Guest blog by Lorenza Ramirez
I didn’t plan on launching a social venture while at Booth. My pre-MBA path was “non-traditional”: I spent 5 years managing voter turnout programs on Presidential and Senate campaigns in battleground states. When I applied to business school, I wrote about the biggest problems I observed on campaigns, and how the MBA would provide the tools I’d need to solve these problems in the long-term.
Fast-forward to winter quarter of my first year. In January of 2024, I enrolled in Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation (SEI) with Rob Gertner. At the beginning of the class, we needed to select a social impact problem to dig into. I revisited my “Why Booth” essay, and knew what I wanted to tackle: solving the talent retention problem in the progressive ecosystem.
Here’s why this problem matters: every election cycle, thousands of inspired staffers join campaigns across the country. Yet when these campaigns end, the vast majority of these talented operatives – whether they’re working on ballot measures, electoral campaigns, or issue advocacy – immediately become unemployed. This cyclical unemployment problem is the broken reality of the campaign industry; right now, there’s no scalable infrastructure to retain talent in the year between elections. As a result, thousands of talented staff are leaving the industry because they can’t afford to be unemployed every two years. Talent attrition has enormous costs, in the form of money, time, and results.
SEI provided the structure I needed for customer discovery and competitor analysis. In two months, I spoke with 50+ senior political operatives and employers. Plenty of people told me the problem was too difficult to fix; but for every pessimistic meeting, I had one that provided early validation that my solution – Blueline – could work. At the same time, the 2024 campaign hiring cycle was ramping up, and the urgency for Blueline grew. Knowing that thousands of staff would become unemployed later that year, I applied and was accepted to the Social New Venture Challenge (SNVC), UChicago’s flagship social impact accelerator.
The SNVC accelerator was the most rewarding, challenging, and humbling experience of my academic career. The competition pushed us to refine our pitch deck and value proposition. Building relationships with SNVC judges was impactful beyond the accelerator: several became advisors and donors after our launch. It was so motivating to learn from other founders, like Jane Kim who launched KindEd. Though Blueline was ineligible to win prize money in the SNVC finals, the accelerator provided the feedback, timeline, and relationships we needed to formally incorporate in June and publicly launch in September at a kick-off with Beto O’Rourke.
Thanks to Booth’s flexible curriculum, I was able to strategically enroll in courses that shaped Blueline’s model in real time. These included Competitive Strategy with Thomas Wollman, Cost Analysis & Internal Controls with Chris Stewart, and Women as CEOs with Alyssa Rapp. Beyond these professors, so many members of the UChicago community went out of their way to provide valuable feedback and make connections – including Samir Mayekar, Director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship, and Julia Stasch, Philanthropy Executive in Residence.
One year after first ideating on Blueline in SEI, we have: received 1,100+ applications to our fellowship program, partnered with 20+ employers, built a team of 15 part-time contractors, and are generating revenue. Launching Blueline successfully on this timeline never would have been possible without the SNVC and the support of the UChicago social impact community. So if you have a social impact problem you are determined to solve – Booth is the place to do it.
