Speaking of green jobs, Net Impact is a great network to meet other business students and professionals that share the same green values and to get useful information and tools to help you with your career goals. Once a month or so they publish on their website an interesting personal story of someone who is pursuing a green career. Here's the last one they published of Malini Ram.
Malini Ram
Net Impact Member Since: 2004Current Position: Manager of a farm collective
Former Position: Engagement Manager, McKinsey & Co.
Education: MBA, University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business
Location: Tallahassee, Florida
Prior to grad school, Malini had been working on Wall Street as an investment banker with JP Morgan where, although initially hopeful she could join the groups that raise public market funding for museums, she instead ended up working on refinancing prison bonds. When she went to business school, she co-led the Net Impact student chapter and had every intention of getting a “Net Impacty” job upon graduation. But she found it hard to pass up an offer with McKinsey & Co so, with the idea that it would serve more as a training ground than an endpoint, Malini accepted the offer and spent a “wonderful, eventful three years” working for them as a strategy consultant in Chicago, New Jersey and Sydney.
But when her husband got accepted to graduate school in Tallahassee, Florida earlier this year and as they began to plan their move, Malini saw an opportunity to make a career move as well. “I’ve always been interested in the local food movement,” explains Malini, whose grandparents had a small farm in South India, “and I wanted my work to focus on something that was unique to the area I was living in.”
She started reaching out to sustainability-minded farmers in the area to understand core issues that needed addressing and found they voiced similar needs: stabilizing cashflow, finding consistent labor, and generating enough revenue to operate and save.
As a result of her interviews with the farmers, Malini and the famers determined that setting up a cooperative would be a viable solution to addressing the issues they identified. “The format of an economic cooperative is exciting because it’s such an effective way for a large group of similar small players to achieve scale and significance in a small marketplace,” says Malini. “We are starting with the traditional farm cooperative as a base, and exploring hybrid business models that could work in the context of Tallahassee’s local food system.”
What started just as conversations eventually got Malini thinking about the cooperative as a small business. In December 2009, she left McKinsey and, though she continues to do some part-time government consulting work, now focuses the bulk of her time on the farmer’s cooperative.
The primary goals of their work are threefold: first, to support the economic stability of small alternative farmers by reducing operating costs through buying clubs and P&L transparency and by stimulating revenue through the development of new channels such as a “farm to school” programs; secondly, to strengthen the community amongst small alternative farmers in this geographical area; third, to expand access to local, fresh farm products for all residents. There’s also a concern about who’s going to be the local food source when these farmers retire, so there’s a discussion of trying to establish mentorship programs for new farmers.
“The success of small organic farms impacts so many issues: economic development and job creation, obesity and nutrition, and education,” says Malini, explaining the importance of helping these small farms to remain economically viable.
Malini says that being a part of the Net Impact community has given her the courage to move forward with this. “I’m coming off of a run of ‘big corporate’ experiences and starting a farm cooperative is a fairly risky thing for me to do right now—I may completely fail at it. What strikes me is that, if it weren’t for Net Impact, I’m not sure I would even be trying this endeavor. Through Net Impact, I’ve had a constant stream of inspiration and motivation to keep me afloat. Staying engaged with case studies, conference calls, national conferences, and local events helped me stay connected to the type of ‘business’ I really cared about conducting.”
Malini has no plans to return to the banking world, and hopes to stay involved over the long term in small farm welfare, local food, and food security issues in some capacity. She enjoys the challenges of this work, and has had her ego humbled a bit. “Few to none of the farmers have ever heard of McKinsey or the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. My credentials mean squat here! Seriously, when I’m with the farmers, it’s just me standing out in the fields with nothing but the smartness of my words and actions.”
They are currently in the process of assembling their board and are preparing to file for legal status. The idea is that the enterprise will eventually be self sustaining, i.e. being fully operated by the members it serves. A long term dream would be for the model to generate enough revenue to codify the knowledge and expand nationally, following a corporate cooperative model similar to Organic Valley or REI.
“We’re still in the early stages, so we don’t have any tangible results yet,” says Malini. “The most rewarding aspect so far has been the feedback I get from the farmers who are excited to talk with me and who are poignantly appreciative that I’m taking on this work. Though the fresh arugula from our local Turkey Hill Farm is also a fine reward—once you taste it, you’ll understand!”
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