Exclusive Interview
A Conversation with Jan Shubert
Editor’s Note:
Last week thirty women from colleges in Jeddah were hosted at Babson College outside Boston for the summer symposium component, the second student event, of the U.S.-Saudi Women’s Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. The summer symposium runs from July 10 to 25, 2009.
The Forum, organized by the U.S. State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), is a one-year public-private partnership joining Dar Al Hekma College, Babson College and the Wellesley Centers for Women, along with project managers from ICF International, the MEPI contractor. The forum’s goals are to: increase Saudi participants’ knowledge of social entrepreneurship; increase participants’ involvement in socially-responsible community activities; and to provide Saudi and American women an opportunity to communicate via interactive online tools. The Forum’s opening student event was a four-day program for about 100 women at Dar Al Hekma College in April 2009.
To find out how the Forum was going, SUSRIS talked with Babson College’s Center for Women’s Leadership Director, Dr. Jan Shubert, who described the concept and elements of the program, the professional development of women through social entrepreneurship and the experiences working with the Saudi women involved in the Forum. Dr. Shubert was interviewed by phone from her office at Babson College on July 15, 2009.
Saudi College Women Build Social Entrepreneurship Skills
A Conversation with Jan Shubert
SUSRIS: Thank you, Dr. Shubert, for joining us to talk about the U.S.-Saudi Women’s Forum, after what must have been a very busy day for you – day three of the two week seminar. So what is the feeling there at Babson College today?
Dr. J. Janelle Shubert: I have a very exciting, energetic group of Saudi women with me and it is such a pleasure. It has been an amazing project working among Babson College, Dar Al Hekma and ICF to create and launch the Forum and it is very exciting actually getting it off the ground.
SUSRIS: Set the scene for the summer symposium for us if you would. Let’s start with the introductory seminar in Jeddah in April. Were there any notable outcomes?
Shubert: There were two. First, this is a great learning partnership. I have very real and very seriously committed colleagues, not just acquaintances, but colleagues at Dar Al Hekma College.
All of us – ICF International, Wellesley, Dar Al Hekma, Babson – approach this very much as a collaboration, and a learning experience, to create this kind of curriculum and this kind of program. It is not only an outcome and impact for students but an outcome and impact for academics and partner institutions, which I find exciting.
In terms of the outcome and impact for the young women participating, well, it’s early days yet. We did four days with them in Jeddah in April where we introduced them to the concepts of social entrepreneurship. We got those good intellectual and creativity muscles working to create very, very early concept statements around the things they are passionate about.
Now they’ve brought those ideas and other ideas to Babson and we’re applying the business skills, the entrepreneurship thoughts and action business skills. How do you take something that’s a passion and turn it into a venture that has an important outcome for society and can be sustainable?
SUSRIS: Were there any individual experiences with the young women in Jeddah in April that you can share?
Shubert: That would be so hard. We had 90 fabulous young women there in Jeddah. Every time we turned around it was a wonderful experience. Learning from them. Hearing from them. Watching their eyes light up. Watching them tell other people what they were passionate about.
SUSRIS: Can you tell us about the relationships among institutions involved in the U.S.-Saudi Women’s Forum?
Shubert: ICF International is the MEPI grant recipient. They subcontracted to Babson College Center for Women’s Leadership, in part because of our longstanding record as the number one school in entrepreneurship but also because we combine entrepreneurship with women with social entrepreneurship.
For the last year we have been crafting a collaborative arrangement among Owen College of Engineering, Babson College and Wellesley College. So this was a fabulous opportunity to really give us a concrete project to work on together – not Owen College in this case, but the Wellesley Centers for Women, a research body at Wellesley College. They’re not an academic division they’re an academic department, a research institute. They have absolutely breathtaking data and breathtaking researchers on women’s issues around the world. What better partners to join with on this project?
SUSRIS: What other work have you done like the U.S.-Saudi Women’s Forum?
Shubert: Babson has about 30 years experience running international entrepreneurship programs. But this is our first one working in Saudi Arabia. One of the real signature pieces of the Babson curriculum and the Babson mission is disseminating entrepreneurship thought and action throughout the world. We have worked in about 100 countries.
What we did was to use the strong foundation that we have here at Babson in global education and customize it for our first time out for women, let me be more specific, young women in Saudi Arabia. These are all undergraduates.
SUSRIS: Looking at the two-week symposium underway now what do you think would be the most important experiences for the participants?
Shubert: You just asked the designer of the program to pick out one important element, which is a very tough question. I honestly can’t answer that because I think each and every part of the program is important.
SUSRIS: What do you want the Saudi students to take away from the summer symposium?
Shubert: What we want them to come away with is an enhanced “toolkit” of social entrepreneurship skills. It will include a strong sense of themselves and their leadership skills to be used to turn their passions into action.
SUSRIS: So, how is it going after three days?
Shubert: It is amazing. I will tell you that one of our most notable faculty members, Dr. Heidi Neck, worked with the group all morning yesterday. At the end of the session she said the quality of their questions, their thinking, their discussion, equaled anything she had seen in an MBA class. They are very smart. They are very engaged. They are very passionate. And they are an absolute delight.
I should mention that in addition to 24 students from Dar Al Hekmah College we also have six students from King Abdul Aziz University and the College of Business Administration in Jeddah.
SUSRIS: What would someone expect to be the outcomes for these young women professionally and as social leaders?
Shubert: I’m the Director for the Center for Women’s Leadership here at Babson College and I am intimately familiar with my own culture and I work daily, hourly and by the minute with our undergraduate women and our MBA students, and I would never predict that for them.
Here’s the thing we absolutely know from around the world. Women’s professional lives are not linear. They just aren’t. And the best thing that we can do is to provide young women, starting as early as grade school or high school, with as many tools and experiences that prepare them to enter a professional realm. Whatever that may be, as a doctor, as an entrepreneur, as a sales representative for a multinational pharmaceutical. Whatever it is – at any point in their professional lives.
It is a continuous, ongoing, process and I would never in a million years claim to be anything close to an expert on Saudi society and Saudi women. But based on getting to know these young women as I have, what I would expect of them is great things regardless of the path they choose.
The expectation is, and it should be, that based on intellectual capability and sheer drive and ambition that these young women are going to be well positioned to make leadership choices.
SUSRIS: What cultural considerations are at play in the program and how are they accommodated?
Shubert: There are several. We recognized there is a great deal of diversity within the group, despite the fact that they are all from Saudi Arabia and they are all Muslim women.
We have set aside prayer rooms in the dormitory and in the building where classes are held. We have accommodated for diet. We recognize that some of the young women choose to remain covered at all times. We always announce when there is going to be a man visiting the classroom so those who want to cover have the opportunity to do so.
SUSRIS: Have they made connections with other students at Babson?
Shubert: We have a group of both MBA and undergraduate women here at Babson who are closely involved in the Forum, some as interns, some as visitors to the classroom, at lunch, at dinner. They are all just young women getting to know each other. The conversations are exactly what you would expect them to be. What major to choose? What the latest hot song is? What are the big issues confronting women in our culture?
I will tell you that their first assignment was to give them a Flip video camera, a mini-camcorder, and take them to Faneuil Hall in Boston. They worked in teams to create a documentary on the cultural similarities and differences that they observed. The results were breathtaking.
That’s all thanks to Emily [Tavoulareas] at ICF who has done a fabulous job at making sure that we are really in this century in terms of technology and connectivity.
SUSRIS: Have you had experience in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Middle East before the April seminar?
Shubert: Never.
SUSRIS: What were your reactions to differences there might have been between your preconceptions of Saudi Arabia and what you found to be the case when you visited and started developing a relationship with your Saudi colleagues?
Shubert: What I have learned about Saudi Arabia was based on one very short visit. It wasn’t that I was absolutely stunned by a total inaccuracy or inconsistency in any respect on either side – that Saudis held beliefs about us that were totally off base or the other way around.
It’s the subtlety. It’s the things that you really have to learn, and I really mean learn to listen and watch for with an open mind and an open heart. One can become concerned about whether or not women can drive, but you have to ask yourself bigger, and perhaps, more important questions.
Westerners get fixated on the “they don’t have” rather than focusing on what are Saudis’ strong tenets of faith? What are their enormous resources, both individually and collectively as a culture, that they can use in positive, productive, creative, meaningful kinds of ways to create meaningful lives for themselves? The devil really is in the details on this question.
SUSRIS: What do you see as follow on for Babson’s role after the current program?
Shubert: Babson is very committed to this. We are part of a KAUST [King Abdullah University of Science and Technology] agreement right now. We are very committed to working with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on increasing access to entrepreneurship thinking and action.
It was absolutely coincidental that the President of our college and the President of our country were recently in the Middle East at the same time. But Obama’s speech about using social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking and acting as a way to bring two great cultures together so resonated with everything that we are about.
So we are certainly looking forward to opportunities to continue this kind of work. Working with Dar Al Hekma has been a pleasure and I can’t imagine not doing it.
SUSRIS: Any last thoughts on the Forum — what you observed so far?
Shubert: This is day three of the formal curriculum. We have more to do and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.
Dr. J. Janelle (Jan) Shubert
Director, Center for Women’s Leadership
Adjunct Professor of Management
Jan has been at Babson since April of 2004. In addition to serving as the Associate Director for CWL she has been co-chair of Babson’s Executive Education (BEE) program for women: “From Managing to Leading.” Shubert has over thirty years of experience in higher education. Prior to coming to Babson she spent twelve years at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In addition to designing and teaching a variety of degree program courses, she was also the Faculty Chair for multiple Executive Education programs, including two programs specifically designed for Northern Ireland, as well as the school’s two oldest professional development programs for women—the International Women’s Forum Leadership Fellows Program and the National Hispania Leadership Institute Fellows program.
Jan has also taught at Harvard Business School and at the University of Michigan and was a visiting faculty member at London Business School. An active consultant for over thirty years to a wide array of organizations, she is a frequent presenter at conferences and professional meetings.
Jan earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and holds a master’s degree from Michigan State University and a B.A. from Southwest Missouri State University. She and her husband Charles live in the Boston area and have one grown son.
Contact Jan Shubert at 781-239-5585 or jshubert@babson.edu
Related Sites:
Dar Al Hekma College
Babson College
ICF International
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