Gabelli Launch gave the MBA candidates, who hail from India, China, Haiti, Italy, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Peru, South Africa, Taiwan and the United States, not only a chance to get to know each other before classes started but also an opportunity to be stretched in important ways. Week One focused on helping the students discover their own leadership style. Week Three focused on specific dimensions of the job search, and long-term career development. And Week Four threw them into the world of data and analytics, asking the students to tackle an industry that they knew nothing about—3-D printing.

But it was Week Two that took the entire cohort to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they engaged with a unique service learning consultancy challenge, putting their marketing, negotiation, financial, cross-cultural communication, time-management, and problem-solving skills into action before the MBA program even began.

“Coming to the States for an MBA can be challenging [because of] different cultures, language, and social barriers,” said MBA student Ramon Barbosa, a managing consultant from Brazil, who credits the weeklong trip for helping to break those barriers. “I know that my MBA experience is going to be enhanced in ways that it wouldn’t—if not for the trip.”

From Aug. 5 to 12, the students worked as advisers to nonprofits that included Energizar Foundation, an organization that promotes renewable energy in Argentina and Latin America; Fundación Emanuel, a pioneering foster care program in La Plata; and FC Bola, a new soccer ball business helping children living in impoverished communities. Some of the NGOs sought guidance in drafting a branding and marketing plan. Others were struggling to develop a corporate strategy, and a few required recommendations on how to diversify their fundraising models to achieve greater impact.

“The students were on teams that were constructed to be cross-cultural in nature, dealing with clients who were not native speakers of English,” said Benjamin M. Cole, Ph.D., director of the Full-time Cohort MBA and Professional MBA programs, who accompanied the students on the trip.

“Given that they were only going to have five days on the ground, they needed to be as effective and efficient as possible. The students had to use their wit and knowledge, and the technology that the school provided to set up virtual meetings and collect data about the organizations before they even set foot in Argentina. At Gabelli, we focus on ‘business with impact,’ and these projects helped set expectations very high.”

No spectators, only participants

When MBA candidate Linda Werner, a manufacturing financial controller from Germany, arrived in Argentina with her teammates, they spent two days brainstorming with leaders of the anti-child-abuse organization Red Por La Infancia.

The organization, which recently began collaborating with the U.N. human rights education initiative THINK EQUAL, wanted to shift its focus from merely being a refuge for victims to manufacturing products and services that educate children and parents about abuse.

“When we got to the school, there were lots of teachers and a couple of people who were part of the board, but there were only two students,” said Swain, whose team was also tasked with helping the organization to clarify its brand message, update its website, and unify its name across all online platforms.

“When we got to the school, there were lots of teachers and a couple of people who were part of the board, but there were only two students,” said Swain, whose team was also tasked with helping the organization to clarify its brand message, update its website, and unify its name across all online platforms.

After learning that many participants ride horses to school, and often miss days, weeks, and months of classes because of bad weather and muddy roads, the MBA students proposed using technology to combat low attendance.

“I think a lot of nonprofits do amazing work and they need to stay around, but we can’t just think that doing good is a responsibility of nonprofits alone.”

“I was amazed to learn that sometimes we think that making an impact is just a matter of being more effective and efficient,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t realize that there are so many cultural barriers that we might have to overcome before trying to make an impact.”

Cole said that was just one of many lessons Gabelli Launch intended to impart.

“You know the field where Walsh Library is today?” he asks. “I used to climb over the fence to play football with my friends when I was in third or fourth grade.”

Growing up in the Bronx, Blount was always aware of Fordham, and his family’s ties to the University have gotten stronger over the years.

He attended a day camp on campus before attending Fordham Prep and Fordham College at Rose Hill. His mother, Barbara Blount, GSAS ’79, and two of his daughters, Veronica Blount, FCRH ’93, and Ciara Blount, FCLC ’09, also attended Fordham.

After graduating, Blount joined the Marines and earned an MBA from Pepperdine University while stationed at a base in California. Now a self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur,” he heads the Center for the Study of Financial Market Evolution, a nonprofit group that focuses on building bridges between financial institutions and regulators.

Blount mostly splits his time between Phoenix and Washington, D.C., where his center is located, and travels to New York City and abroad frequently. But although he no longer lives “in the shadow of Keating Hall,” as he describes his childhood home, he often thinks of Fordham on his travels.

It was on a trip to England in 2011 that Blount came up with the idea for Fordham’s Regulatory Outreach for Student Education (ROSE) program. Blount had read about the Ridgeway Trail, a 5,000-year-old Neolithic trail, a few years before, and decided he needed to see it for himself.

As he was hiking the trail, he came to a realization.

The article he had read “positioned it as a defensive trail, connecting prehistoric forts,” Blount says. “As a former Marine, I’m interested in those kinds of things. But I was also an English and economics double major, and I was interested in how the trail connected market towns. So while hiking I kept thinking about all the people that would have taken this route as they were going to market, or going to negotiate for benefits with priests in nearby towns.”

The more Blount thought about the travelers who had come before him, the more he started to see a connection to the modern world of financial regulation.

“We do the same thing now,” he says. “We go to Washington, to our capital, from New York City, and we ask for a break or for relief. So we’ve been traveling to negotiate for a very long time. And being the tired traveler puts you at a disadvantage in those negotiations.”

Blount, who was already a Fordham scholarship supporter, an active member of several alumni chapters, and part of the President’s Council Executive Committee, thought about how students often don’t understand the regulatory negotiation and travel components of working in the financial industry until they experience them for themselves. So he pitched the ROSE program.

In its first year, the ROSE program brought a group of about 20 students down to Washington, D.C., for one day. Blount funded the trip and organized meetings with representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve, where the students presented comment letters they had prepared in response to newly proposed regulations.

Now entering its fifth year, the ROSE program has been so successful that it has become a for-credit class taught by Chris Meyer, PhD, a clinical assistant professor of management systems at the Gabelli School of Business.

Meyer works with Blount to choose two newly proposed pieces of financial regulation each year. The students, who are from several of Fordham’s undergraduate and graduate schools, then attend lectures on the topics, hear from alumni guest speakers, and split into teams to write responses. A panel of alumni judges chooses the best response, and the other comment letters are consolidated into a task force report. The two responses are then presented to regulators in D.C. and submitted to the Financial Stability Board in Switzerland.

Fordham students’ comment letters have been chosen and posted online every year since the ROSE program’s inception.

“It’s very unusual for students to get to present their own ideas on a current and significant topic and then get feedback,” Meyer says. “There are lots of financial trading simulations and investment clubs, but this is something where students are truly interacting with the outside world. And they got to take selfies in [Federal Reserve Chair] Janet Yellen’s chair.”

Blount is still an integral part of the course and the trip, helping make connections with other alumni and providing “really valuable expertise and coaching,” Meyer says. “He just puts a lot of time and energy into the program and the school.”

For Blount, the growing program is important in multiple ways. Financial regulation is a “highly charged political issue right now,” he says, “and many positions are diametrically opposed. Finding balance is important. These students all plan to get involved in the industry, so they have a dog in the fight here. They should be listened to.”

He’s also thrilled he’s found another way to give back to his alma mater. “I think you have to give back. Give money if you can, but anyone can give back. Every alumnus has experiences that can benefit students and individuals,” Blount says.

“We haven’t even scratched the surface of what we can do as a community.”