-ever Social Entrepreneurship Fellow, the school announced Wednesday.

Elizabeth M. Scharpf, a 2007 graduate of the Business School and the Kennedy School, will receive $25,000 to fund a social venture she has started. Her business, Sustainable Health Enterprises, aims to make low-cost sanitary napkins from locally-sourced materials for women and girls in developing countries.

The pads, which are being introduced in a pilot project in Rwanda, will allow women and girls to stay at work and in school while they are menstruating. Currently, many African girls miss up to 45 days of school annually—a significant hindrance to their education—because they cannot afford sanitary pads, according to Scharpf.

Scharpf said she was grateful for the fellowship because of its potential to increase public awareness of this little-known issue.

“It will give girls and women dealing with problems visibility and hopefully encourage others to get involved and address this problem,” Scharpf said.

Scharpf said she became interested in social entrepreneurship after she consulted for the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative.

“I realized that I could do business and do good at the same time,” she said. “There wasn’t a huge trade-off.”

Scharpf then enrolled at the Kennedy School and then the Business School before working for the World Bank in Africa.

The creation of the Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, which will be given annually to an HBS alum, is indicative of a growing focus on social enterprise at the Business School. In 2001, the HBS Business Plan Contest added a social enterprise track, and attendance at the school’s Social Enterprise Conference has grown consistently. And with the economic downturn limiting traditional job opportunities, more students have begun to explore social causes.

Faculty Co-Chair of the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative Herman “Dutch” B. Leonard ’74, who served on the selection committee for the fellowship, said that the committee was impressed by the volume of worthwhile projects submitted for consideration.

“We had a number of really strong projects. This was a difficult choice,” Leonard said. “There were quite a few all of us would have been happy to see as the winner.”

Scharpf’s project was chosen because, in addition to addressing a specific social issue, it will create jobs in the affected community, encourage sustainable agriculture, and promote discussions about sexual health, Leonard said.

The Business School would like to expand the fellowship in future years if budgets allow, Leonard said.

While Scharpf said she finds the growing profile of social enterprise encouraging, she cautioned about the dangers of seeing the field as a separate niche.

“Social enterprise and these ideas really should be a part of every boardroom, whether at the biggest companies in the world or the smallest non-profits in the world,” she said. “The idea is having a great social impact.”

—Staff writer William N. White can be reached at wwhite@fas.harvard.edu.