By CBE Blog Staff With more and more companies vowing to embrace and incorporate Environmental, Social, and Governance ( ESG) strategies into their business practices, we want to highlight several top companies that have seamlessly demonstrated their commitment to upholding and integrating these standards into their business practices. Contrary to popular belief, ESG goes beyond just green initiatives — it extends into ethical business practices, corporate philanthropy, inclusive impact, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and more. ESG standards create stronger partnerships between stakeholders, customers, and other businesses that aim to uphold similar standards. Moreover, ESG serves as a beacon of inclusivity by supporting marginalized identities and communities as a whole.  Climate Change and Sustainability  Nvidia Corporation is a Santa Clara, CA-based company that has made significant strides in the field of AI. As one of the most highly valued and innovative companies in the world, Nvidia’s largest product is its GPU chip which has increased in demand as the AI field continues to grow. Its corporate sustainability standards are no less — by the 2025 fiscal year, Nvidia expects to use 100% renewable energy  for its office and data center use. As an effort to further reduce energy use and maximize efficiency, its GPU chips are estimated to be about 20x as efficient as traditional chips. As more and more industries shift towards AI technology, Nvidia has supported multiple companies across the globe to uplift their communities. In the healthcare technology  industry, for example, Nvidia has offered its services to create AI models for healthcare services including prescription drug creation, screenings, and medical imaging. In partnership with Amazon Web Services, Nvidia’s AI Enterprise has increased its services to a variety of healthcare and life science companies across the industry to promote healthcare innovation. Due to its efficacy and efficiency, this initiative will speed up drug development across industries. A-Alpha Bio, a large biotechnology firm experienced a 10x efficiency in their engineering of protein samples.  Avocados are a tremendously popular food,  known for their numerous health benefits and nutritional value; however, a significant number of avocado pits end up being thrown out which further contributes to global food waste. Bioengineering company, Biofase  has made impressive strides in creating plastics from avocado seeds and reducing food waste. Traditionally, bioplastics are created from corn or potato-based grains. The Mexico-based company was founded by Scott Munguia in 2013 and has developed a technology that uses avocado pits to create 100% compostable and biodegradable utensils called Biocom compostables.  The technology uses the biopolymer from the pits called polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) elements to replace traditional plastic consumption in the form of polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene. Beginning in the production process, the avocado pits are cleaned and then converted to biopolymer plastic. They are then mixed with organic compounds and transformed into a resin that builds their heat tolerance. Their other offering includes a Biocom Hybrid product which is made up of about 60% composted vegetable matter. Since the creation of Biofase, they have been awarded numerous times including the 2017 Forbes 30 under 30 Latin America award, FRISA Award for Entrepreneurial Development, and the 2012 Cleantech Challenge. In an industry where sustainability is just as important, Alleyoop  is a cosmetic and wellness brand that offers products ranging from body care, to makeup brushes, and makeup pens. Founded in 2019, the company has received multiple awards from Elle and Allure magazine due to its cleaner ingredients free of parabens, aluminum, and latex. Their sustainability model  prides itself on its “multifunctional” designed packaging which reduces the need for multiple items because the products and tools needed for a makeup object are already included in the design. Not only is their packaging locally and sustainably sourced, but it also uses far less land, water, and energy sources to create their packaging in the first place. Alleyoop has committed itself to net-zero plastic packaging and has reused about 21,000 lbs of plastic found in the ocean. To top it all off, all of Alleyoop’s products are vegan and cruelty-free to promote its dedication to preserving life and natural resources.   Social Responsibility and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Sodexo, a French food and merchandise company founded in 1966 has won numerous awards for its gender-based DEI initiatives in the workplace. Serving over 100 million customers on a daily basis, the company was given a perfect disability equality index score, named Forbes’ 2022 best employer for diversity, Seramount’s best company for multicultural-identifying women, and Employer of the Year by the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind. The company continues to spearhead the DEI space through representation, inclusivity, and educational training . About 60% of the board of directors, 29% of its executive governing committee members, and over 55% of its total staff are women. Thousands of their company leaders and managers participate in DEI training annually. Swiss-based company, Novartis  is one of the leading global pharmaceutical companies in the world. Novartis strives to include historically underrepresented voices in the world of medicine and has been awarded for its gender equality and LGBTQ+ employment efforts. It was included in Bloomberg’s 2023 Gender Equality Index and awarded Stonewalls’ Top Global Employer in 2022. Novartis employees can join numerous Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to receive support and create bonds with those of similar backgrounds, interests, and perspectives. To impact underserved communities, it announced a 10-year-long partnership with over 25 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) across the country  to mitigate the ongoing impacts of healthcare disparities. As the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbates these impacts, Novartis aims to increase diversity “among trial participants…clinical trial investigators, medical school students, and physicians.” Novartis will support the education of future Black healthcare providers through mentorship in collaboration with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and by establishing Digitally Enabled Clinical Trial Centers for Excellence to increase racial diversity in medical trials which can be incorporated into textbooks and future studies. Are you looking to implement sustainable best practices in your operations? CBE's high-impact focus on sustainability, technology, and life sciences allows us to deliver research-driven solutions catered to the needs of our clients. If you would like to learn more about how CBE could work with your organization, contact us at info@harvardcbe.com  or by navigating to the Contact page of our website.

