Partners in Practice: How Global Social Entrepreneurship Builds Impact Beyond the Classroom

For many social enterprises working on solutions to social challenges, the hardest questions are rarely caused by a lack of vision. They come from the pressure of growing while serving communities well, measuring impact while managing daily operations, and making strategic choices with limited time and resources. Yale SOM’s Global Social Entrepreneurship course has become one way for organizations across India, Kenya, and Brazil to create space for that kind of thinking.

Launched in 2008, Global Social Entrepreneurship connects teams of Yale students with mission-driven organizations working on complex management challenges. But the course is not designed as a traditional consulting exercise. Tony Sheldon, senior lecturer in the practice of management and senior advisor to the Program on Social Enterprise, Innovation, and Impact, is careful about that distinction. Partners do not apply to the course for students to develop “solutions,” but rather to collaborate to jointly analyze challenges and develop recommendations on potential strategies. They come because the process helps them frame a problem, break it into component parts, explore possible paths, and make better decisions. The process is as important as the final outputs.

That approach is central to why organizations return to GSE. Many partners deeply understand their communities and sectors, but do not always have the bandwidth to examine a question from multiple angles. The partner is an expert in context, and the student team brings time, structure, research capacity, and a fresh analytical lens. That combination has been valuable from the beginning for Aditya Tyagi of i-Saksham, a women’s leadership nonprofit in Bihar, India, that has partnered with GSE multiple times. When i -Saksham first worked with Yale, the organization was still young and was looking for help thinking through questions it did not have the time, bandwidth, or internal expertise to address alone. What stood out to Tyagi was not only the talent of the students, but their willingness to understand the work as partners. “The eagerness to understand our cause and be a thought partner has not changed,” he said.

As i-Saksham has grown, the questions it brings to GSE have also grown more complex. Tyagi described how the organization expanded from a small fellowship program into a much larger platform supporting hundreds of fellows. Yet the value of the partnership has remained consistent: fresh perspective, thoughtful analysis, and a relationship built on trust. He also emphasized that students from earlier cohorts have stayed in touch years later, with some becoming mentors and role models for i-Saksham team members and fellows. For Tyagi, that continuity reflects one of the less visible strengths of GSE: the exchange is not only technical, but human.

Hello Tractor, a Kenya based agricultural technology company, offers another view of how partner organizations experience GSE as a practical resource for growth. Founded to expand access to mechanization for smallholder farmers, Hello Tractor connects tractor owners with farmers who need affordable equipment services – the “the Uber for farming equipment.” For founder and CEO Jehiel Oliver, the appeal of GSE is direct. Organizations like his can benefit from strong analytical talent but do not always have the resources to hire it. “Yale SOM’s ability to inject small, talented, tactical teams on discrete projects is a scaling accelerant,” he said. Oliver described how an earlier GSE project in 2020 helped Hello Tractor think through the model behind a financing structure that has since become the foundation of its business model. He emphasized that successful projects depend on a well-constructed student team, a clearly defined scope, and a strong commitment on both sides to execution.

Hello Tractor’s experience points to a broader pattern. This year’s Kenya collaborations included organizations working in creative education, school finance, clean water, agriculture, and entrepreneurship. Some partners sought financial models to support growth. Others looked for help to strengthen impact measurement, refine operating systems, or think through long term sustainability. Across these sectors, the common thread was not a single deliverable, but instead focused thinking around decisions that matter for scale and impact.

Emily Nagler’26, who experienced GSE first as a student in Brazil and later as a teaching assistant in Kenya, saw that pattern across projects. Many organizations, she observed, are grappling with questions they already know are important, but have not had the time to examine holistically. A student team can step back, interview stakeholders, compare approaches, test assumptions, and offer possible paths. Fieldwork gives that analysis texture. In Kenya, Nagler spent a day with a team working with the Jackfruit Network, which finances low fee private schools. A member of the partner organization traveled with the team across Nairobi, introducing students to school directors and helping them understand the context behind each visit. That kind of access changed the quality of the work, allowing students to see the partner’s questions not only as data problems, but as lived realities for schools, families, and communities.

For Natasha Pirani’27, a student on the Jackfruit team, that context changed how her team understood impact. At first, the team thought about education impact in familiar terms such as test scores, enrollment, and access. But after visiting schools, they realized that facilities and school appearance also mattered deeply to parents deciding where to send their children. Whether a classroom was made of brick or sheet metal, the quality of the grounds, and the visible condition of the school were not peripheral details. They shaped how families understood value and trust.

That shift illustrates what makes the GSE model work. Students bring tools, but partners and communities shape how those tools are used. It is global in reach, but local in practice. It works because partners are not treated as cases to be studied, but as collaborators bringing their knowledge, expertise, constraints, and ambitions. At its best, GSE creates value not only through the reports, models, and recommendations students deliver, but through the relationships that make those outputs meaningful. The work begins with a project, but the impact often reaches much further.