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February 2006 Buddy, Can You Spare Some Time?Ryan Caldbeck, MBA ’05, was in for a surprise last year when he asked the boss to match his donation for Hurricane Katrina relief. TSG Consumer President and CEO Chuck Esserman, MBA ’82, suggested the company instead send Caldbeck to do whatever he could to help. So a month to the day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Caldbeck and his classmate Rory Eakin, who had a few weeks free before reporting to work at Boston Consulting, hit Biloxi, Miss. Running. After sleeping in a football field the first night, the two interspersed physical labor, like clearing debris and cutting trees, with visits to relief organizations, where they talked to leaders, other volunteers, citizens, and city councilmember Bill Stallworth, who was organizing a coalition of relief organizations and asked the two MBAs to share their observations with the group. “I gave a presentation outlining our findings,” Caldbeck wrote back to TSG colleagues, “and, yes, we found a computer with PowerPoint!” The two MBAs reported a certain amount of overlap and inefficiency; for example, two different organizations were operating Biloxi’s two largest food distribution points within four blocks of each other. They found that short-term needs like hot meals, water, and clothing had been met in abundance while long-term needs like housing and transportation were not being fully addressed. And they learned that, in hard-hit East Biloxi anyway, volunteers were more precious than money. “All the money in the world won’t move that tree,” Richard Smith, a representative of Hands On USA, told the two. “We just need to get people cutting it.” |
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