By Isis Rodriguez ‘27 Last spring, a team of CBE members partnered with Brothers Building A Better Nation  (BBABN), a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping young Black and Latino men in the Newark area meet all of their needs, thrive, and succeed. The CBE team delivered recommendations for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) the nonprofit can use to continue to develop their growing financial and organizational practices to maintain transparency and accountability both internally and to external funding and community partners. In working with Brothers Building a Better Nation, the CBE team was able to gain key insights into the unique challenges and research techniques of nonprofit KPI development, ultimately helping BBABN develop KPIs that uniquely support their financial and organizational development. KPIs for Nonprofit Versus For-Profit Organizations CBE team members underscore that nonprofit and for-profit organizations have very different motivations which greatly impact how KPI research was both researched and presented to the client. Analyst Joseph Price ‘27,  found in his research process that there was a much larger emphasis on qualitative KPI development for BBABN, especially given the vast community-driven programs the nonprofit runs, including mentorship and harm reduction. He stated that nonprofits are “like businesses that [do] charitable things” and that while for-profit organizations focus on KPIs catered towards revenue, nonprofit KPIs have the objective of “maximizing impact” on their designated community. Thus, in Joseph’s research process, he largely focused on putting himself in the place of the young men of color BBABN serves, asking himself what kinds of programs he would look for, and subsequently discovering whether data largely supported his feelings and devising plans and KPI metrics accordingly. Case Team Lead Theresa Huang ‘26  shared a similar sentiment. “There is a difference,” she stated. “Nonprofits are geared more towards the community whereas for-profit organizations tend to be more revenue driven.” However, regardless of motivation, Theresa notes that “analysis largely remains the same” and the main aspect of research and final deliverables that changes is the language used to present, which more accurately reflects the different goals of each type of organization. She gave the example of “competitive analysis” for a for-profit organization, a term that becomes “nonprofit comparison” in the nonprofit context. Research for this case and its deliverables aligned more with qualitative, community-based goals outlined in conversations with the client — a departure from our research for for-profit organizations that often centers around maximizing profitability and ROI for continued operations. The Major Challenge A large challenge of working with nonprofits like BBABN is devising strategies around BBABN’s limited financial resources.  BBABN founder and leader Quadeer Porter  agrees that nonprofits like his are very community focused. His organization and others like it — nonprofits born out of the pandemic and not bringing in steady streams of income — face issues defining boundaries of the limits of the organization's powers within the community. Porter outlines that BBABN helps as many people as possible. However, the nonprofit’s stream of funding, which comes from donations, is no match for the power of the income stream of for-profit organizations with clientele who buy into the organization both literally and figuratively, and with investors that supplement and support major spending ventures. As such, nonprofits face a double burden of heightened responsibility to those they serve without all the necessary financial resources to always comfortably and adequately serve them.  Our Solutions To bridge the gap between financial limitations and maximized community impact, Theresa and Joseph stress, per Theresa’s words, “balancing the quantitative and qualitative metrics.” Although nonprofit KPI metrics are often largely qualitative, the research to create them is not much different from the research involved in developing quantitative KPIs for for-profit organizations. Thus, being intentional about quantitative KPI development in the research process proves to be a powerful way for nonprofit organizations to have a variety of metrics measuring the strength of the relationship between the nonprofit and the communities served against the internal financial organization of the nonprofit. For BBABN, it was important to remain creative in the KPI development process, as the increased financial burden of nonprofits affects the feasibility of any solutions a case team may devise. Joseph reflected that the limited resources of the nonprofit sector forced him to think more “creatively” about affordable programming BBABN could implement for increased public exposure in community and donor sectors. Joseph also got creative with affordable technology for KPI data collection, so that BBABN could have all the necessary financial and programming data continuously. Theresa encourages nonprofits, especially those founded more recently, to build up data before launching the organization into the games of comparison with other nonprofits. As the nonprofit establishes its niche, the KPI sample data taken in the short term may no longer be an accurate data set for the nonprofit’s newfound long-term plans. This conflict necessitates a reframing of the KPIs, as well as a restructuring of data collection and data analysis metrics. Critically, by advising both long-term and short-term flexibility around their KPIs and developing key metrics to gauge success, CBE helped ensure that BBABN can adapt to the ever-changing needs of the community they serve in a sustainable manner going forward. Are you looking for a personalized approach to measuring organizational outcomes through creative KPI development? CBE is committed to delivering thoroughly researched, high-impact solutions catered to the needs of our clients. If you would like to learn more about how CBE could work with your organization, contact us at info@harvardcbe.com or by navigating to the Contact page of our website.

