By Sahana Kumar, Miller Center Data Monetization & Programming Intern
When grappling with choosing what to major in, there seemed to be two directions for what I could study. One, a humanities major, which boasts passion and finding your niche in a sea of creativity and problem-solving. Or two, a “technical” major boasting the practicality of your college degree. I found myself quite frustrated with this binary approach to higher education, but made my decision regardless. When choosing schools, I was between Political Science at a “straight-to-Capitol-Hill” school or Computer Science at Santa Clara — a major I wasn’t in love with but felt compelled to study because I was so challenged by it.
Fast forward a few months: I’m a freshman at Santa Clara in our taxing Computer Science and Mathematics program, and I’m a bit early for a lab on the 4th floor of SCDI. Wandering about, I stumble upon a hallway that says in big letters: “Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship”. Having never heard of social entrepreneurship in my life, I waltzed in and learned about the beauty of social entrepreneurship: it’s not quite non-profit, but not quite for-profit either. It is a business that makes products that increase the standard of living in less fortunate communities by working within the capitalist system and putting people over profit, as well as making a profit. I applied for an internship the same day.
Fast forward a few more months: I am at the end of sophomore year and have spent my time at Miller Center as a programming intern, helping steer our new cohort of social entrepreneurs through the Center’s highly competitive Accelerator Program and supporting the admissions process for next year’s. Last October, I was lucky to work at the center’s In-Residence, which brings a select cohort of social entrepreneurs to California every year for mock investor meetings, networking opportunities, and shared learnings. I was able to speak to leaders from around the Global South and learn about how integral having individuals with varied educational backgrounds is to create a formative mission that helps their local economies.
I spoke to social workers, scientists, engineers, economists, and teachers, all noticing a significant issue in their communities and working with them to improve their environment. This further helped me break down the humanities/STEM division and introduced me to a plethora of engineers who use their technical skills to understand the logistics and develop products for community-oriented solutions. They left working for a big company where they would be a small piece of reinventing the technological wheel to be one of the few creators of a solution they could see the impact of. The most inspirational part of this was seeing the gleaming pride on their face when they explained how happy they were to be a social entrepreneur.
I carried that sentiment with me when applying for summer internships and was overjoyed to be offered a position at Koolboks, a Nigerian-French social enterprise that went through Miller Center’s Accelerator program a year before. Koolboks sells solar-powered refrigerators on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning they sell fridges to the lower-income populations of Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda that would otherwise be unable to buy a fridge outright. Our target audiences are food vendors, and if you are selling food day to day, it is an obvious necessity to have a refrigeration system. Yet, due to the income status of our customers, most are rejected from securing a loan at a bank to buy this essential! How crazy is that??
I am currently in the final weeks of my internship as a data monetization intern. I have spent my summer learning about how a hybrid profit model works in Sub-Saharan Africa and applying my data skills from my computer science major to analyze Koolboks’ data and suggest how they can grow their financial revenues from their data. I’m very grateful to work at Koolboks because, unlike a typical tech internship where I would work on a product that would either be scrapped or entirely modified, I know the work I am doing will make an impact on Koolboks’ revenue model.
The amazing benefit of working for a small company is that I have taken on varied roles under my title, including redesigning our website, drafting grant applications, and working with Google employees on creating an alternative crediting approach in determining the viability of future customers. Before this summer, I had never considered myself remotely interested in economics — but learning about how the West’s “traditional” economic models simply do not apply in other countries has captured my attention. To give you an example: My work at Koolboks also involves crafting a credit score for our customers who wish to take out loans that would otherwise be rejected due to their income status. This involved a lot of market research to understand how banking, local economies, and status work in Sub-Saharan Africa. And, funnily enough, I am loving it, dare I say, thriving in it!
In essence, during my time at Santa Clara and Miller Center, I have been able to apply the same interdisciplinary principles to a work experience — something I once foolishly deemed an impossibility. This leads me to say: For those in my precarious situation of thinking your major guides your life, it does not in any way, shape, or form. Your major is simply an extension of your education, and what is far more important is your ability to apply the skills you are taught in your major to what you believe in.
Is this to say I am set in my life as a future social entrepreneur? Of course not! For all I know, next year, I may be an ecologist hiding away in Yosemite. However, my time at Miller Center has informed me of the wide array of possibilities that await me after graduation. I will soon be studying abroad in Paris and hope to further explore what the future holds.
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Afterword: One way I am planning to communicate the importance of an interdisciplinary education in tech is through my club, AI Collaborate. We are hosting Santa Clara’s first-ever AI Summit on October 9th, 2024, and it will involve panelists from all fields, including environmentalists, journalists, social workers, researchers, and engineers. For more information, follow AI Collaborate on Instagram @scu_aicollab.
Photo Credits:
- Sahaha Kumar SCU ‘26
- Sahana (far right) with fellow Miller Center interns (L to R) Philip Serewicz-Movery SCU ‘25, Lillay Gebru SCU ‘26, and Carson Brooks, University of Miami ‘26
- Koolboks
- Koolboks
