Entreprenuerial Learner, thy name is Melissa

I look back on the morning's OB classes and know now how to define the Entreprenuerial Learner aspect of our OBCT 2008 theme. Melissa.

She graduated from my university last May with a BSBA. From the previous summer and part time over her senior year, Melissa worked for Cintas Corporation in their internship channel. Then, she became one of their management trainees.
Melissa was our guest this week in my OB class, telling her story in the context of our unit on diversity.

How does she embody my vision of an entreprenuerial learner? For the last eight month she has been driving a big Cintas van loaded with first aid and safety supplies and equipment, making stops at her 180 business customers spread across a large part of Connecticut and Rhode Island.

She stands about 5 feet tall, a 22 woman, lovely, with sparkly dark eyes and a winningly bright smile. Her heritage is Puerto Rican, so she is bi-lingual - a plus for working with Latino customers. The main point is that Melissa is the only woman MT doing this demanding job in this sector of the company. Those are her customers to keep or lose. She is keeping them by bringing timely solutions to whatever they throw at her and Cintas to do for them.

Melissa passed up a desk job in insurance to go out into this rough and tumble blue-color world. She is staking her future in this global corporation on demonstrating that she is more than capable of doing what is regarded as "man's work".

Next in her training, she changes out of her uniform and into a business suit for a long stint in business to business selling of the products and services she has taken out on the road. This is the pathway that most in this company take to enter the higher ranks.

Here is why I see Melissa as my prototypical Entreprenueral Learner. She told the class that no one day is like the next, that she finds changes can happen overnight in her customers' business; that tasks she finally mastered are eclipsed by new ways either her company or customers or both need changes to accomodate the upheavels in this dynamic business environment. She spoke of how she deals with turmoil with zest, recognizing that THIS is real business putting her to the test; not a professor with blue book and term paper. Melissa reaches out to the people who can help her shape her answers, does her own action research, and leaves creative solutions in her wake.

I wish I could show you a video clip of Melissa's poised, animated, and optimistic way of being there today. Her "bring it on and let's tame this problem look" was not missed by my students, many of whom will soon be graduating. Yes, last Spring, Melissa was one of them, taking this same course with me, wondering how it would be to get out there and work a territory. Now she knows that she can do business with the best of them.

Do you have Melissa's in your teaching history? Isn't a the grandest feeling to know they credit us as being among those who believed in their limitless capacity to learn?