By Jordan Chan ‘27 Although HUCBE is a professional consulting organization providing real-world clients with valuable research and recommendations, our members also participate in community initiatives beyond our casework. One of our fundamental goals is to create a meaningful impact by giving back to the community — through initiatives such as Boston Public School scholarships, our Ventures competition, sustainability grants, pro-bono work, and a series of volunteering events in the Greater Boston area.  Volunteerism can boost productivity and member engagement within organizations, and CBE is no exception. CBE members get to know each other not just as colleagues, but also as friends by contributing to community service projects together. Furthermore, volunteering with people with a variety of experiences and opinions helps our members produce work that keeps the full range and diversity of people it may impact close to mind. This broad perspective is beneficial when we work with larger clients whose high-level operations may have consequences for individuals in ways that may not seem as salient in, for example, a statement of work. In this way, volunteering in our community is about more than just the organizations we benefit — it is about incorporating a deeper purpose into all of the work we do. Here’s a recap of a few of the exciting volunteering events CBE members participated in during the Spring 2024 semester! Harvard University Dining Services Heat-N-Eats Program Seven CBE members did not have to travel far to make a difference this semester, going to Harvard’s very own Annenberg dining hall to package meals for food-insecure individuals in the surrounding Cambridge area through the Heat-N-Eats Program . These microwaveable meals — containing a balanced mix of proteins, rice or grains, and vegetables that did not get consumed during meal service — are donated to local residential hotels and shelters that lack the capacity to prepare healthy food for residents on site. The program rescues food that would have otherwise gone to waste, meaning it has environmental benefits as well as humanitarian ones. Director of Sourcing Audrey Zhang ‘26 , who participated in Heat-N-Eats with CBE this semester, mentioned how she would often see leftover food at the end of meal service and wonder where it all went. “I didn’t think they would just throw it all away,” she explained, “but being able to see behind the scenes…and help out with packaging made me really see how [the Harvard University Dining Services] is doing something tangible.” It also “opened [her] eyes to just how much food is left over.” Audrey recalled that she and her team of volunteers formed an assembly line, scooping items like leftover grains into bags and meal boxes, then packaging them with saran wrap. She is grateful that CBE community initiatives help her get off campus and engage with the community, expressing that community is “a very important value that we want to make sure all of our members, including future members, take to heart.” Friday Night Supper Program CBE members helped provide nutritious three-course meals to individuals in need in the Greater Boston area through the Friday Night Supper Program (FNSP) . According to the FNSP website, they are “one of the longest running supper programs in Boston” and have served dinner to people experiencing homelessness or poverty every Friday evening since 1984. Speaking to why her experiences at FNSP were particularly meaningful, Analyst Jeeya Patel ‘27 emphasized how “being able to work in a soup kitchen has a very direct impact on people who are homeless or who just maybe can’t afford a meal that day.” She “learned a lot…and met a lot of different people” during the several hours that she spent in Arlington Street Church washing and drying dishes, assisting with wrap-up, and maintaining the cleanliness of the kitchen and eating areas. Other volunteers helped serve the food and check in on people coming in for a meal.  Jeeya also underscored the importance of community service events in CBE. “People looking at a CBE…will see that we work with multi-billion dollar clients,” she explained. “It’s really good to bring everyone…back to the real world.” Reflecting shared sentiments across the CBE community, she also stressed the importance of humility: “No one gets into Harvard just by their own merits. I think it takes a village to raise someone; it’s really important to give back to the community in whatever way you can.”  Harvard Habitat for Humanity For the next featured volunteering event, Managing Director Joey Liu ‘26 and her fellow members put on their hard hats and tool belts. After a shuttle ride and safety brief from their supervisors with Harvard's chapter of Habitat for Humanity , they stepped onto an active construction site to combat housing insecurity by building a brand-new multi-family house, complete with individual kitchens, bedrooms, and bathrooms. This all-day event kept everyone busy; some members helped install the house’s insulation, while others assisted with cutting and nailing down planks of wood. Building safe and affordable homes like this one is how Habitat for Humanity, a global nonprofit organization, fulfills their vision of  “a world where everyone has a decent place to live.” Reflecting on her experiences, Joey appreciated how hands-on this community service event was. She and other CBE members directly contributed to a project that would give other kids “the opportunity to be protected, have a better childhood, and [gain] the ability to…make a better life for themselves.” As Harvard students, “we are always exposed to the [homeless] community,” Joey mentioned. Housing insecurity “is something I always wished I could help out with.” She added that, after participating, she gained a newfound respect for the work that employees of Habitat for Humanity and similar organizations commit to in the long term. From the moment Joey joined CBE, she has been particularly proud of the organization’s continued commitment to volunteerism. She admitted that being a student at Harvard can be stressful and hectic, so she is grateful that, through CBE, she and other members can take a step back, reconnect with their fundamental values, and use “resources and human capital to really try and make a difference in the community — in whatever way, shape, or form that we can.” CBE is committed to further bolstering community initiatives to maximize our positive impact on those around us as we move into another semester of hard work. If you would like to read more about what CBE is doing to give back, check out our giving report at hucbe.org/impact  or by navigating to the Impact page of our website.

