How to Leave YLS Prepared for an Innovative Career: Advice from Entrepreneurial Alums

Sarah Ryan
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Image by Uncleweed via Flikr

This afternoon, Jonathan Ng, Global Legal Director of Ashoka (a renowned social entrepreneurship organization), gave YLS students this advice: You can learn what you need to know to lead a new organization or sector during your time at Yale. The advice was echoed by social entrepreneurship scholar and YLS fellow Zachary D. Kaufman (Yale College ’00, YLS ’09) and Generation Rwanda Executive Director Jamie Hodari (YLS ’09).

The three had gathered to discuss Kaufman’s new book, Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities, a project to which each had contributed. While the event commenced with a presentation on the emerging field of systems-changing social ventures, it ended with a lengthy discussion of how the presenters had forged meaningful careers in nascent legal fields. Hodari encouraged YLS students to follow their passions immediately following law school, rather than spending years “opening doors…” In that vein, consider how the law library and Yale University can help you prepare for your post-graduation ventures. Below are 10 exemplary resources from each. For further information, come see a librarian.

 

From the law library

1. Learn how to be a social entrepreneur

2. Learn how to run a nonprofit organization

3. Learn how to budget for your organization

4. Learn how to build strong public relations for your organization

5. Learn how to market your invention

6. Learn how to write environmental and natural resource management policies

7. Learn how to mediate, arbitrate, and resolve labor disputes 

8. Learn how to manage human emergencies and natural disasters

9. Learn how to manage a law office

10. Learn how to have a career in the foreign service

 

Learning Opportunities via Yale College

1. Economics events, education, and professional development opportunities

2. Program in Agrarian Studies

3. Center for American Studies/American Politics and Public Policy Workshop 

4. Center for Business and the Environment  

5. Center for Environmental Law & Policy

6. Program on Ethics, Politics and Economics

7. Center for Industrial Ecology

8. Hixon Center for Urban Ecology  

9. MacMillan Center for Area Studies            

10. Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence

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