Yale SOM and Local Nonprofit Organizations Celebrate Local Partnerships

PSEII’s Annual Community Mixer brought together 150 students, community leaders, and other PSEII partners to celebrate and share their work. This year, PSEII is partnering with over 55 local nonprofit organizations, through sponsored programs like the Golub Capital Board Fellows and the Social Impact Consulting Club. These top-tier experiential learning opportunities support community-led priorities while students strengthen connections to the local community and gain experience using their MBA toolkits for good.

Professor Judy Chevalier, PSEII faculty director, set the tone with a warm welcome and an invitation to explore the student project posters around the room: “There are lots of different ways for you to engage with us. Our agenda for today is for you to meet each other, meet our students, to welcome you to our home and thank you for working with our students in various capacities.”

Posters at the event highlighted projects with local mission-driven organizations including Leila Day Nursery, Community Dining Room, Interruptions, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP), City Seed, Inc., The Black Business Alliance (BBA), and Read to Grow, Inc.

Vibrant conversations filled the atrium. At one table, Ramya Srinivasan (MBA ’26) described a year on the board of Leila Day Nursery: “We set goals for the next three to five years as the organization approaches their 150th anniversary. We held retreats with teachers, parents, the board, and even talked to the kids, asking what they want Leila Day to be remembered for.”

Through Yale SOM’s Golub Capital Nonprofit Board Fellows program, MBA students are placed with local organizations to serve as nonvoting members of their boards for two years. A new first-year fellow joins as the other fellow moves into their second year, so there is continuity and learning between fellows. A two-year immersion in the organizational mission and culture enables fellows to work on projects where they can make a meaningful contribution.

As a Golub Capital Board Fellow, Ramya researched financial assistance models to help Leila Day consider how to restructure their financial aid and pricing model.

Malik Dent (MBA ’26) co-president of the Golub Capital Board Fellows, is helping the Central Connecticut Coast YMCA’s governance committee with a ten-year bylaws revision. What struck him most was the culture: “If you want to help, they welcome it. It is a team that holds hands to get the work done – and that’s been a breath of fresh air.”

At a poster, Laura Zhang (MBA ’26) talked through her project with City Seed, a local nonprofit that engages the community in growing a local food system that promotes economic development, community development, and sustainable agriculture. Laura benchmarked similar-size nonprofits in Connecticut to research benefits upgrades. “My biggest takeaway is that the best benefits are the ones your employees actually want,” she said. Centering employee needs and creating feedback loops was essential to their success.

Across the room, Isabelle Levenson (MBA ’26) spoke about LEAP – Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership – a New Haven nonprofit that serves nearly 1,500 children and is the city’s largest youth employer. “I’m assessing their accounting system,” she said. “We mapped pain points, ran stakeholder interviews and software demos, and built recommendations with an implementation plan.”

Across governance, finance, and program design, a common thread ran through the evening: listen first, test ideas, and close the loop with stakeholders. As one attendee put it, “The best solutions are the ones people can actually use – and want to use.”