By: Daniel Shen, Sophia Zhou, Fiona Millan, Kevin Tan, Khanh Le, and Daniela Shuman Chinese investment in the African region has steadily increased over the past two decades, ranging in the billions of dollars annually. However, there is little public research about these investments, their motivations, and their outcomes; investment negotiations often occur privately, without opportunity for external stakeholder input. This presents a problem to organizations that have been working for decades with existing governments to develop climate-friendly and resilient transportation infrastructure. How can these organizations gain leverage in negotiations with Chinese investors and African developers to pursue “greener” infrastructure projects? To solve this problem, a team of CBE and Insight Program members developed a comprehensive study detailing the process and outcome of Chinese investment in African transportation projects. A novel motivation framework for these investments was constructed, providing insight on the future of Chinese monetary flow to Africa. This white paper is a contribution to research on Chinese investment in Africa and an informative analysis for those interested in this field of affairs Click here to download our entire slide deck: Click here to download a database of Chinese Investment Projects in African Transportation infrastructure:

As we prepare for the 2020 competition, the CBE Ventures team has reconnected with our 2019 winners and their progress since Pitch Day almost one year ago. Starting from our own student community, these entrepreneurs have made incredible strides to revolutionize their industries, and CBE is proud to support their work towards a better and more sustainable future. Grand Prize Winner: ShelfLife For craft food and beverage producers, ShelfLife’s ordering platform and vendor network provide volume discounts on common packaging materials and services. Since our competition last year, ShelfLife has raised $325K in pre-seed funding from NextView Ventures, MBA Fund, Rough Draft Ventures, Dorm Room Fund, Switch Ventures, HBS Rock Center, and Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners. ShelfLife has piloted its product with Lamplighter Brewing Co., generating purchase orders for $10,000-$12,000 in raw materials per week. Currently, they are in the process of launching packaging resources and automating purchase orders. ShelfLife is on its way towards its goal of becoming the go-to, managed marketplace for food and beverage primary packaging in the US. Runner-Up: Debate Spaces Debate Spaces is an education non-profit that uses debate to foster activism and connect middle school students from around the Greater Boston area. This past year, Debate Spaces has raised $20K in its first seed funding round and expanded its reach by adding a community organizer and teacher to their team. While the shift to online learning has affected the delivery of education around the world, Debate Spaces has shifted its in-person programming to remote offerings so its students can continue to build their core skills of debate, engage with current events, and meet new friends from their homes. Debate Spaces is also committed to making racial justice a central focus of its curriculum, holding an emergency session to discuss police brutality and systemic racism, as well as raising additional funds to ensure that its services are accessible to students to process and create change regarding racism in our communities. Sustainability Prize: Troav Troav offers a monthly subscription membership, allowing users to access a large inventory of physical goods quickly and easily. For the past few months, the Troav team has been building out a local instant delivery service for the past few months, partnering with gig drivers and suppliers to enhance their reach. They have worked on adapting their model to navigate the pandemic, spending the summer in Boston to build their service for its users.

