Senior Assistant Dean of Admissions Dawna Clarke recently hosted a webinar featuring Professor of Practice and Former CEO of Save the Children Carolyn Miles (MBA ’88). Their wide-ranging conversation highlighted Miles’ work at the global NGO, the Women@Darden initiative — which just held the first annual Women in Leadership Summit, teaching and learning at Darden, opportunities Darden’s alumni network provides and how Miles’ role models influenced her personal and professional journeys. Clarke and Miles also discussed Darden traditions, including the Miles’ goal of making First Coffee a more sustainable tradition by encouraging the community to become paper cup free by 2023.
Miles’ signature issues include hunger, learning outcomes, and ending preventable child deaths. Her championing of women’s and girls’ issues is also well known in the INGO community
In addition to her role as an Executive Fellow, Miles is also a active member of the teaching faculty. She will be launching a new course offering this spring, bringing her humanitarianism experience from Save the Children to the Darden classroom.
Miles shared, “During my time at Save the Children, I noticed was how much humanitarian action (or the response to a natural disaster or a war in crisis) changed in terms of the the ecosystem over the years. In the early days, business partners were focused on monetary contributions to assisting with the crisis aid. Over the last 20 years, that has really changed, and the focus has shifted to a skills-based approach from business. For example, when it comes to helping people that are impacted in a huge hurricane, we need logistical skills. We need skills that are about communications — we need to be able to implement technology solutions to help people who are trying to find a safe place to stay. Or, if it’s a refugee that’s crossing borders, you want an app that’s in their hand that they can use to find a safe place to go. And then, how do they get there? What’s the route? It’s been a huge change in the engagement from business.”
“This class really brings that humanitarian action piece to kind of current day, and what does it look like now with corporate with social entrepreneurs, with innovation with technology and with companies? And what is what should it look like in the future? That’s where we’ll conclude the class – what’s the new model?”
View the webinar recording:
