Growing my Social Capital

Industry:

My expert for this category is Diego Valderrama. Mr. Valderrama is the professor for this Humanitarian assistance class I currently taking. In terms of his background experience, my professor has experience in international development. He has worked in impoverished areas in Africa and South America. Moreover, he has worked in projects led by the United Nations. As mentioned earlier, I met him through this class he is teaching. I simply went up to him, introduced my "business venture" and asked for his help. I sent him an email afterwords with more information. Reception wise, he thought my idea was excellent and referred me to Vestergaard, the company that invented the life straw. How Mr. Valderrama could assist me is by steering me into certain non-profits that could benefit from my idea.

Market:

My market expert is Crystal A. Felima. She is part of the Department of Anthropology staff and is my instructor for Cultural Anthropology. She specializes in Disaster anthropology and has conducted fieldwork in Haiti for twenty months. Again, I met her through my class. However, this time I initiated contact through an elaborate email. Like Mr. Valderrama, she supports my venture, especially since she knows that clean water and electricity are hard to come by in Haiti. Ms. Felima has frequently interacted with people living in impoverished areas in Haiti and because of this, I can further modify the bottle and receive direct feedback from the people themselves. 

Supplier:

My supplier is actually a personal friend of mine that I met through kickboxing. Now while he doesn't own the company, Herman works for a business that "prints" metal. Think of a it this way: you design something on autocad, save it on a flash drive and plug it into a 3D printer. Instead of plastic, however, it is aluminum. Now, this company does not exclusively work for a certain type of industry, but it can be useful for my venture, especially when I have someone on the inside. He said should pursue this path, t will be cheaper for me because I already have the design ready. 

Reflection time!

I feel that I may have been luckier than most for this assignment because I already, for the most part, somewhat already established contact. Think about, what are the chances that both of my teachers have experience in international development? The UN? Twenty months of fieldwork in Haiti? Then there's the fact that my friend casually mentioned that he got a job at the metal printing place without him knowing about my venture. In the end though, I still had to reach out and ask the question, which is not as intimidating as it seems, especially when they can potentially have interest for your cause.