I. Overview In the last few years, the Life Sciences industry in the US industry has been facing unique challenges, as costs rise, government regulations change, and operational barriers mount. A new paradigm has been created called the New Health Economy, which also includes consolidating hospitals for efficiency, changing expectations of patients, and increasing calls for price reforms. To combat these challenges, the industry has grown more consumer-facing and collaborative. [1] A significant result of this shift is that life sciences organizations—particularly pharmaceutical groups—have begun to tailor the healthcare experience towards patients directly. Data-driven product development has led to more personalized treatments, although the lack of big data talent in bioinformatics has been hampering growth. In the next few years, companies will move towards a more flexible and interactive approach by directly interfacing with patients, delivering better experiences for patients and gathering valuable data for drugmakers. [2] Life sciences groups have formed geographic clusters, particularly in Boston and in the Bay Area [3]. However, this means that rising rents and an increasingly competitive recruitment pool can lead to increased costs. Finally, many potential external factors must be prepared for, as they could reshape the industry. Changes in insurance policies and the politics behind them can wildly affect pricing and customers’ level of willingness to pay for certain services. Diseases and pandemics can occur without prior notice and could change the drug development focus, as seen with the Ebola crisis. Particular inventions or discoveries (such as new antibiotics and genetic treatments) can also change research directions. II. Industry Sectors Biotech Boston is a major hub for biotech and pharmaceutical startups, including many of our former clients. The gamut of organizations is vast, with capabilities ranging from using virtual reality to cure lazy eye to incentivizing proper health practices with a mobile app. They often focus on individualized medicine made possible through data analytics. Looking forward, the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council expects the following four trends to impact biotechnology: a strategic hunt for revenue growth, an influx of new sources of capital, real estate solutions driven by tight markets, and talent acquisition. A changing tax regime may also have a significant impact. [4] Pharmaceuticals Pharmaceutical organizations generally expect to see returns on investment only after at least 8- 10 years. Thus, drug development is an expensive and time intensive process that requires a long-term commitment towards R&D before monetization. This also means that the pricing of the drugs is usually very expensive and relatively inelastic. A series of lawsuits, nevertheless, has been highlighting predatory pricing in this field, which could bring some relief to customers. Often smaller companies that develop direct market competitors to other pharmaceutical companies will sell themselves to the competitor to gain more resources. Pharmaceutical organizations are focusing on using enterprise analytics and data sciences to influence their business decisions, leveraging big data analytics. As medical records move to the cloud, imaging becomes progressively higher quality, and genome information becomes widely available, these companies take in the large data sets to help with drug development. This means that cloud-services, privacy, and security become primary concerns for the organizations. III. References 1. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/life-sciences-and-health-care/articles/lifesciences-outlook.html 2. https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/trend/2017-life-sciences-trends 3. http://www.us.jll.com/united-states/en-us/research/industry/life-sciences-companies 4. https://www.massbio.org/news/blog/top-4-trends-impacting-the-life-sciences-industry-ingreater-boston-and-across-the-us-125972

A little over a month ago, we received news that Harvard would require students to move off campus amid growing concerns over COVID-19. Shortly thereafter, we sprung into action. We doubled down on our commitment to supporting our members, providing stipends for relocation relief. And once everyone managed to settle down — to the extent this phrase can aptly describe these unprecedented circumstances — we announced the launch of the CBE COVID-19 Action Team. Within days, the task force expanded to over 50 people, consisting of both past and present CBE members. CBE was founded on the fundamental premise that community matters. Anchored by the “Environment” in its name and the pillar of sustainability that guides its work, CBE has long held the view that generating positive impact is critical in confronting a modern world facing increasingly complex challenges. Moreover, the fundamental aim of consulting is to solve problems. As an undergraduate consulting group, we recognized that there was much impact that students could generate if they collectively leveraged their capabilities and resources to tackle these issues. While we had numerous plans in place to expand our sustainability work and programming this semester, many were crowded out by COVID-19. Yet, in recognizing the urgency of the public health crisis, along with the numerous parallels between the pandemic and climate change, we quickly pivoted our sustainability work towards COVID-19 relief efforts. We formed partnerships with organizations including Response4Life and Group 17a, working on pro bono consulting projects in which we analyzed ventilator manufacturing processes and county-level responses to coronavirus outbreaks in jails, respectively. Through these partnerships, members of the CBE COVID-19 action team were able to not only advance pandemic relief efforts, but also learn more about the insidious challenges that COVID-19 presents. A screenshot taken from our initial COVID-19 meeting. Since then, our team has grown and taken off! Since we kicked off these initial projects, we have pursued several other efforts as well. We launched our first-ever partnership with Harvard Effective Altruism on a “Giving Game” event to welcome the incoming Harvard College Class of 2024. At this event, CBE donated $1,000 to two nonprofits, GiveDirectly and Greater Boston Food Bank — these decisions were informed, in part, by “effective altruism” frameworks to understand how organizations like CBE and their members could maximize the impact of their donations. Furthermore, we partnered with Project Concern International, an international development nonprofit, to create several internships for our members. These members will be analyzing how a better understanding of data analytics and health outcomes can inform and improve COVID-19 relief efforts. We do not intend to stop here. We recognize that we have a long road ahead to adequately stem the COVID-19 pandemic, let alone climate change. We will continue to iterate on the insights we gather from our initial projects and investments to inform a more thorough understanding of how we can best pursue future ones. CBE is, and always has been, about environment, impact, and problem solving — moving forward, we will continue to act with these values in mind. We are eager to partner with organizations on projects advancing COVID-19 relief. If you or your organization could benefit from a partnership or a pro bono consulting project, please do not hesitate to reach out. We eagerly await the collaborative journey that lies ahead.

