Social Entrepreneurship: A career path that is gaining importance

Social entrepreneurship seems be gaining ground – and what is interesting is that it is going so amongst MBA students and graduates. Several MBA programs had added courses, conferences, clubs and other forums to allow for formal taining, dialogue and debate on issues related to social entrepreneurship.
But what is social entrepreneurship? Social entrepreneurs drive social innovation and transformation in various fields including education, health, environment and enterprise development. They pursue social goals with entrepreneurial zeal, business methods and the courage to innovate and overcome traditional practices. A social entrepreneur, similar to a business entrepreneur, builds strong and sustainable organizations, which are either set up as not-for-profit or for-profit companies. In fact, I have come across an increasing number of for-profit social entrepreneurs or social businesses recently.

A social entrepreneur is a leader or pragmatic visionary who:

• Achieves large scale, systemic and sustainable social change through a new invention, a different approach, a more rigorous application of known technologies or strategies, or a combination of these.
• Focuses first and foremost on the social and/or ecological value creation and tries to optimize the financial value creation.
• Innovates by finding a new product, a new service, or a new approach to a social problem.
• Continuously refines and adapts approach in response to feedback.
• Combines the characteristics represented by Richard Branson and Mother Teresa.

Social entrepreneurs share come common traits including:

• An unwavering belief in the innate capacity of all people to contribute meaningfully to economic and social development
• A driving passion to make that happen.
• A practical but innovative stance to a social problem, often using market principles and forces, coupled with dogged determination, that allows them to break away from constraints imposed by ideology or field of discipline, and pushes them to take risks that others wouldn’t dare.
• A zeal to measure and monitor their impact. Entrepreneurs have high standards, particularly in relation to their own organization’s efforts and in response to the communities with which they engage. Data, both quantitative and qualitative, are their key tools, guiding continuous feedback and improvement.
• A healthy impatience. Social entrepreneurs cannot sit back and wait for change to happen – they are the change drivers.

According to the ‘US News 2010 Best College Rankings’ the top universities to pursue a biomedical engineering degree are Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Califormia – SanDiego, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, University of Washington and Boston University

Network systems and data communications analyst

Even though we keep reading about how information technology jobs have been hit hard in this recession, projections indicate that better days are ahead with over 150,000 network systems and data communications analyst jobs expected to be added by 2018. And what is spurring this demand? A need for organizations to upgrade their technology capacity and incorporate the newest technology as well as the growing reliance on wireless networks is driving the growth. These jobs require a bachelor’s degree, and the average salary is about $73,830

Financial examiner

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the increasing complexity of financial regulations will spur employment growth both of financial examiners and of compliance officers in many fields. The average wage is about $78,180, and a bachelor’s degree is required. However, over 35% of the financial examiners jobs rested with the federal and state government in 2008, which generally require you to be a US citizen.
As a non-US citizen, you can still take advantage of this trend in increasing financial regulations and the need for greater accountability as it will drive also demand for accountants and auditors, adding roughly 279,400 jobs to this occupation from 2008 to 2018. Further, an increasingly competitive business environment will grow demand for management analysts, an occupation that is expected to add 178,300 jobs. In fact both accountants and auditors and management analyst both make it to the top 10 list of jobs with the greatest number of additional jobs projected by 2018 – in terms of absolute numbers.

Physician assistant

Tasks that were previously performed by doctors, nurses, dentists or other health care professionals increasingly are being performed by physician assistants, medical assistants, dental hygienists and physical therapist aide according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The job requires a master’s degree, and the average pay is $81,230.
So how do you qualify to become a physician’s assistant? After high school you can enroll in a combined Bachelor/Masters program – these are typically 5-year physician assistant programs and you graduate with a masters degree. It is important to the specifics of the program across universities as some of the programs may only award a bachelors degree. Alternatively you can get a bachelors degree then apply to a physician assistant program, after having gotten some sort of “medical” background/experience before applying. A bachelors degreein biology or pre-med is a great foundation for this career, though not necessary to be a physician assistant.