GRAZIADIO IN THE NEWS

MALIBU TIMES — MBA students in the social entrepreneurship course taught this spring by Professor Annie Krikorian divided into teams and took on the task of assisting SABEResPODER, a Spanish-language media company based in Los Angeles, in developing a website and a business strategy to connect Latino immigrants with jobs.
SABEResPODER, a purpose-driven B-corporation, focuses on empowering the lives of Latinos by delivering educational content over multiple platforms—video, print, digital, mobile and events— to help immigrants assimilate into the United States.
The first group of five students presented the “Help Buddy Opportunities” system, a website that allows users to search a database of workers in the SABEResPODER system and oversee their own hiring process for jobs or individual projects.
They presented sample customer and worker profiles, including a picture, skill set, language, and satisfaction rating options.
They conducted a survey of employers and of the total respondents, 86 said they would be willing to hire a Latino worker for a job or project from an online database.
The second group of six students presented the “Micro-Business Opportunity,” an option to create a middle layer between the clients and the employees that oversee jobs being done and ensure their quality fulfillment.
They proposed hiring and managing people via mobile phones. After conducting several studies and looking at the statistics, the group concluded that there is high demand for cleaning services and that it would be the best option for SABEResPODER to explore.
Pepperdine full-time MBA students Jens Eser, Benson Su, TJ Wolcott, and Nicole Warner are quoted in the article in The Malibu Times.