by Kavya Kopparapu It’s been almost a year since our first Ventures Initiative, and our winning teams have been hard at work revolutionizing and making significant impacts in their respective fields. As an organization, we’re incredibly proud to support organizations who sustainable and mission-driven, as well as provide a forum on campus for the exchange of ideas between students and companies. Since last year, our three winners have had significant progress in their respective ventures: Loro: Grand Prize Winner Loro is a startup building a smart personalized companion device giving people with limited mobilities the freedom to connect with the world. The team has worked hard in the past year and has gained significant traction! Loro has been tested on over 60 users who have demonstrated overwhelming enthusiasm and support for the product. Currently, Loro already has 75 customers on their waitlist and plan to launch product Loro 1.0 soon! In April, Loro won First Place at the Harvard College i3 Innovation Challenge, Harvard's premier startup competition; Second Place at the Harvard China Forum Pitch Competition, winning funding from GGV Capital and ZhenFund; First Place at the AARP Innovation Challenge in New Orleans; and a $160K grant from Fit4Start in Luxembourg. Apothecary: Grand Prize Runner-Up Apothecary.ai is a data-driven skincare consultation service. They take the guessing out of product discovery with targeted recommendations and enable users to test out products for less through their curated collection of trial minis. Apothecary is in beta testing and is looking to raise their pre-seed in the next couple of months. MakerFleet: Sustainability Prize MakerFleet is making hardware as scalable as software by building a distributed manufacturing system, providing hardware modules that connect underutilized 3D Printers to the cloud to increase accessibility. They had their own booth in the startup section (Eureka Park) of CES 2019, one of the largest technology trade shows, in Las Vegas! MakerFleet is currently undergoing a pivot that will allow the company to be much more scalable and decreases marketing costs by leveraging a unique network effect. As we gear up for this year’s Ventures Initiative, we’re looking to support another group of talented students looking to change the world with great ideas. If you think your student-run venture fits this description, apply for the 2019 Ventures Initiative! We’re looking forward to your application.

Earlier this month, CBE held its third bi-annual Sustainability Day! Founded in Fall 2018 to commemorate our organization’s 10th anniversary, the Sustainability Day initiative aims to connect all 80+ members of CBE with local non-profit projects to engage in hands-on volunteer work. Not only is it a great chance to get off campus, meet members of the community, and contribute in a small way to sustainability efforts in the Greater Boston area, but it is also an invaluable chance for members of CBE to gain experience with other forms of impact work, beyond business, consulting, and academia. This semester, we partnered with Greenovate City of Boston, Neville Place Assisted Living, Fresh Pond Reservation, and Food For Free. Below, four of our members reflect on their experiences with these projects. Greenovate: The CBE team spent the morning working with Greenovate at an “urban wild” in West Roxbury. Upon arrival, the team split into two groups to work on beautifying the area and making the trail more accessible. The first group focused on picking up garbage, whereas the second used cutters to remove excess or overgrown wildlife. It was fantastic to reconnect with Greenovate leader, David Corbie, who we last worked with last fall and work alongside members of the Greater Boston community. - Andy Fan ‘21 Neville Place Assisted Living: We spent most of the bus ride over re-remembering how to make paper cranes from our childhood. We were about to spend the next two hours teaching residents of Neville Place origami, but we had to do a bit of learning ourselves first. When we got there, we split up, with each resident having about two CBE members to work with. As the hours progressed, more and more residents filed in and more and more paper animals appeared on the table. Towards the middle of our time at the residence, many of the residents were done doing origami and were more excited just to have a genuine conversation with some of the CBE members. Another CBE member, Nyla, and I talked to former a English Professor. He had escaped Nazi-controlled Budapest at 15 and remarked how he took pride in the fact that him, a “Hungarian boy,” taught English to thousands of American students. He gave Nyla and I some much-needed life advice and positivity as did all the residents to our CBE members. Needless to say, we’ll be back during the semester for another session of conversation and paper cranes! - Javin Pombra ‘22 Fresh Pond Reservation: Our first time working with the Fresh Pond Reservation, we were thrilled to be hosted by Park Ranger Jean, who put us to work filling wheelbarrows with wood-chips and creating new jogging trails with them. We had a great time creating the paths, flattening and shaping them with our rakes, as other CBE members ran the wheelbarrows filled with wood-chips up and down the hill. By the end of our time, we had used up the entire pile of wood-chips and Ranger Jean commended us for being one of the most productive volunteer groups she has worked with. We hope to continue to work with the Fresh Pond Reservation moving forward! - Siona Prasad ‘23 Food For Free: A group of CBE members collaborated with Harvard University Dining Services and Food For Free to package leftover food, diverting it from going to waste, so that it could be given to food insecure members of the greater-Boston community. Working in the kitchen of Annenberg, we created a meal of pork and rice and a meal of chicken, plantains, and squash. As someone who has had a long-time interest in the issue of food waste, it was great to have the chance to be directly involved in Harvard’s efforts to minimize its waste. - Jasper Johnston, ‘20 Thank you to all of the organizations which hosted us this fall! If your organization is in the Greater Boston area could use volunteers at anytime during the fall or spring, please be in touch. We are always looking for new partnerships. To learn more about our flagship sustainability initiatives, check out https://www.harvardcbe.com/community-impact.

