MBA grad looks at business through an enviro-social lens

When Suzanne von der Porten started her undergraduate degree in kinesiology, she was planning a future in medicine. But she soon realized she wanted a little more risk and a lot less structure for her future career.

Inspired, she completed the BSc and then turned instead to an MBA with a specialization in entrepreneurship—Von der Porten, who has biked across Canada and studied Tibetan medicine and languages, looks at business through an environmental, social and economic lens.

"The triple bottom line is the basic way of describing business sustainability or social entrepreneurship, but it’s also a shift in thinking more than anything. My generation is going to be running the businesses of the future and our thinking needs to be different; we can see some clear global problems that we can’t turn a blind eye to anymore."

In her final year, von der Porten studied with Dr. Ana Maria Peredo who specializes in indigenous entrepreneurship. Von der Porten jumped at the opportunity to spend time in northern B.C. and complete a marketing plan with the Gitsegukla First Nation as part of her MBA thesis work.

"The Gitsegukla are an amazing people who are trying to foster a local economy to encourage employment in their community," she says.

After meeting with the Gitsegukla Band Council, the significance of culture was brought home to von der Porten and her three classmates. "We learned that you can’t just apply the classic business model to every situation. Their life and realities are so different—you have to respect their culture and develop a strategy that caters to it."

Von der Porten is pondering a return to the north. " I grew up in Vancouver but really love the northern culture so I’ll probably look for work there in entrepreneurship or human resources. Entrepreneurship is not a steady job for life; but it’s definitely challenging and exciting."