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Stanford Graduate School of Business Joins 10,000 Women

Posted on: Thursday, 6 March 2008, 15:01 CST

The Stanford Graduate School of Business today announced that it will be an initial partner with The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) of 10,000 Women, a global initiative to provide 10,000 underserved women, predominantly in developing and emerging markets, with a business and management education.

The initiative will invest in a largely untapped yet significant resource -- the exponential power of women as entrepreneurs and managers. 10,000 Women establishes partnerships between universities in the U.S. and Europe and business schools in emerging and developing countries to improve the quality and capacity of business education in developing regions around the world. Goldman Sachs announced March 5 that it will commit $100 million to the initiative over the next five years.

"Half the world lives on $2 a day or less, so alleviating global poverty is an important priority," said Garth Saloner, director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "Entrepreneurship is integral to solving this problem in developing economies and something leading business schools ought to be involved in.

"In many such economies women in particular are underemployed because of hurdles associated with gender; yet at the same time they are a core support of the family," said Saloner, who is also the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management, and Economics and the Dhirubhai Ambani Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship for 2007-2008. "Enabling them to have skills to advance themselves and their families is extremely important in the fight against a lack of basic human needs."

Stanford Business School has a long tradition of developing teaching materials and academic work around entrepreneurship. Saloner is currently engaged in creating a course about entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship in the developing world through a series of cases based on real organizations in Africa and elsewhere. These cases will support Goldman Sachs' effort to expand access to knowledge to improve the lives of people in every corner of the world.

Initial Partners in 10,000 Women include:

American University of Afghanistan

American University in Cairo

Brown University

Columbia Business School

Harvard Business School

Indian School of Business

Pan-African University, Nigeria

School of Finance and Banking, Rwanda

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Thunderbird School of Global Management

United States International University, Kenya

University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business

Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania

Delivering Business and Management Education to 10,000 Women

10,000 Women brings together academic partners, development organizations and Goldman Sachs to support pragmatic, flexible and shorter term academic programs, resulting in business and management certificates that can open doors for thousands of women whose financial and practical circumstances prevent them from receiving a traditional business education. There will also be a select number of MBA and BA degrees funded.

In addition to funding tuition for business and management education, 10,000 Women will work with development organizations to better understand the local challenges girls and young women must overcome so more of them can realize economic opportunity and achieve their full potential. Some of these partnerships will seek to establish mentoring and networking channels for women and encourage career development opportunities.

There will also be a strong focus on capacity building: developing curricula, creating local case study models and "Training the Trainers" to improve the level of faculty training and expertise as well as increasing the overall quality of business education.

More detailed information about 10,000 Women can be found at 10000women.org.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business is a leader in management education. The School's mission is to create ideas that advance the understanding of management and with those ideas to develop innovative, principled, and insightful leaders who change the world. Four key centers at the School include the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, the Center for Social Innovation, the Center for Global Business and the Economy, and the Center for Leadership Development and Research.

Goldman Sachs is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high net worth individuals. Founded in 1869, it is one of the oldest and largest investment banking firms. The firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Hong Kong and other major financial centers around the world.

Source: Business Wire

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