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Sattler Capstones: Business

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Capstones

Sattler Capstones: Business

Two weeks ago a student described the nature of Sattler capstones. This week, the 2022 business graduates share the details of their capstone. Most students work on their capstone individually, but this year’s business majors — Cody Sensenig and Dylan Martin — are unique in that they were the only individuals in their class to collaborate on a capstone. Below they present the substance, motivation, and process of their capstone. In their presentation, they further relay the backstory, show the tools they used, and hear a word from the organization they partnered with.

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The What

Our senior business capstone project was all about producing clarity from complexity. We partnered with a non-profit organization called Partners Worldwide (PW). They do business development in 35 countries around the world. Their mission is to partner with business leaders to end poverty for good. Our project was focused on producing a visualization of their India network. 

PW’s India region has 7 Local Community Institutions (LCI). These LCI’s (i.e. organizations/groups) operations range from slum ministry to business incubation and agricultural development. Our job was to take all of the LCI’s relationships and connections and visualize them in a way that made sense to all the staff at PW. In other words, it took everything that was known about how things connected in the region and put them in a diagram/map. This visualization could then be used to drive strategic decision-making and onboard new staff in the region. 

The visualization helped PW to clarify their mission in the country and form multiple strategic initiatives for the next 10 years. It also helped convince more donors of the efficacy of putting money towards these LCI’s work in India.

 

The Why

We have partnered with Partners Worldwide a couple of times on other projects throughout our time at Sattler College. In addition, Dr. Oliver, our business professor, had worked on a project with them as a consultant in the past and had close connections with the leaders. Also, both of us wanted to contribute to PW’s mission of ending poverty through business. This is because we believe that God has a special place in his heart for the poor and has called Christians everywhere to unite in fighting for them.

 

The How

The process consisted of interviewing many of the regional and LCI leaders to get a clear understanding of how the network functioned. Then we took those interviews and distilled them into key information that could be used to create a diagram. The process also included sitting down with the regional leaders from the India network at PW headquarters in Grand Rapids, MI, to discuss the implications of this work.

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To read more about Partners Worldwide, follow this link.

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