4/2/2013 – This guest post is written by Rachael Miller, (GSSE MBA ’12 and RPCV Benin ’06-‘08), about her new endeavor to solve urban food insecurity. She and three classmates graduated last year, but continue to build profitable ventures that make a difference.

Be a change-maker. Be your own boss. Use your career for good.

These drivers are why many of us joined the GSSE MBA program in the first place, and why many of us can’t seem to do anything else, even after graduation.

MamaCarts Co-Founders (from left to right): Lindsay Saperstone, Meghan Coleman, Rachael Miller, Jeannie Whitler

Fellow graduates Jeannie, Meghan, Lindsay, and I went to San Francisco this March to compete in the Hult Prize; a social enterprise competition with the promise of $1M at the end of the tunnel. We earned our MBAs in December, and our work resume spans 8 countries and 3 languages.  Plus, our combined years of working and living abroad made us extremely good at laughing at ourselves and being humbled by unexpected outcomes. So we eagerly rose to the occasion when Bill Clinton himself issued the Hult Challenge:  Increase food security in urban slums by 2018, using a sustainable, scalable, and fast-growing solution.

Key take away: If you want to solve a problem, actually start with the problem! This competition provided teams with free reign to tackle food insecurity from their respective angles.  It took a magical mix of teamwork, networks, experience, dedication, advising, late night meetings, and lots of iterating.  And so without further ado, we are excited to introduce MamaCarts!

MamaCarts Logo

MamaCarts is a product of every lesson we’d learned in our 18-month MBA condensed into 8 weeks of planning, research, and testing.  Our holistic yet simple solution: MamaCarts is a for-profit food cart microfranchise that leverages existing supply chains to distribute complete, clean and delicious meals to lower income urban markets.

And now – after receiving feedback from the Hult judges (from Gap Inc, IDEO, Saatchi&Saatchi S, and WalMart), we’re just getting started.  If this has peaked your interest, there are a number of ways you can get involved and learn more:

• Please vote for our video on the Global Business School Network video contest.  It will really help our exposure and increase our chances to get featured on the NextBillion blog.
• MamaCarts will be competing in the Hult online video competition, so stay tuned!
• For a more detailed version of our Hult experience, please visit my personal blog.

Check out our website and social media pages for updates and announcements:

• Website: www.mamacarts.com
• Twitter: @Mama_Carts
• Email: mamacarts@gmail.com
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/mamacarts

-Rachael