Translating consulting skills from the US to Japan Americans have a tendency to exoticize the rest of the world. Even as the world globalizes, other countries and cultures remain foreign, exceptional, and special to us; these landscapes of indecipherable languages, mannerisms, and ideas are incomprehensible. Taking a moment to look a bit closer, however, reveals that in fact this façade of differences belies the reality: fundamentally, people are still people with many of the same dreams, problems, and motivations. This past summer, I had the fortunate experience to be a part of the HKIC (Harvard Keio Initiative for Creators) program, a week-long experience organized by Keio University students in Tokyo, Japan where Harvard students and Japanese students interact, learn from each other, and solve problems. The students we met were fun, friendly, and always eager to both learn and teach; they became wonderful and close friends! At the same time, the goal of the program came down to a consulting project. Japan has some major issues due to its aging population demographics. Restrictions on immigration and cultural norms have meant that there is now a surplus of unskilled labor jobs. The startup we worked with is seeking to solve this problem by incentivizing young people to quickly take up jobs for short periods of time. Their mobile app lets employers post jobs requiring unskilled labor and then matches those jobs with jobseekers, assured of both short-term employment and instant payment. The interview process is eliminated along with any long-term commitments. Over the last few years, the company has grown dramatically and aims to grow dramatically over the next three years. The task given to us was to build a business plan to reach that target growth rate. Working in Japan, as a foreigner, requires figuring out how to break down the barriers of language and culture such that the real business fundamentals can be tackled. Fortunately, our team included two incredible Japanese students who were able to translate not only the language but also the cultural context. Transposing the business into terms that we understood showed how the problems facing the startup came down to fundamental issues faced by all mainstream technology companies. We broke the company down with a SWOT analysis, noting its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. From there, we moved into a classic breakdown of its Pirate Metrics of Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue (AARRR) with a goal of highlighting where this startup could grow its user base. Finally, we walked through the company’s financials, translating them from Japanese to English and modeling them to see trends and growth rates. In the end we discovered that the startup probably would not expect to reach its revenue targets with just an expanding user base. The required growth rate was too high. Even if the desired number of users were achieved, each one would not bring in nearly as much revenue as expected. We realized that we had to not only grow the core business but also the expanding monetization of their current customers. We ended up recommending, in order of feasibility, that the startup: 1) Automate employer onboarding; 2) Create premium subscriptions for both employees and employers; 3) Gameify employment; 4) Monetize collected data; 5) Expand to foreign markets; 6) Build a holistic recruiting platform. Strikingly, none of this would be out of place in the United States. The process, the team, and the results all parallel classic tech consulting cases with which we are familiar. The language of business, in capitalist, globalized societies doesn’t fundamentally change around the world. The context, scope, and values may change, but business, and consequently consulting, remains the same. As a result, we connected fluently with the Japanese students and with the startup's leadership in spite our linguistic divide. The cultural and language barriers dissolved as we found that we weren’t so different after all. Dhruv Gupta is a Managing Director for CBE, and a senior at Harvard studying Computer Science and Government.

