Balancing Community-Corporate Needs Through Influential Leadership

Transcript

Irvin Ashford Jr.: [0:15] Honestly, I can tell you that the entire educational experience was the most rewarding. The fact that a kid from the Lower East Side of Manhattan got to go and get a graduate degree in business really made me know two things. One, that I could thrive in any business environment that I was going to be in, and, two, that my particular form of diversity mattered to the outcome of my business.

[0:48] My challenge is to balance the need of the corporation with the community needs of people that we serve.

[0:57] What I mean by that is, there are times where, as a businessperson, I'm responsible for maximizing shareholder value or meeting some predetermined goal that the corporation has set. Sometimes, those goals don't match the community needs that we serve.

[1:17] I have to translate the needs between the corporation and the community, and the community and the corporation, and create win-win situations for both of us in order for both entities to thrive.

[1:30] Following the advancement of business education, I think practitioners could simply provide access. Access to people from disadvantaged backgrounds, from rural areas, access to a diverse group of folks, and give them what I like to call "dirt under the nails" experience.

[1:52] There are times where one class, one socioeconomic culture, gets opportunity to do things and others don't. I think there's a need to have or provide access to different types of jobs, internships, co-op opportunities, so that different types of people can work and have real-world experience and move things from the theoretical to the practical.

[2:25] In order to form better relationships with corporations, I think business schools simply need to solve a problem or seek ways to help meet bottom-line issues or help us do things better. I think oftentimes schools approach corporations with one goal in mind, and that's typically to raise money.

[2:48] I think if you approach the corporation under the guise of solving a problem, I think money issues will take care of themselves, particularly if you're helping us solve real-world, big-ticket pricey problems.

Filmed at AACSB Co-Lab: Connecting Industry With Business Schools, May 2019.