MBAEC
MBA Enterprise Corps
Driving Change in Eastern Europe: MBAEC and the Rise of a New Economy
The role of business school grads in Eastern Europe’s economic transition
A New Model for International Service
The Peace Corps energized American volunteers to embed in far-flung places during the flower-power ’60s and ‘70s. Was there a way to similarly spark business students to aid countries in Eastern Europe, newly unchained from the yoke of Communism, in the ’90s?
The MBA Enterprise Corps (MBAEC) did precisely that, enlisting volunteer recent business school graduates to postpone lucrative careers for one year to teach would-be entrepreneurs in Eastern Bloc countries — a generation cut off from free-market principles inside a Communist bottle — how to thrive in a capitalist system.
Officially launched in 1990 as the Consortium for the MBA Enterprise Corps, the organization’s mission was to “assist private or privatizing enterprises in Central Europe and other countries transitioning from socialism to capitalism to adjust to market signals.”
Building on Proven Approaches
The MBAEC was modeled after two other efforts to stimulate economic opportunities outside the U.S.
After World War II, President Truman authorized the European Recovery Program (a.k.a. the Marshall Plan) to help rebuild Europe’s shattered economies. A decade and a half later, President Kennedy established the Peace Corps to assist fledgling nations in health, education, and development in a geopolitical landscape swirling with mistrust of superpowers.
From Vision to Action
The idea for the MBAEC was initially suggested in a speech by businessman and former third-party Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and subsequently echoed by U.S. News and World Report editor David Gergen at a 1989 MBA symposium at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC): Why go straight to Wall Street, went their premise to newly minted MBA graduates, when you could play a role in history teaching market strategies to just-emerging former Soviet-bloc countries?
Volunteers from 16 of the finest MBA programs in the U.S. — Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, George Washington, Georgetown, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Thunderbird, UC-Berkeley, UC-Irvine, UCLA, UNC, and Vanderbilt — saw the game-changing opportunity, and were selected to embed in countries like Poland, Hungary, and the newly separated new nations of the former Czechoslovakia.
UNC’s Kenan Institute vetted the notion and sent two faculty members to Eastern Europe to explore the possibility. They found a welcoming climate for the idea, as these Eastern countries had a clear appetite for Western-style capitalism.
Young Americans were similarly eager to participate in this historic moment. The opportunity was too exciting to pass up for many, like Wharton graduate John Lynch, who was one of the first cohort of 42 such volunteers to cross the Atlantic in the program’s first year, 1991.
“For one year, I wanted to be a part of history,” he recalled in a recent interview, who also noted that the excitement was not without its challenges. “There was no internet. It was 1991. There were no maps. There were no books. There was no information. It was the Eastern Bloc. We knew nothing about what we were getting into. It was the wild, wild East.”
Expanding the Impact Through Partnership
Over the next decade, more than 500 Corps members were embedded in 21 countries, aiding local businesses with all aspects of management and private sector best practices.
In 2000, the MBAEC found a new home by merging with Citizen Democracy Corps (now known as Pyxera Global), whose mission at the time was focused on building democratic societies and free-market economies in Russia, Ukraine, and Central Europe. Combining MBAEC’s legacy of mobilizing skilled professionals with Citizen Democracy Corps’ innovative approach to addressing social, economic, and environmental challenges worldwide strengthened its impact in the region.
Honoring a Legacy of Service
Because the MBAEC was founded in the pre-Web era, there is very little evidence online to celebrate — or even acknowledge — the role it played in navigating a tricky moment in modern history. Without the support of these earnest, knowledgeable, and committed volunteers, the Eastern embrace of a free-market economy might have been short-lived. That is why it is so important to honor and commemorate the work of these 500+ volunteers and staff.
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