GEMBA Alumni Partner for Social Transformation

If you ask Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education Paul Almeida to describe the Georgetown-ESADE Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) program, he will say, “It is not just about educating the best people in the world, but the best people for the world.”

Staying true to this expectation, the program’s Class of 2015 launched an initiative that aims to have a profound impact on society. The GEMBA Legacy Project supports underprivileged students in Colombia by restoring areas for play, recreation, and learning to refugee and displaced children.

“During the last months of the GEMBA program, there was a growing desire among the cohort to find ways to work together on a project with social impact,” said Daniel Villanueva (GEMBA ’15). “The more we studied global strategies and structures, the stronger awareness we had about our own capabilities and expertise. GEMBA Legacy was born from the desire to leverage those strengths for good.”

The GEMBA alumni are partnering with Entreculturas, a Spanish Jesuit NGO that implements educational projects as instruments for social change, and Fe y Algería Colombia, which serves students through schools and child education and community development centers.

The project’s goal is to raise $100,000 to provide 22 child centers of Fe y Algería Colombia with game libraries and playgrounds for 4,179 children. As of late October, the initiative had raised one-quarter of its goal.

“GEMBA Legacy was conceived as a channel of solidarity for the GEMBA family. Our education has changed perspectives, capabilities, and the scopes of our lives. We wanted to build a platform to promote education for the most vulnerable population,” said Villanueva, who also is on the university’s Board of Directors.

The GEMBA program is a joint partnership among Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and School of Foreign Service and ESADE Business School in Spain.