NESsT Entrepreneur-in-Residence (June - August 2005, Budapest)

University: Stanford University (California)

NESsTER Project: Assist with development of the NESsT Margins Project

"I was originally drawn to NESsT by its distinctly market approach to solving systemic injustices. The profit-making orientation of capitalism and social-consciousness are often thought of as being mutually-exclusive, but NESsT, through its various initiatives, demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case. I am excited to join NESsT and help the organization bring the best of the for-profit segment to the non-profit realm.

"As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence I hope to learn a great deal about social entrepreneurship and NESsT's philanthropic investment approach. While my summer with NESsT will inevitably end too soon, I hope to accomplish a lot during my residency and leave NESsT with grounded strategies for encouraging philanthropic investing within the investment and wine industries. Perhaps a bit more selfishly, I am also looking forward to spending a summer in Budapest , one of the most beautiful and interesting cities I have ever had the pleasure of visiting."

-- John Waldmann

Background:

John Waldmann joined NESsT for the summer of 2005 courtesy of a Stanford in Government Fellowship from the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University. As a NESsTER, John worked on The Margins Project and the Wineries Investing in Nonprofit Enterprise (WINE) Project.

At the time of his NESsTERship, John was in his third year at Stanford University, where he is double majored in Political Science and Sociology. He wais one of four Stanford recipients of the Glaser Scholarship recognizing excellence in Sociology. In addition to his coursework at Stanford, John also completed courses in accounting and entrepreneurship at the London School of Economics during the summer of 2004.

While NESsT represented John's first serious step into social entrepreneurship and the non-profit realm, he joined NESsT with significant business knowledge. John founded two different companies in high school, an internet retailer and a web-design company, both of which proved successful as part-time endeavors. After his first year at Stanford, John held a position as a market-development specialist at IMM Inc., a yacht sales and brokerage business located in his native city of Seattle , where he designed a national advertising campaign for the introduction of a new yacht line and handled public relations efforts. Most recently, John joined Stanford Consulting, a student-run consulting company at Stanford University. As a consultant, John has undergone extensive training in business analysis and has worked closely with a Singaporean start-up to assess the viability of entering the U.S. clothing market. He has also worked with a non-profit organization in the California Bay Area to investigate possible ways to finance the distribution of educational software in developing countries.

Contact: waldmann@stanford.edu

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