The Barefoot MBA Teaches Lessons Worldwide
January 2008
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS— Teaching basic business skills to villagers in the developing world so they can run their micro-companies more efficiently is the goal behind the Barefoot MBA, a program developed by two Stanford Graduate School of Business students.
Katherine Boas, MBA ’07, and second-year student Scott Raymond got the idea during a service learning trip to Thailand early in 2007, organized through the School’s Public Management Program. Their host was Mechai Vivavaidya, the founder and chairman of Population and Community Development Association, which received a $1 million Gates Award for Global Health in 2007 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Thai group’s founder told the Stanford students that rural business owners who received microloans could benefit from a basic curriculum designed to help them learn business fundamentals. “Scott and I sort of looked at each other and we said, ‘We could do that.’ We’ve learned this stuff,” Boas said.
Designed for teachers, the Barefoot MBA series of lessons explain complex topics to motivated, but often uneducated, people who may be unfamiliar with formal classroom environments and teaching tools. Stanford’s students presented their program at the Schwab Social Entrepreneurs’ Summit in January in Switzerland, and they are discussing expanding the Barefoot MBA to Ethiopia, Guatemala, and India.