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International Experience
Yale SOM is the first major MBA program to require students to study abroad.
Students traveled to several destinations - click here for more information. In each country, students engaged in intenstive study, met with business, government and non-profit leaders, completed a trip project, and took part in cultural activities. Each of the trips was led by a Yale School of Management faculty member, and was fully integrated into the school's innovative new curriculum.
Garry Brewer, the Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser Professor of Resource Policy and Management at the Yale School of Management led the Costa Rica trip. "Costa Rica is a very interesting case study," said Professor Brewer. "Here you have a country that sees it to be in the long-term national interest to be focused on the environment. Costa Rica has figured out how to take advantage of its natural resources through ecotourism and how to do it in an environmentally-friendly way."
David Fuentes-Montero, who served as Costa Rica's Minister of Finance until May 2006 and spent a semester at Yale as a World Fellow, was instrumental in arranging the trip's meetings and joined the group of students and faculty on the trip. While in Costa Rica, the students learned about doing business in the country and in particular studying the country's focus on natural resources and the environment as an innovative national strategy.
The students visited the following organizations while on the Costa Rica international experience: Carlos Ricardo Benavides, Minister of Tourism (who discussed ecotourism); Gerardo Corrales, CEO of BAC San Jose (who discussed the role of commercial banking on economic development); Jose Rafael Brenes, CEO of the Costa Rican Stock Exchange (who discussed the importance of fiscal development and the role of savings in development); and leaders from the Rainforest Alliance and the Organization for Tropical Studies (who discussed sustainable tourism). Other activities on the international experience to Costa Rica included tours of certified coffee, banana, and pineapple plantations, and a visit to the La Selva rainforest.
This international experience tied directly into the Sourcing and Managing Funds class and provided students with insights into how long-term investments in local natural resources and education contribute to economic development.
In keeping with the school's mission of linking business and society, the students initiated a campaign to purchase a portfolio of Certified Emissions Reductions to offset the carbon emissions that their international experiences created.