Wow. It’s been an incredible year. When I joined about a year and a half ago, Harvard Undergraduate Consulting on Business and the Environment was a different organization. We served only startups and local businesses. We had only 25 members handling about 6 cases and a community that severely lacked any sort of cohesion. That’s since changed, thanks particularly to our outgoing President, Kevin Stephen. Thank you Kevin for your leadership and guidance. We now have over 75 members in our organization, have successfully completed 18 cases with multiple Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft and Roche, and are a completely different organization. We’ve had parties in Boston hotels, fun outings to paint balling, and a community that has come together as a large family. In the past year, we helped fund Breaktime, a Harvard startup that provides work for the homeless, secured $10,000 in funding for sustainable initiatives on campus through our Sustainability Grants, volunteered with multiple local organizations during Sustainability Day, and offered $15,000 in prize money for Harvard student led startups via Ventures. We have made a significant impact on our local community. We can’t wait to continue all of this in the future with our new leadership team from the Board to the Case Team Leaders and Associates all under our new President, Rainbow Yeung. While our focus in the past year was on external growth and development, our focus this year is on internal stability and analyst education. We aim to do this in three main ways based on suggestions that analysts have made. Lifelong Learning All of our analysts are incredible Harvard students with a wealth of experience in various fields. It’s time that our analysts get an opportunity to help guide their peers through lifelong learning initiatives. This upcoming semester, we will plan events that will allow any member of the organization to hold a workshop and teach a valuable skill. A workshop on financial modeling, on speaking with clients, on slide design. Analysts are exceptionally skilled and can offer so much to our organization. Most importantly, such workshops will allow others to learn, which is of course the whole point of joining such an organization. Diversity It is extremely important to us that we have a roomful of not only intelligent people, but diverse perspectives. We know we have not done super well on this front up until now, so this semester we will focus on ensuring that we have people from various backgrounds joining our organization. We plan on partnering with other organizations that represent underrepresented communities as well as finding ways to provide role models for those communities. CBE can only grow to be an effective organization if we have a community that can have a positive impact on everyone, no matter where they’re from. Community Finally, we want to make sure that CBE feels like a home to the undergraduates who join us. Up to this point, analysts have often felt siloed in their case teams, finding limited opportunities to meet members of other teams. That has to change. We will work towards ensuring that we provide ways for analysts to meet people working on cases dissimilar from their own and learn from others in the organization. At this point, we hope to try a bunch of stuff and see what sticks! If one of them helps us break the barriers we’ve inadvertently formed between the cases, then we know we’ve succeeded. I, for one, am extremely excited for next semester. This is an ever-growing, ever-changing organization driven completely based on analyst feedback. We can’t wait to involve analysts in every initiative that we push and have another successful semester. Till then, happy new year!

CBE is committed to improving sustainability—locally, nationally, and internationally. In recognition of our organization's 10th anniversary, and in an effort to further our mission, this fall we held our inaugural Sustainability Day. This initiative aimed to engage the organization in hands-on impact in the greater-Boston community. On November 10th, 2018, every member of our organization partnered with one of a handful of local non-profit organizations to partake in volunteer work. The projects included the following: Greenovate City of Boston: Work with the Boston mayor's office to improve a local park - pulling out invasive species and cleaning up litter. Habitat for Humanity: Work with the Harvard branch of Habitat for Humanity - a nonprofit organization that helps people in our community and around the world build or improve a place they can call home - to build and paint houses. HARTZ: Work with HARTZ, a PBHA program that sends volunteers to visit Cambridge Rehabilitation and Nursing Center residents as a group and entertain them by playing bingo, leading art classes, coordinating outings to Boston landmarks, and planning holiday-themed parties. Y2Y: Work with Y2Y - a student-run organization that provides temporary housing, meals, and other services to at-risk youth. As a member of the team working with Greenovate City of Boston, the day began at 8:15AM on Saturday, November 10th in the Malkin Athletic Centre parking lot. Our group of about 25 CBE members took public transit to Jamaica Plain, Boston, where the work site was located. The commute was quite a long one, but allowed for interesting conversation and a chance to get to know members outside of our respective case teams. Upon arrival at the site, we were broken up into smaller working teams and equipped with gloves, loppers, organic waste bags, and garbage bags. It was an experience far removed from our typical casework, but meaningful in being able to get on the ground and create an evident change. The locations in which we were situated were visibly cleaner. Although the weather was far from ideal as we were outdoors, the day went very smoothly overall. It can often be difficult to see the impact being made, especially in doing casework that serves a top-down rather than bottom-up approach in sustainable action. Therefore, this opportunity to create tangible change, though small in its long-term impact with respect to the work itself, allowed CBE members to bond with one another and connect to our mission statement of sustainability. CBE’s Sustainability Day is just one of several initiatives held in keeping with the organization’s commitment to sustainability and impact. On a higher level, CBE’s casework seeks to help clients improve their operations and sustainable practices. CBE’s Sustainability Grant enables and encourages individuals and organizations to pursue in innovative sustainability projects. While CBE's work, people, and resources enable us to cultivate positive change, there is room yet for this impact to grow. Much can be done to further CBE’s work in creating a more sustainable world and demonstrate that industry does not necessitate a depreciating environment. There is great potential in bridging the two, as environmental conservation allows for sustainable growth of the economy. To reconcile the environmental damage that is often associated with business, it is not only essential that sustainable business practices are adopted, but that we can begin to rethink our current models and form regenerative, environmentally conscious systems. CBE continues to seek ways to further our impact in the near future; we plan to roll out initiatives such as a high school sustainability scholarship, while fortifying our environmental casework and current projects of the Sustainability Grant and Sustainability Day.